CARDINAL’S PLEA

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26779, 24 May 1948, Page 6

CARDINAL’S PLEA

PEACE-LOVING WORLD “CORDS OF COMMUNISM” “What lies before us? Those who hold the fate of kingdoms in their hands assure us that once the bloodthirsty discords of the present moment have been laid aside they will introduce a new order of things based on a foundation of justice and economic settlement, but is it really to be a different, a better world? At the end of this war will there be fresh paths, fresh arrangements in international relations? Will they be conceived in the spirit of justice and fairness all round, in a spirit of reconstruction and peace? Or will they disastrously repeat our old and our recent errors? Experience shows it it but an empty dream to expect a real settlement to emerge at the moment when the conflagration of war has died down.” These questions were asked by Cardinal Spellman, the Cardinal Axchbishop of New York, in a broadcast address last night. Cardinal Spellman recorded the talk when he visited the Dominion last week. “To will an aggressive war is a crime and in these bitter days while nations stand helpless to cope with infernal atheistic forces we who believe in God must in prayer dedicate ourselves to penance in reparation for our own sins and the sins of those who willed war and who do not serve God or respect their fellow men,” Cardinal Spellman said. “To-day. and all days of our years, we must do our duty to protect our heritage of peace, earned for us by our martyred dead who fell asleep that nations might awaken, that other men might work in peace. In their name we must strive to see that all who sordidly serve only themselves all whose demoniac aim is to divide peoples by open or covert appeals to national, racial, social, economic and religious prejudices, re-fashion themselves upon the pattern of our soldier sons. In the name of God and country they fought and won a war. They did not fail us; now we must not fail them. We must win and protect a peace, which they in their united sacrifice and strength won for us. “In unity alone lies self-preserva-tion and peace, but to-day the threatened peace is a brutal peace based on the complete captivity and the crushing of vanquished nations and weak peoples, of the earth, a peace bespeaking the wanton will of God-hating men determined to dominate the world and drain it of tolerance, charity and love. For atheists and Communists, like vandals. revel in the desecration and destruction of all that is noble and sacred and every loyal man in New Zealand, every right-thinking Australian, every true American, to keep faith with his country, his God and himself, must resolve actively to love and live a life that follows the pattern of the life of Christ, lest the freedoms that we cherish be choked from our nation’s democratic body by the cords of Communism already circling the Sl “ Democracy stands trial before the world,” the Cardinal declared. Each one of us has a part in the choice that is to be made. If man chooses the road to strangulation and serfdom the fault will be ours, a fault not alone of the statesmen entrusted with the richest heritage of any peoples in the world, but the fault of every citizen of New Zealand, Australia, and America, every free human being everywhere who tills the farm, who toils in the factory, who tends the shop, who teaches in the schools, who preaches in the pulpit, who graces the home, the fault of every Christian and of every man who believes in God who fails to follow the profession of his faith in love and God and chanty to his neighbour. . , “In defence of our liberty, peoples of our free countries have defended their ideals and practices, and I do when I condemn atheistic Communism as an enemy of all men who believe in a Godly way of life, and I believe that New Zealanders, Australians, and Americans should unite with other peace-loving men of all nations m opposing Communism, by living the Godly way of life, teaching our chiidren to follow God, and ourselves contribute our share of honest endeavour for 'the common good of our countrymen and of all mankind. For if we keep faith with our neighbour nations, with our neighbours and with ourselves, then no danger can enshackle us.”