BISHOP SUMS UP

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20624, 27 November 1941, Page 6

BISHOP SUMS UP

CONSCIENCE RIGHTS SERVICE OBJECTORS MUST ACCEPT PENALTIES (Per Press Association.) HAMILTON, thiu day. The rights of conscience and the obligation of man to follow the dictates of conscience regardless of the consequences, are dealt with by the Bishop of Waikato, the Rt. Rev. C. A. Cherrington, in the current issue of the diocesan magazine. “Conscience is the last court of appeal for every one of us,” states the Bishop, “whatever may be held. That is the penalty of our great gift of free will.

“Now a man refusing on the grounds of conscience to fight for his country, or even to help to fight for his country, is obliged to follow his conscience. He cannot go against that and be true to himself. His conscience, so we may think, may be guiding wrong. He has to follow it just the same. It is his conscience.

“His conscience may fail him as another faculty, memory, may fail. He may not have trained his conscience properly as every man ‘should train his faculties. That cannot be helped. It is his conscience and he is bound to act upon it, but he must be prepared to be crucified for it —‘but if ye suffer for conscience’s sake, happy are ye.’ “His country, if he is not prepared to fight at the call of it, has a perfect right to punish him as the Government thereof thinks best, for it also has a conscience and is bound to follow it. A conscientious objector has to prove the genuiness of his objection by submitting to banishment. A country can refuse to protect a man who will not fight for her, or to perpetual imprisonment for the duration of the war, or to being made to work on peace-time work with just enough to keep him alive —no awards, no pension, no anything. If he does not show himself willing, without complaint, to submit to any or all of these, he is no true conscientious objector.’’