Summary of a Pastoral Letter

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 508, 10 November 1928, Page 12

Summary of a Pastoral Letter

Issued by His Grace Archbishop Redwood, S.M.,

Archbishop of Wellington and Metropolitan (Published by Arrangement.)

WELLINGTON, October 19, 1928. As Metropolitan of this Ecclesiastical Province, I deem it my duty to again give the Catholic body of New Zealand right guidance on the matter of Prohibition—National Prohibition —with which it is threatened. I hope such a calamity will never befall it. The position of Prohibition advocates is altogether untenable. If they argue that alcoholic drink is an evil in itself, they run counter to Scripture and the emphatic teaching and example of Christ. If they argue that alcoholic drink is not an evil in itself, then regulation of its traffic is surely the moral course to adopt. But if Prohibition is urged on account of the misuse which some make of alcoholic drink, then, to be morally consistent, the same people should demand the suppression of many other things, for instance, printing, theatres, dancing and numerous other uses; but this is against reason and common sense. REFORM IS NEEDED—NOT PROHIBITION—reform wise and moderate and patient in the light of experience, education, and true morality; in the interests of the great body of the public, and especially of moderate men, who constitute the majority of the people. To brand New Zealanders, who are generally a sober community, as a drink-sodden people, demanding drastic legislation, is a vile and monstrous calumny. The whole scheme of National Prohibition is a great step backward; it would be an odious and inquisitorial tyranny, foreign to the basic principle and spirit of British law. PROHIBITION IS INDEED FATAL TO LIBERTY, because it involves a serious outrage against the natural rights and liberties of individuals, and contemptuously disregards the claims of dissenting minorities. It is also fatal to TEMPERANCE, though not a few sophistically confound temperance with Prohibition. Temperance is a growth, like all moral laws, in the individual and the community. Prohibition proposes to establish temperance according to the Criminal Code. Temperance is positive, and appeals to man’s sense of self-control, to his reason ancK conscience. Prohibition is negative, and appeals to the sense of fear, to pains and penalties, and utterly ignores man’s habits and education. Temperance is the development of man’s righteousness and selfcontrol. Prohibition is the reduction of man to a position of compulsory national total abstinence by the criminal law. Temperance is the heritage and blessing of a free people. Prohibition is the yoke which a country constructs for itself when it confesses its inability to self-control, and from which it will take long years to free itself. Temperance is the badge of self-rfespect and orderliness. There are many other cogent reasons why enlightened New Zealanders should reject Prohibition. From the purely temporal standpoint of efficiency, Prohibition does not prohibit —as the example of America outstandingly proves—and never will prohibit so long as men exercise their birthright in a matter' that God has left them free. From the ( ethical point of view temperance, or selfcontrol and moderation in tha use of such things, is a moral virtue, and as such postulates free choice in the exercise of it. PROHIBITION IS THE SYMBOL FOR HYPOCRISY AND DECEPTION All the secret encouragement of sly drinking, the utter lack of control, the absence of all authority, the vile decoctions served, are sure to generate a low moral atmosphere of great mischief. And such places of sly drinking greatly appeal to the young. Once let a young man become contaminated by the moral tone of the “sly grogs,” he will be damaged morally, if not utterly- ruined. Prohibition will undoubtedly generate lawlessness. Its extreme character, Its far-reaching measures, its enormous penalties, stamp it as a grinding despotism—the fruitful parent of disorder. PROHIBITION IS AS DESPOTIC AS ANY LAW OF THE WORST DESPOT It utterly disregards and tramples under foot the undoubted rights of minorities, whom it grossly insults by the way it flaunts their wishes and destroys their privileges. The minority under it would obey or suffer outrageous penalties. Wherever it prevails it is monstrous in every way and grossly insulting to the intelligence of the large minority. If it is carried in New Zealand we may expect that shortly the land will be filled with dens, all of which will be schools of hypocrisy, evasion, lawlessness and deception. One extreme begets another. Prohibition would plunge us into a course of folly, bringing turmoil into the politics of the country, perjury and evasion into the courts, and deception into the people. Let it not be argued that “sly grog” would become an impossibility when throughout the whole of the Dominion there would be no liquor to be procured, for what could prevent the manufacture of sly grog in the country and its introduction by a WIDESPREAD SYSTEM OF SMUGGLING? But in any case this plea is no excuse for its inherent and rampant tyranny. In a publication regarded as authoritative by the No-License Party, these'words occur:—“l recollect on one occasion, in conversation, one of the brewers said to a prohibitionist, ‘I hate the drunkard as much as you.’ The prohibitionist replied: ‘That remark defines the difference between us. You hate the drunkard; I hate the drunkard-maker.’ ” It is this very extenuation in teaching which is sure to add to the list of the drunken. Nay, it destroys all morality. This teaching would render morality impossible. Anarchy and lawlessness, would be rampant. “I hate the drunkardmaker.” In terms of logic, he hates the hotelkeeper who sells wine, the barman who serves it, the commercial traveller who represents wholesale houses which stock wine. A STEP FURTHER. He tgopjd bate the junr prmr<ir t jtbe

