FIRST NATIONAL CONGRESS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVIII, Issue 77, 28 February 1938, Page 11

FIRST NATIONAL CONGRESS.

ST. VINCENT DE PAUL SOCIETY. Per Press Association. AUCKLAND, Fob. 27. In the presence of 1500 supporters, the Apostolic Delegate this afternoon opened the first national congress of the St. Vincent de Paul Society, m tlie Town Hall. Associated with His Excellency were tjie president of the Superior Council of the society. Mr P. D. Hoskins, of Wellington, Bishop Liston, and several visiting prelates, including Archbishops D.-Mannix, of Melbourne, and

A. Killan, of Adelaide, and the Provincial of the Vincentian Fathers, Very Rev. Father It. Macken. His Excellency complimented the church upon the celebrations, and emphasised the need for unity in charitable ivork. “If in New Zealand the Catholic Church was to be considered always the poor man’s friend, if it was to stave off the calamities which had been brought upon it in other countries by the ruinous tenets of aetheistic Communism, it would be due to such workers as those of the society going out to seek and succour their fellowmcn in distress. “To ensure another century of unhampered progress, it is necessary to renew the spirit of union based on the virtue of Christian charity, and set out again to work in perfect harmony for the further alleviation of human distress.” PROFESSOR’S SERMON. The significance of the incarnation of Christ formed the subject of a sermon by Very Rev. Ur Arthur H. Ryan, professor of scholastic philosophy at Queen’s University, Belfast, preached at Solemn Pontifical Vespers at st. Patrick’s Cathedral to-niglit. “God’s plan was entry into Life at one end and Heaven at the other,” said Dr Ryan. “Death was not to lio between. From Adam we were to inherit all preternatural gifts, but Adam sinned. That God did not prevent his sinning may seem strange. Ho could have prevented it, but to have done so would have made of huinahity a race of marionettes, dancing at the Master’s will. Freedom was one of the noblest endowments of Adam’s nature, and freedom involved the possibility of his sin, which shattered the original plan. “In spite of this ingratitude, the broken threads of the divine plan were gathered together in Christ, who by His Passion and death atoned for humanity's sin and restored, to us access to our Heavenly Father and established the Church.” “Our salvation for the world is to return to the Christian concept and the supremacy of the spiritual,” said Dr Ryan. “The supremacy of matter has brought disaster everywhere in a loosening of morality, in the enslavement of peoples, and in the spread df despair and bewilderment. “There is no hope for humanity in mechanical or economic organisation alone; these are but instruments, potent indeed for great good, but also for evil if the will that uses them is distorted. We must frequently remind ourselves that the source and foundation of all reality is in God.”