MORAL STANDARDS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21276, 1 September 1932, Page 13

MORAL STANDARDS

THE DANGER OF DECAY RESPONSIBILITY OF WOMEN APPEAL BY ARCHBISHOP The world's code of morals and tho responsibility of women in raising them to a higher level formed the subject of an address by Archbishop Averill at a special service for women held in St. Mary's Cathedral yesterday afternoon in connection with the week's campaign of Christian witness.

■The archbishop referred to the great danger arising from the tendency of a certain section of women, and particularly a certain section of young women, to regard the Christian ideal and ethic as capable of being flung aside and labelled as oldfashioned and out of dato. "The world has what it would call its code of morals," the archbishop said. "This consists in doing what you like so long as you do not get found out. Society also has its code of morals which consists largely in doing what-you like so long as you do not transgress the canons of worldly respectability or break that sacred slogan, 'it's not done.' Where does loyalty to Jesus or activity in doing God's will como in there?" tho archbishop asked. Value ol Public Opinion

The noblest thing in God's creation was a good woman, the archbishop said. If woman lost her high estate the world would lose all moral restraint and revm-fc to the ethics of tho jungle. A nation's moral standard could never rise higher than its women, and nowadays when everything was challenged it behoved women to take up a very definite stand for tho righteousness which exalted a nation.

Tho conspiracy of silence against matters which wer<j considered delicate and hard to discuss was denounced by the archbishop, who maintained that such a silence only confused the issues between light and wrong. An absenco of public opinion was often an incentive to moral decay. "Immorality is a sin against God and a sin against society," the archbishop continued, "and in spite of the modern attempts to escape the very ugly word sin, and to water down man's indebtedness to God, wo are bound to stand beside God whether society likes it or not. Slavery to society or to a fashion is tyranny, and it is the terrible feebleness of Christian witness which is lowering tho moral standard of the world to-day. A Dangerous Philosophy "Is the sex-saturated novel and the sexsuggestive cinema or play the outcome of the spirit of the ago or the cause of it?" the archbishop asked. "I think it is largely the outcome of it. We are told to get what we want, and if no voice is raised against moral drift, silence is so often accepted as acquiescence." In conclusion, the archbishop said the challenge of its standards by high-prin-cipled and courageous women was what the world needed to day. Narrow-minded criticism was worse than useless, but tho silence of a good woman was tantamount to the defeat of Christ's standards by those of the world. Tho world said Christ's ideals were not workable in these days, but if such a philosophy were exploited the inevitable result would be a decay of the world's moral standard. Although it required moral courage to be "out of fashion" even if the fashion were hopelessly corrupt, tho archbishop urged women to help the world by simple loyalty to Christ and by courage and fearlessness in the face of all opposition.