labourer in the vineyard, and the carter who carries the wine, and so on. In large drapery establishments certain persons practise shop-lifting. Prohibitionist teaching would exonerate them and blame the drapers. “I hate not the thief, but the thiefmaker.” Such a doctrine would abolish the Ten Commandments. To shift the responsibility from the man who drinks to excess to other persons is to encourage sympathy with the drunken, and still more is this wrought by absolutely stopping the supply, not only to the few lawless, but to the whole community. This remedy is fatal to morals. It is fatal to set up a compulsory and ascetic total abstinence society for the people #.nd to enforce its rules by a drastic criminal code. A true educational development undoubtedly means that the whole of man’s attributes are to be brought into true harmony. Here lies the worth of the individual and THE TRUE GREATNESS OF THE STATE A mere negation such as prohibition would never accomplish this; in fact, a greater violation of its principles can hardly be conceived. This National Prohibition craze is mainly the work of a handful of fanatics. LIQUOR FOR MEDICINAL, SACRAMENTAL AND INDUSTRIAL PURPOSES I shall be told that we run no danger in New Zealand of our being deprived of alcoholic liquor for medicinal, sacramental and industrial purposes. We have had the assurance of the leaders of the No-License League, together with the Government* that satisfactory regulations will be made to allow wine to be procured for these purposes, but let all good Christians be timely warned. I am not at all convinced that these regulations will be satisfactory. First of all, what are they? Nobody has seen them, and they are to be made, I understand, only in the event of National Prohibition being carried. IS IT REASONABLE to ask Catholics to vote for National Prohibition on the strength of regulations not yet made, and about which we know nothing—whether they will be satisfactory or otherwise? But even though the present Government may be perfectly sincere in its avowed purpose to make regulations that will be entirely satisfactory, what guarantees have we that in a few years, once National Prohibition is the law of the land, another Government —on the ground, say, that the exemptions are being abused —may not insert an amendment in the Act doing away with all exemptions, even for sacramental purposes? We have had too much experience of “rush” legislation on the part of our Parliament not to fear similar “rush” legislation in regard to sacramental wine. I consider, therefore, that I would be failing in my duty did I not warn our people of THE DANGEROUS POSSIBILITIES that are before them. Are we in this pretended free land to depend for the exercise of a natural and divine right on any fallible and fallacious Government or set of politicians? Such a thing is an insult, an outrage, and an indignity. It implies a prying and inquisitorial interference with every altar in the Dominion. I call, therefore, on all Catholics in the Dominion to vote dead against National Prohibition, as they value common sense and liberty. Let them band with the best men in the Dominion, the majority of good and moderate men, to stamp out this noxious thing, National Prohibitition, for ever. Let such inquisitorial and grinding tyranny never curse this free land. The Catholic who votes for National Prohibition in the present condition of this Dominion-is true neither to his common sense nor his love of freedom, nor his loyalty to his holy religion. Let him cast his vote patriotically and religiously against it, in this and every other election. Let him not become the slave of a false system inspired by narrow-mindedness and fanaticism.