COMING ELECTION

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26289, 22 October 1946, Page 4

COMING ELECTION

POSITION OF CLERGY ACTIVITY INADVISABLE DUTY TO REGISTER VOTES “ Next month we shall be called upon to record our votes in a general election. and in the meantime candidates for election will be conducting their campaign, which I am sure we all hope will be conducted with tolerant good humour and freedom from bitterness,”

commented the Bishop of Dunedin, the Right Rev. W. A. R. Fitchett, in his presidential address to the opening day of the Anglican Synod session yesterday.

“ Officially the Church has no political party attitude,” the bishop said, “so it is quite beyond the function of a bishop to atetmpt to give any guidance or advice to members of the Church as to how they should vote, and in my opinion quite wrong that he should do so. .But it is a bishop’s function to state that to disobey the law, by abstaining from voting or neglecting to vote, is a grave , dereliction of Christian duty. “ I say emphatically that whatever your political convictions may be, it is your Christian duty to record your vote, and to record it as you conscientiously believe to be in the best inter-, ests of this Dominion,” he continued So far from neglecting to vote, there will be some Church people who desire to take an active part in the election campaign, it may be by public speaking, by acting on committees, or by canvassing, and so far as the laity are concerned, this is quite as it should be.

“ I am definitely of the opinion that the clergy should avoid such political activity and confine themselves to recording their votes in the ballot box,” stated Bishop Fitchett. “The clergy occupy an official position in the Church, involving the duty of administering the Word and Sacraments to those who will accept their ministry, and there can be no doubf, however much we should think it may be otherwise, that a public political party attitude on the part of a clergyman militates against those strongly opposed to his publicly expressed political views accepting his ministry, and with confidence committing to him the spiritual training of their children.”