NO LIAISON

Southland Times, Issue 20527, 2 July 1928, Page 8

NO LIAISON

EMPHATIC DENIAL

CATHOLIC CHURCH AND LABOUR PARTY VOTER’S LIBERTY NOT INFRINGED (Per United Press Association.) Auckland, July 1. At St. Patrick’s Cathedral to-day, Dr. Cleary replied to Canon James’s statement that the Labour Party in voting against the Religious Exercises in Schools Bill “are obeying the orders of their masters, the Roman Catholic Church. This is the price of Roman Catholic support at the polls.” An emphatic denial of any such bargain, said Dr. Cleary, was made on behalf of both of the alleged parties to it. The Bible in Schools League was offering as “the price of support imaginary” huge electoral majorities “of seventy to eighty-four per cent.” Their demand for a “count of noses” on intimate or other questions of religious faith or practice was described as a “menace to religious peace and liberty.” The canon’s attack recalled another high placed league authority’s announcement of a “gloves off” campaign during the election year for “stirring up strife in the community.” Dr. Cleary repudiated any alleged bargain with any political party claiming intimate knowledge of the official action of the heads of his church in New Zealand. Their church stood above and outside all political parties and this was a matter of long established law and based on the old standing doctrinal and moral principles embodied and emphasized in Pope Leo XIII’s encyclicals and in numerous other papal documents. A number of these were quo.ted to the following effect: Catholics “are forbidden to involve the church in party strife” on political and civil matters. Catholic voters have an “honourable liberty of action” and are “perfectly free to say and think what they like.”

Having due respect for “charity and justice” all “who represent the interests of religion in any way or degree” are required to avoid “even a simple appearance of holding with and favouring political parties.” An instruction dated Epiphany 1920 ordered all writers of Catholic journals to avoid political partisanship. When the speaker (Dr. Cleary) was editor of the New Zealand Tablet, it was appointed by the Catholic Hierarchy “sole organ of the Catholic body in New Zealand,” and one condition of the appointment required the paper to avoid either advocacy of or opposition to any political party. The speaker had exactly followed the Catholic principles herein both as editor and bishop. He had as official spiritual head and teacher and ruler of his diocese many times given instructions to his priests and people on these subjects along the church’s lines. The present Pope in 1923 had commended him in a letter for his strict editorial and episcopal avoidance of party entanglement.

The Catholic Church and its heads here have neither right nor power nor desire to interfere with the free exercise of Catholic voters’ perfect liberty to think and act as they please in political and civil matters. Grave attacks on God-given sacred rights would naturally tend to knit politically divided Catholics for the rightful defence but even when enemies sought to cripple or destroy religion in the various countries, the Church had not permitted to her representatives any alliance with political parties. In regard to the canon’s allegation of a bargain or compact for Labour votes, Dr. Cleary concluded: “I speak with relevant documents and with intimate inside knowledge of our church heads’ action in this Dominion, and I declare that his statement is contrary to fact.”