CHURCH AND STATE.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LI, Issue 197, 22 July 1931, Page 6

CHURCH AND STATE.

A BISHOP’S STATEMENT. AUCKLAND, July 19. The present religious •' troubles in Italy were taken by Dr. J. M. Liston, Roman Catholic Bishop of Auckland, as the text for an address upon the relations between Churcli and State which he delivered in St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Sunday.

The bishop declared that while the State and tiie Church each had its own responsibilities and its proper sphere of activity, the duty of the Church and its members was to see that Christian principles were respected in the activities of the State. The recent onslaught by the ruling civil power in Italy upon the Roman Catholic Action Society, said the Bishop, was not without benefit, because it forced men to consider a wider ■ and deeper problem, the relations of Church and State. ' The whole world, within and without the Church, was listening in, and it was natural to ask whither all this was tending. Since its foundation in 1923 this society had been merely a grouping of older socities; it had dealt with such questions as Roman Catholic education, family life and young men’s clubs. Men to-day, Bishop Liston continued, were being led in wrong directions by a group of pernicious theories which taught that the State was supreme in spiritual as well as temporal matters. It was said'that men must determine the things of the State by their own inferior light, without guidance from above. It was also said that the State was something apart from the spiritual world; that it could not recognise eternal values; that it could not admit religion to the schools because it would cause trouble and the State -was not concerned with the religious life—if any—of the children. The Church might be useful, but it must always subordinate to the needs of the people as dictated by the Slate. These errors, said the bishop,- were accepted in various European countries, and partly in New Zealand. The State was ■ free and untrammelled in dealing with all the temporal affairs of man, as for example, with the legal relations between men, with taxation and defence. The Church had much to sav to kings, to armies and to those in schools and workshops; it had the teaching of Christ to impart apd the laws of Christ to proclaim. It was no matter for surprise, but rather to be expected, that there should be conflict between the principles of the Church and those of a pagan State. Such a conflict had been in progress for many years in France, more lately in Russia, and now it was- to be found in Italy. “We in New Zealand,” iemarked Bishop Liston, “are living in a fool’s paradise if we do not recognise the changes that are taking place in the world of. thought, bringing with them new customs’ traditions and beliefs.”