THE CHURCH OF THE PEOPLE.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXV, Issue 15, 13 August 1897, Page 20

THE CHURCH OF THE PEOPLE.

THE LABOUR PROBLEM. Father O'Ryan, a well-known American priest, lectured the other day in New York, on " The Church and the People." His remarks will be of interest to the workers of these colonies :—: — The Catholic Church had been in existence for nineteen centuries, during the whole of which time she had been the Church of the people, and such she would and must continue to be. The seat of the highest dignity of the Church is called " The Throne of the Fisherman."' The speaker argued that the labour problem was solved in tlie Middle Ages, when the Chuich was supreme over all the civilised world by the workmen's guilds organised under the auspices of the Church, and every trade and profession throughout Europe when Europe was Catholic had its guild. These guilds bound all classes together in the practice of religion and morality, for that was possibLe when all Europe was Catholic. They defended the innocent and helped to punish the guilty. They visited and comforted the sick and buried the dead. They covered the face of Europe with a network of sympathy, benevolence and charity. The speaker said that in 188."), when a concerted invasion of Africa was made by Europeans, partly for the purpose of acquiring choice territory and partly for the purpose of gathering slaTes for sale, Pope Leo sent one of his Cardinals through Europe demanding that they should put down the slave traffic. At the Congress of Nations soon after his voice was heard and heeded, and the traffic in negroes abolished. Pope Leo soon after that event issued his famous encyclical on the condition of the working people. He was denounced for that by the Conservatives and he was called a socialist.

Pope Leo's solution of the labour question was founded on the Gospel of Christ ; justice and charity iounded on religion, binding 1 on every man, employer and employe. These are the great virtues which should rejuvenate the world; they are the great and only virtues that can bring material prosperity to the world again. When the Pope said that in case of extreme destitution, when men were brought to the verge of starvation, property then became common, and there could be no robbery, he was denounced as being worse than a socialist, in fact an anarchist. The Pope held that the employer should practice justice, and that there should be a fair day's wages for a fair day s. work — wages sufficient to support himself and family in a decent and respectable manner. lie said :—: —

'•It is neither justice nor humanity to grind down men with excessive labour so as to stupety their minds and wear out their bodies. Daily labour must be so regulate 1 that it may not be protiaclel dip inn lingei houi-. than strength permits." Cardinal Cibbnn- del :neoi the Knights of Labour was spoken ol'asb-iiu in liiK with lh.' s nt inients and ]> >li -y of the Church.