CATHOLICS AND THE WAR

Press, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23263, 25 February 1941, Page 8

CATHOLICS AND THE WAR

BISHOP DEFINES ATTITUDE “WOULD BE ASHAMED OF ANY SHIRKER ” The attitude of Roman Catholics to the war was defined by the Roman Catholic Bishop of Christchurch, the Most Rev. Dr. M. J. Brodie, in an address at the jubilee reception to him last night. Setting out the duty of a man to fight for his country, Bishop Brodie quoted a pronouncement of the present Pope; and added himself that he would, as Bishop, be ashamed if any Catholic in the community was a shirker.

“Our faith is inseparably bound up with our duty to our country and our Empire,” said Bishop Brodie. As a Bishop and a citizen he would make that clear.

He would like, he said, to see published in eVfcry newspaper a recent pronouncement on the war, by Pope Pius XII, the present Pontiff. In the first place, that said, it was the duty of every man in the world to strive for an honourable and lasting peace. But while it was true that a man who made war from an unjust cause must stand before God for judgment, it was nevertheless also true that those engaged in war should give of their best in the defence of their fatherland.

Publicly, as Bishop, he would be ashamed should any man in the community prove a shirker. That there were none such might be found by reading the list of Victoria Crosses so far awarded in -the present war. The first awarded was to a Catholic; so. too, a Catholic won the first George Cross, the new civil award. Of the 14 Victoria Crosses so far awarded in this war four had been gained by Catholics.

Bishop Brodie gave as an example of Catholic heroism in the war the action of a Catholic rating on H.M.S Foylebank, who manned the gun placed in his charge until he was killed—still at his duty. “Remember what Hitler has done,” continued the Bishop in his discussion on the war. He had closed the Catholic schools; just as 1400 years before the schools had been closed in Germany in an effort to crush and destroy the Faith.