The Church and the Home

New Zealand Tablet, 7 September 1911, Page 1769

The Church and the Home

One of the last public appearances of the late Cardinal Moran was at Chatswood on the Sunday before his death, when his Eminence blessed the foundation stone of a new presbytery. In the course of an address on the occasion, his Eminence said that the Christian Home should be a sort of vestibule of heaven to those who reside in it, and it was the desire of Holy Church to so sanctify it, that if the angels came from heaven to earth they would find it a resting place, worthy of Paradise itself. Take the blessings which Holy Church imparted to the married state. At the present day divorce was rife in many countries of the world, but Holy Church set herself against breaking this holy bond of matrimony. He had been informed that in the United States, during the past ten years, over one million divorces had been granted. What a vast number of persons had been compromised by divorce. Not only the husbands and wives, but the children and immediate relatives were affected by dissolved marriages, and a stain inflicted upon them by the terrible disease of divorce. It was a terrible disease and one that should be combated. Holy Church had remained inflexible by not giving her sanction to it, and would sacrifice everything rather than imperil in any single case the inviolability of the bond. Holy Church again commanded respect to the laws of the land. On her banner was an inscription that the laws of the land must be obeyed. Continuing, his Eminence said that nowadays there seemed to be some who set aside the Ten Commandments, and who thought that they did not belong to the present day. The Church decreed that the Ten Commandments must be obeyed. His Eminence also alluded to the Church being the great safeguard to its children in their own temporal state. He referred to the many difficulties between Labor and Capital. It was the duty of Holy Church to preach equity, assuring to labor its rights and to maintain the position of the employer along the paths of duty and responsibility. _ In many ways also the Church was engaged in relieving suffering, in preparing refuges for the fallen, establishing numerous hospitals for the sick and distressed, and asylums for orphans and foundlings and the aged and poor, and bringing to the suffering all the consolations that religion and science could impart.