CHURCH AND STATE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20929, 20 July 1931, Page 9

CHURCH AND STATE.

ROMAN CATHOLIC VIEW. PRESENT TROUBLES IN ITALY. 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 Church and State which he delivered in St. Patrick's; • Cathedral' yesterday afternoon. The bishop declared thai while the State and the 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 nob 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. Sine# its foundation in 1923 this society had been merely a grouping of older societies; 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 supremo in spiritual as well as temporal'matters. It wis said that men must .determine the things of the State by their own interior light, without guidance from above. Ifc 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' Ub useful, but it must always b« subordinate to the needs of the people as dictated by the State. 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 o? man,. as, ios example, with the legal relations betweets men, with taxation and , defence, Th< Church had much to say to kings, ic armies and to those in schools and workshops; it had the teaching es Christ to impart and the laws of Christ to proclaim.

It was no matter for surprise, but rather to be expected, that thm» should l>e conflict between the principles of th« Church and those of a pagan State. Such a conflict had been iu progress for roanj years in France, more lately iu Russia, and now it was to be found in Italy, "We in New Zealand," remarked Bishos Listoti, "aire living in a fool's paradise ii we do not recognise the changes that ar<. taking place in the world of thought* bringing with them new customs, traditions and beliefs."