THE POPE AND TEMPERANCE.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXV, Issue 16549, 13 May 1914, Page 5

THE POPE AND TEMPERANCE.

ro the nnrron. Sir, —Some prohibitionists are endeavouring to .mako • temporanco mean prohibition, and prohibition to mean temperance. It is evidence of mental obfuscation to confuse the words and to attribute to them the same meaning. Prohibition is the essence of compulsion, and would attempt to deprive the individual—all men and women—of the right to bo temperate and live temperately, practising temperance in the use of alcoholic liquors. Temporanco is a .virtue, and men and women must not be compelled' by the club of a prohibitionist majority to be totally abstinent. Tho prohibitionists were not so treated. Why should they attempt to compel others £ Prohibition is antagonistic to the Divino order, which is freedom of choice. In his treatise on “ Prohibition: It is Wrong,” Mr C. A. Wind Jo puts this point very clearly: “ God will not accept service of people who are stricken to tlieib knees with dubs. If Ho believed in force, man would not have been left to the freedom of bis own will, as is the phrase of the Shorter Catechism. Tf (tod believed in force, and did not represent freedom of choice, He Would long since have destroyed' the Evil One, but He did not do so, as that is not Divine order. The theologians toll you that 1 God made us able to stand, though free to fall.’ Havo they been telling you the truth for hundreds of years? If so, then prohibition is contrary to tho Divino order, because it strikes down freedom of choice.” John tho Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine, and the people said lie had a. devil. The Son of Man rathe eating bread and drinking wine, and what did tho prohibitionists of His day say of Him: ‘‘Behold a gluttonous man and a wine-bibber —a wine-bibber means a. tippler or a drunkard. Prohibitionists have exaggerated in all ages, and it was thus they denounced Him who is tho Ideal Moral Character to all mankind. Today in your columns the prohibitionists aro endeavouring to throw mud' at the Pope as 11 tho representative of Jesus Christ upon earth,” because lie has established the distinction between prohibition and temporanco, and urged the clergy to warn their flocks against the evils of over-indulgence, producing alcoholism or drunkenness, and has urged the clergy to sot an example of temperance to their people. As a Christian, the Pope could not afford’to stand by prohibition, because prohibition .is anti-Christian. It is unChristian in character, for surely it never can be Christian to prohibit a thing that Jesus did. It is the voice or Christ, speaking by the Pope to the Catholic people of tho world, and all other d'onominations, if they would hear, telling them to .beware of alcoholism and the sin of drunkenness, and to practise temperance. It is an insult to tho intelligence of your readers for anyone to suggest that the Pope’s admonition to temperance is oho in favour of prohibition. It is a vast pity that prohibitionists will have recourse to such degrading and dishonourable methods to bolster up a easing political agitation so antagonistic to Christian futb.—l am, etc., 4 CHURCHMAN.