ARCHBISHOP O’SHEA’S ADDRESS.

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 21 July 1925, Page 4

ARCHBISHOP O’SHEA’S ADDRESS.

(To the Editor). Sir,—l have no doubt that ydu.r journal in to-night’s issue correctly reports the words or general purport) ot the Archbishop’s address at Opunake yesterday. I have no- desire to rush into print, but for fear that the gratuitous slur offered to Protestants in that address should pass unchaienged, I desire to offer my protest. The words to which I take objection are principally these: “Four hundred years ago the rich wished to overturn the influence of the Church, and succeeded, and then set about fostering the greed and avarice of the old Empire.” Now, sir, this i s without the smal’est doubt a .reference to the Reformation, and it is astonishing that facts recorded by historian after historian assume colours and proportions when viewed by Roman Catholic eyes—especially ecclesiastical eyes —so different from the colours and proportions when viewed by Protestant eyes. . My reading of history tells me that the Reformation movement was anything Out a. movement of the rich—that there were riches, hut that these were in the coffers of the-Church of Rome, and that one great factor in the Reform movement was the desire to get back to the simp- icity and poverty of the One who had not so much a s where to lay His head. My reading of history tells me that the early glimmerings of the new light were carried throughout Europe by the Lo’lards —the poor men of Lyons—men -of one garment and. a stave who walked up and down taking the Word to th e common people. I read that the Reformers of Holland were Sea Beggars (little there to indicate wealth), but men of indomitabledesire for freedom and independence. When Huss went to stand trial at Constance before the representatives of the wealthv corporation of tho Church of Rome,' it was the common people who flocked to him and pleaded with him not to risk entering the lion’s den. Luther’s work in Germany resulted m the Peasants’ War—the despairing and r>erhaps misguided efforts of the rura*working population of Germany to secure freedom from the religious order that held them in bondage. And who hut a person jost to truth as a Protestant sees it would say that the Reform movement in Scotland was the darling of a rich and leisured class of hen pie? I take out of the Arclihishop’s words nothing more or H'ss than an attempt on the part of the. Church of Rome to make it appear to the working people of this district that their advancement, spiritually and materially, wily best be served by submission to tlie body of which the Archbishop is the mouthdeee, and that on the contrary the Reformation wa s a seeming success by a small wealthy party, in the hands of whom the eommon people’s welfare grievously suffered. I say that history emphatically contradicts the Archbishop.—l am, etc., - L. A. TAYLOR. ■ Hawera, July 20.