Resistance Against Censorship Bids

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30221, 28 August 1963, Page 14

Resistance Against Censorship Bids

(New Zealand Press Association) AUCKLAND, August 27. There was resistance to any curb on the poisoning of a nation’s mind through salacious literature, plays and films, the chairman of the Auckland Methodist Synod, the Rev. E. C. Leadley, said today.

Many people in New Zealand today were impatient of such things as censorship, he said. They shouted: “We are adults. We should be able to see what we like, read what we like, and do what we like.” “Recent happenings in England bring us face to face with the importance of public and private morality,” said Mr Leadley. “There is a danger that the key figures in recent trials will become the scapegoats for thousands of people in England, this country, and elsewhere, whose moral standards have slipped badly. “In many countries there is an increasing moral laxity We are now in a moral revolution and it is hoped that what has happened will come as a salutary shock.” Mr Leadley said that national strength did not lie primarily in armies and alliances but in morality and spiritual values. The prerequisite to political stabirty was social justice and an adherence to moral standards. “We must re-emphasise the right and duty of individual Christians and of the church to set high standards and try to maintain them,” he said.

“We must remember that pietism can be nauseating unless balanced by social justice and common sense, and we must beware of hypocrisy as we beware the plague.”