N.Z. MEMORIES

Evening Post, Volume CXXIX, Issue 15, 18 January 1940, Page 11

N.Z. MEMORIES

LETTER TO-" (CONGRESS

PROBLEMS OF TODAY

. Charming memories of New Zealand are retained by Father C. C. Martindai'e,. the "famous" English Jesuit priest, author and-lecturer, who has Written a highly-interestirig' letter to his Grace Archbishop O'Shea, Wellingion, regarding the..National. Eucharistic Congress to be held at .Wellington from February 1 to 4. Father'Martindale- comments also upon social questions of the day and'the world outlook. ■ "Till i' received'"your and Archbishop Redwood's welcome in 1928," he writes, "I had never .been.' outside Europe save for a brief visit to Algeria' when I was ill. But friendships formed during the war had made me feel sure of that welcome, though even so I did not guess how kind and warm it would.be, nor into what a. strange and exquisite world the North Island was to introduce me. \ ) ■"■■ ''Since,then it has been my good fortune ■ to: return to. "New Zealand and Australia,, and also to visit many other parts of the." world-—South Africa, South America, the Philippines-, Ceylon—but nowhere have I seen any-/ thing lovelier, or been made to feel more truly at home or more happy.> And I have never lost a chance of saying so. \-.-. ■ ' :• "When I was. first among you, I was surprised to find how many f>lt that they were, somehow 'over the world's edge,' separated despite themselves from the great.movements of European culture. As one of your own poetesses wrote—her sensitive- work -is highly and increasingly- prized in- England: 'We are the wheat self-sown; Beyond the hem of the paddock; Banned by the wind from., the furrows;. Lonely of root and head.' ' • NEjy ZEALAND FRESHNESS:' "Well,,in some of your country parts, I had .certainly, found, a simplicity; a self-possessed friendliness, a quiet hosr pitality which reminded me' of Vicr torian days, and also a freshness— if I may say so, a New Zealandness, which was even better:: than my-mem-ories. How I welcomed it, after the sophistication of towns!.' H6w I hoped that New Zealand:'would-develop its own culture;.without:• imitation, let alone infection—for European society must already have been sick enough; for the war to have come about;'and, worse, to have produced the wretchednesses that have followed the war and leven now exist." SOCIAL PROBLEMS. Father Martindale aeverthelesk confessed Ms concern at, -the social evil of birth control, both in England and in New Zealand, and "adds: "If England continues as, it was doing, that certainly is the end of any value it could be within a Commonwealth of Nations; and if New Zealand continues .as it was doing.; there is. nothing before it save emptiness and presum.ab.ly invasion. ■!: ■' -■', • '"■'■'■ ,■' :'; ■ "The racket/1 know, is so remunerative and involves sq:many Wat legal ■checks. upoii'rthis. -pe^t. "ate -hardly to be hoped ■■fJot: A'-Biit''r^.""--p^blid r 'opiliion can be formed ahdi amongst "us, is being formedj; arid ; the' old" argumients are being discarded, for i not only economic 1 or medical, bu^'also, psychological and spiritual. ' ' ' • "We may foresee 'the day When ;all these doctrines of death—contraception;'if that fail-s,abortidn; iff that failsi sterilisation";' and 'finally euthaniasia, all of: them -forms "Of killmg^-givae^ay to that eomplex'idoctrinGF-oriife' which the Church; VahU-: she" only, h^s' so?' obstinately maintained "against ill odds. SPIRITUAL IDEALI "This may partly . account for the ever-increasing attention which the Church is winning in Englahcl . and America. As a man said naively to me only the other - day: . 'It is. astounding how your .Pope; has. become a ; public man;. in fact r ,.th'e public man!- r .Ojnly,he weat:bh,!;fit"isViip-;td now to be "ipO, per 7 ceni. Ca.th<ilics for all eyes; are upon you.' , .• ■.. . ; "A Eucharistic Congress, as I have always felt when present at them; is literally the only force in the world that can draw men of all nationalities together for one purpose, with identity of faith and hope,..with, one heart, and one spirit, with orie Lord, one God,; and Father-of them alLv> "True, yours is a national celebration; but. no "man and no cpuntry \ and no race lives in isolation; we live not to ourselves, alone;" and the prayers of all the world will be with New Zealand during these days; Impossible, within that universal globe which is the-Faith* for any man, any land, to be 'over the world's edge.' Even an Empire is a very little thing, compared with that Kingdom which is to have no .end."