COMMUNISM PERIL

Gisborne Times, Volume LXXIII, Issue 11877, 23 February 1933, Page 2

COMMUNISM PERIL

"RENDER TO GOD THE THINGS 'THAT ARE GOD’S ” '

PLEA BY ARCHBISHOP

A pastoral from the Archbishop of Wellington and Metropolitan, Dr. Redwood, was read in the Roman Catholic Churches throughout the archdiocese on Sunday.

"The most deplorable and alarming fact, of the present day is the ignoring of God and the leaving of religion altogether out of account, " said his Grace. "And from the ignoring of God, as it is in our midst, the logical distance is not great to the hatred c.f God, as we see it to-day m Russia, combined with the menace of world-wide Communism.

"When vou visit Rome you see how Christianity rose upon the rums of paganism. How often a Christian church stands upon the site of a pagan temple! It symbolises and proclaims the victory of Divine teaching over human learning, ancient philosophies, and man-made religions. Christ and His Church purified the pagan world and set up a social order, on the sound basis of. justice and- charity.

‘’’ln the course of ages, Christianity has undergone many assaults, hut' it may be safely said that none equalled in malice and extent the present onslaught of Communism. Paganism must be conquered again, and the new paganism is more deadly and destructive than the paganism of the ancient world. The pagans of old were sitting in darkness, because the Light, of the World, Jesus Christ, had not yet shone upon them; but the pagans of our day sit- in darkness, indeed, but a darkness or thenown making, because they shut their eves to the Light of the \V orld and decline to receive it. The pagans ot old, despite their darkness, believed in some necessity of religion, but the pagans of to-day make man the men-

sure of ail things and "banish God altogether, as we see in Russia, where the basic tenet- of Russian Communism is the banishment of God from the universe. No matter what creed —Christian, Jewish, Mohammedan—all are equally banished from Russia as opposed to the welfare of the Soviet states.

"And this is quite natural, on, account of the inevitable opposition between the principles of Catholicism and the principles of Communism. So Catholicism is proclaimed in Russia and abroad to "be the afeh enemy of Communism. Between Communism and Catholicism compromise is impossible. A Catholic cannot he a Communist, nor can a Communist he a Catholic As a bait to catch the working man, Russia promised him a veritable haven upon earth, distributed the land to the workers', and thereby inaugurated a system of peasant owner-agnosticism or heresy, in the pretended interests of the commonwealth. As Christians we arc- bound not only to render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, but also, ancl in the first place, to render to God the things that are God’s. "Let us hearken to the earnest and repeated exhortations of. our Holy Father the Pope, and be constant in fervent prayers that goodwill may lie restored to the world, and dissipate class hatred and class warfare, and give back to the world that peace of Christ which surpasses all understanding,'” ,