THE CHURCH & YOUTH

Dominion, Volume 27, Issue 17, 14 October 1933, Page 6

THE CHURCH & YOUTH

What Its Aims Should Be

REFERENCE TO SCOUTING

By Telegraph.—Press Association,

Auckland, October 13.

The relation of the Church to the youth of the community, and the strenuous efforts contemplated to forge a closer bond, were referred to by Archbishop Averill when delivering his charge to Synod. His comment arose from the report of the commission appointed by him to consider the Church’s ministry to the young.

"Have we got quite the right idea of the Sunday schools?" asked the Archbishop. “They are not a substitute for home and day.school training; they are intended to be supplementary to it and to afford special training for confirmation where homes and parents fail to do their duty. Is it not the duty of the Church to find some remedy for such failure?

‘‘There is no more important work that the Church can do, there is no more important work that the council can do, than provide a supply of good sound Church literature for broadcasting throughout the diocese. There is no more important expenditure which the diocese can undertake than the financing of such an effort. The country is flooded with literature of a narrow sectarian kind, and even of a dangerous and pernicious kind, and it is the bounden duty of the Church to broadcast freely literature dealing with the fundamentals of the Christian faith and the principles for which the Church of England stands. “The council has carefully considered the position of Scouts and Guides in connection with parochial organisations for the young, and naturally is somewhat perturbed at the practical abolition of controlled troops in New Zealand, which seems to be contrary to the spirit and letter of the 1933 Scout Handbook. The Church’s first duty is to train her children in the faith and principles of the Church, and if Scouts and Guides are not helped by scouting and guiding to be loyal to their own church it would be far better for the Church to adopt or create some other organisation which would produce more satisfactory results. “We are anxious to co-operate fully with the authorities of scouting and guiding in New Zealand so long as they are acting constitutionally, but we have a right to demand that our own children in all that appertains to religion shall continue to be under the guidance and control of the Church. What we claim for ourselves we claim equally for others, and the children in the open troops should aways be encouraged to attend their own churches.

“The question of leadership is the crux of the whole matter. There should be a supply of laymen and laywomen who could qualify for leadership in both scouts and guides. It is unfair to expect the clergy to shoulder the whole burden. Both organisations are excellent in themselves, and continue to supply a very real need, and I hope that the authorities will encourage the various religious bodies to form their own troops whenever and wherever possible and so remove one hindrance to the spread and consolidation of an excellent organisation.”