Archbishop Calls For Faith In U.N.

Press, Volume XCIV, Issue 28161, 27 December 1956, Page 9

Archbishop Calls For Faith In U.N.

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright)

CANTERBURY, Dec. 25.

The Archbishop of Canterbury (Dr. Geoffrey Fisher) said in his Christmas sermon today that the world should be careful not to scorn the United Nations Organisation for being weak or ineffective. Preaching in Canterbury Cathedral, the Primate declared that the world organisation might seem useless, but that it could have a long life of promise “which only a Herod would care to slay.” The Archbishop said: “Certainly it is capable of acquiring moral authority if the nations will let it live and nourish it. “And since human wisdom has not yet found any better alternative than the United Nations to the dangerous and double-edged and unpredictable methods of force and unrestrained friction, it may be that Christ is pointing us to this unexpected and improbable and unattractive piece of world organisation to be a vehicle of the peace and the goodwill which is His Gospel to mankind.” There was a growing horror that the use of force might destroy the innocent with the guilty, the Archbishop said. He added: “Even now, in the anguish of these days when the cleavage between and within the peoples seems to grow more bitter, the sense that all countries and races are bound together by some kind of mutual obligation grows stronger. “Distress and offences against that obligation in other parts of the world, the shock and pain felt among us by a temporary but bitter estrangement from our own friends and allies, are, or, at least, should be, driving home the elementary truth of Christ’s Gospel.” “Revolt Against Force” Declaring that this century had for the first time in history witnessed a general revolt against force, the Archbishop added: “The only thing which can replace force is the moral authority of goodwill, and the only thing which can contain frictions with faith and fruitful limits is the curb of friendship and mutual trust.” At Westminster Abbey, in London. the Dean of Westminster (Dr. A. C. Don) referred in his Christmas sermon to the recent Polish and Hungarian uprisings. “There can, I think, be no question that their fight for freedom springs ultimately from their religious traditions which the Soviet atheists have tried in vain to er "In C the long run what we are witnessing today may have conse-

quences as far-reaching and as beneficent as those which crowned the efforts of the Christians in the Roman Empire long ago,” he said. Lesson for U.N. The United Nations badly needed to learn the Christmas motto, “It is more blessed to give than to receive,” the Anglican Archbishop of Brisbane (Archbishop Haise) said yesterday. Preaching in St. John’s Cathedral, he said the idea of an international organisation had no greater admirer than himself. But the United Nations was made up of “very ordinary and very wilful men.” “We can see what happens when selfish nations get together. No one country can be blamed. Something is lacking,” he said.