CUCKOO CRY IN AUSTRALIA.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXIV, Issue 18819, 6 March 1931, Page 9

CUCKOO CRY IN AUSTRALIA.

The Church and Politics. STATEMENT BY THE PRIMATE. United Presa Association—By Electric Telegraph—copyright NEWCASTLE, March 5. The contention that the Church should take a lead in political affairs was described by Dr. Wright, Primate of Australia, as a “cuckoo cry." He said the time had passed when high dignitaries of the Church were associated with .positions in civil life. The Church must lead in bringing people back to God. BISHOP AND MODERN POLITICS. DEMOCRACY IN AUSTRALIA. SYDNEY, February 26. In the course of a remarkable utterance from the pulpit of the Cathedral at Bathurst last Sunday, Bishop Crotty entered upon a vigorous attack on modern politics. He said that democracy in Australia was at the crossroads, and hinted that at no distant data the Church must definitely enter politics and save democracy from the destruction that threatens it. A preacher in England, in placing first on the list of modem deadly sins the cult of policies, divorced from principles, had, he said, placed his finger on the primary cause of the gathering chaos and the increasing poison in Australian public life. When a private individual foreswore his debts and lawful obligations it was a policy without a principle. When a nation or its chosen representatives made the same infamous proposal, the same moral poison was at work. The policy had slain the principle, and the moral murder was callous and complete.

The reason for the shameful divorce of policy from principle was not far to seek, said the Bishop. Moral principles had been pulled up from their roots in God. The acids of modernity had dissolved ancient faiths. Dethroned principles would not reappear until the people went back to God. That this divorce was showing its face in politics was not surprising. In politics, exploited increasingly by men both ignorant and unscrupulous, human tensions emerged in their fiercest vein. In the public life of to-day there was a frank and cynical disavowal of principle. And in that apostasy the doom of democracy was sealed. At that point, said Bishop Orotty, the Church would definitely enter into politics and sweep with its scourge throughout its temple, overturn the tables of the reckless money-changers and exposing their barren and impudent deceits. To-day the community in the moment of political bankruptcy looked wistfully to the Church for a bold, a Christian, and a non-Party lead. The Church, were her vision clear and her voice united, might yet make a Christian demand that would be loud and potent, cutting through the drifting stupidities like a twoedged sword. She might assert the principle of fellowship vital to industry and to life. There was no such thing as an unordered liberty. The Church might call to Australian democracy to go forth in a new spirit, reminding it that it was a new spirit and a new statesmanship, and not new States, it needed, continued the Bishop. She could call on it to revise its political implements, making them more democratic and more Christian; and she might demand fiercely that Party machines should be put back in their place, and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people should be restorad. She could remind that same democracy that if the multitudes refused their democratic and God-given task, some autocracy from the Left Wing or the Right must inevitably emerge to do what they refused to do. Finally, she could state unequivocally the things for which the Church had always stood and would flatly stand.