CHURCHES' LEAD

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 252, 23 October 1943, Page 5

CHURCHES' LEAD

"RELIGION AND LIFE" Economic Security And Social Health N.Z. Press Association —Copyright Rec. 10 a.m. SYDNEY, this day. The Pope and leaders of the other Christian Churches should be consulted at the peace conference, in the opinion of speakers at Australia's first "Religion and Life" Convention which is now being held in Newcastle. Delegates of all denominations are attending. Criticisms voiced at the conference have covered education, political and social life. The State svstem of Education, with its merely ethical approach to life, has been roundly condemned. Some division of opinion was evident when the conference discussed "economic security as necessary to social health." Delegates who pointed to accomplishments within the Soviet Union were replied .to by the Rev Dr. P. J- Ryan, Roman Catholic writer and philosopher. Present economic ills, he said, were not due to ownership, but to lick of ownership. Too few owned too much and the many owned too little Communism did not remove this unjust inequality. It aggravated transferring the ownership of productive goods®to the State thus combining economic with political power and reducing the citizen to slavery. ' "The Communist system," said Dr. Rvan "has no more to do with the bravery of the Russian people than has the capitalist system with the i of the A I.F. There are g,rs,t£..K ~i nnvthine like Australian Coin-lell-protected indusfnes W far from the battle front.