Non-worshippers “Hardly Human”

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31210, 7 November 1966, Page 18

Non-worshippers “Hardly Human”

Human beings were distinguished from animals by their spiritual faculty, said the Archbishop of Melbourne (the Most Rev. F. Woods) last evening.

People did not realise enough that those who did not say their prayers, did not worship, did not hear the Gospel, were “poor, terribly poor, indeed you might say hardly human.”

People, said Archbishop Woods, could not be human beings without God.

Archbishop Woods was preaching the Festal Evensong sermon of the centenary celebrations of St Mary’s Church, Merivale, before a packed congregation. He told the congregation that for each one of them present perhaps 10 or 20 persons were not there because they were indifferent to the worship of God. i The congregation, he said, had a task to serve the community in which God had placed them. Archbishop Woods said that

a parish was serving the community when it was worshipping. He would put this right at the top of the list. A parish served the community best and deepest by it worship—by its worship that was real and sincere, by its worship that it knew was representative. The parishioners of St.

Mary’s said Archbishop Woods would serve the community if they went on with living worship; worship that really meant something; worship that was relevant to those who lived around, even if they did not know it. Archbishop Woods spoke of the challenges of “the massed urbanised society.” “We are going to have to live in bigger and bigger cities,” he said. “In this mass population it is very hard for people to try to be of service to the community.” Part of the service of the

people of St. Mary’s to the community, he said, was to provide over-riding fellowship, where people could know themselves to be one. Archbishop Woods said that many men and women felt a frustration and purposelessness because their feelings were submerged in commercial valleys; even in mechanical valleys, if there were such things. The service was taken by the vicar of St. Mary’s (the Ven. S. E. Woods) who is a brother of the Archbishop of Melbourne.