P.M. wants report card: 'He tried his best'

Press, 28 February 1980, Page 4

P.M. wants report card: 'He tried his best'

PA Wellington The Prime Minister (Mr Muldoon) hopes his “report card" will one day be marked, “He tried his best.”

He spoke on “What my faith means to me,” at St Paul’s Cathedral in Wellington. It was one of a series of addresses by prominent people. Mr Muldoon, son of a Methodist father and an Anglican mother, and brough up as a Baptist, said faith to him was everything that knowledge and understanding was not.

“Faith is the extra factor. Faith is the factor of humility. Being sufficiently humble to say I do not know, I shall never know, I do not want to

know, because I have faith. “I have some experience and even some confidence in the field of domestic economic management, international finance, political tactics, the art of government, if you like. But beyond all that I have an optimism for the future of this country and for the future of mankind that is riot based on calculation. It is not based on understanding. It is based on faith in our Creator.” Mr Muldoon said he loved the words and tunes of old hymns. The one that expressed what he was saying was: “Lead kindly light amid the encircling gloom, lead thou me on. The night is dark, and I am far from home, lead thou me on. Point

thou my feet, I do not ask to see the distant scene, one step enough for nie.” Mr Muldoon said: “But with faith there must be works', and if we have faith we owe 1 it ‘to our Maker to use what talents : and what opportunities we may have with our utmost strength.” ..He believed God . was compassionate towards human failings. ' “I hope it is not blasphemous to say that God may even think, “You know, if I did it all again, I might do it a little differentlv in one or two respects.” $ “I hope that one day my report card will be marked ‘He tried his best’.” Mr Muldoon said somebody with his background

was not likely to be strong on “doctrinal niceties” and was not likely “to pay much heed to the ancient animosity between Catholic and Protestant, b e tw e e n i . established church and . non-con-formist”; : . . He was even likely to see some good in those religions which “go beyond the faith of Christ.” But Mr Muldoon said, “I am bound to say that my ecumenical spirit and even my tolerance stop short when I see ministers of the Christian religion as bedfellows of the servants of atheistic communism. “No faith that I can understand can tolerate walking hand in hand with the quintessance of evil in the modern world,” he said.