“PURITANS”

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXI, Issue 10923, 24 September 1932, Page 4

“PURITANS”

STRICT SABBATH. Devoting Sunday wholly to meditation is wrong, according to Divine Law, declared a high Roman Catholic clergyman, when invited to give his Church’s viewpoint on Sabbath observance to the Sydney Sun. According to Divine Law, he said, people were commanded to observe Saturday, therefore, the insistence on Sunday being sanctified, is desertion from the Scripture. The observance of Sunday is purely ecclesiastical.

“I remember a boy in Scotland, he went on, “who was fined for whistling on Sunday. That and the outcry against golf, tennis, or any other healthy sport, is pure Phariseeism and puritanism at its worst. So long as a person abstains from servile work, and attends Mass on Sunday, there is no other restriction.”

Speaking on behalf of the Council of Churches, but not for the Salvation Army, Colonel Bell said he agreed that the Sabbath in its genesis was a day for joyousness and triumph, but the Council was opposed to the commercialisation aifd secularisation of that day. Hiking Craze.

“It is too late in the day,” said Colonel Bell, “to frame a list of ‘don’ts,’ but it made one shudder to read of Sunday concerts and picture shows, dinners, aero displays, football, cricket, hockey, tennis, golf, sailing races, picnics, motor drives, harbour excursions, and sports. “We regard hikfcig as the latest craze, which will soon ho found at its normal level, and we are not losing our hair over it,” he added.

Souls and Lives.

This is what some of the sporting people think of how Sunday should be observed: —

Mr A. Holmes (president, Manly Lifesaving Club); Sunday was made for man, and he has a right to observe it as he likes. Reverend gentlemen should remember that they are saving souls, and we are saving lives. Both are good works, so why not let us go our own ways? Mr W. H. Walker (secretary, Royal Lifesaving Society): It is a matter for the individual. I think it was Bacon who said something about there being sermons in stones and good in everything, and that is my way of thinking. Mr Miller (secretary, N.S.W. Rugby League): We do not recognise Sunday football in any shape 01 form. Football is an amusement, but it would "lose that attribute if men were called upon to play it two days in succession.