SOCIALISM CONDEMNED.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 33, 9 February 1914, Page 5

SOCIALISM CONDEMNED.

IN A PASTORAL LETTER.

[Per Press Association. 1 Wellington, February 8

A pastoral letter from his Grace Archbishop Redwood was read at all the Wellington Catholic Churches today. It declaims vigorously against Socialism, The letter says that in their reaction against a false individualism, socialists have rejected that true individualism which is the necessary basis of sound democracy. Two ideals were set to man by socialism and Christianity. Socialism deems this life an end in itself, Christianitly regards it as a preparation for a life to come. Furthermore, Christianity views the State as a natural institution with well-defined rights and duties, limited by the prior rights and duties of the individual and the family. Socialism on the contrary is an economy set up to run counter to the providential purposes of the State. Under Socialism, State action, instead of being supplementary to individual action, would become a substitute lor it. The individual would be swallowed up by the State, a mere cell in an organism which is the inversion of the natural order. Socialism is non-natural if not unnatural. Socialism would paralyse man's freedom. Under it man would not be master of bis own life, but a slave, a cog iii the State machinery. Divorce is bad enough, race suicide is worse, and this is openly promoted, nay eulogised, by socialism.