THE NEW ETHICS

New Zealand Tablet, 15 November 1917, Page 29

THE NEW ETHICS

Under this- heading the Church Gazette, the monthly journal of the Anglican, diocese of Auckland, published the following letter from a correspondent in its issue of November 1:

“Sir, —As the editor of a journal that, if anything, is a guardian of morals, you will have noted the new code of ethics put forward -as a result of the Post Office enquiry. At that enquiry a minister of a Christian Church was shown to have written in letters odious charges against members of the Roman Catholic Church, which he made no attempt to substantiate. For this most un-Christian conduct he was severely criticised by the Commissioner and in Parliament, But some of his fellow-ministers, instead of fairly facing the disrepute into which he had brought his Church, concentrated their attention on the charge —quite immaterial to the main moral question—that he had fabricated the letters. They were indignant at the criticism levelled at him, and defended him by saying that he believed the accusations he wrote to be true. They further declared that if the Roman Catholics did not choose to open their establishments to inspection, they must expect to have such things said of them. Note the code of ethics that is here involved. You make atrocious statements or suggestions about people without substantiating them, and you are defended by your friends on the ground that you believe them to be true, and your friends do you the additional service of throwing overboard the fundamental doctrine of English law, which, in this case, is identical with the Christian ethic, that a man is innocent until he is proved to be guilty, and substituting for it the principle that it lies upon the person charged to prove his innocence. lam expecting it to be said of some high Anglican dignitary that all sorts of horrible things happen in his house, and when I ask for proof, to lie told that there is good ground for suspicion because the dignitary lives his home life within four walls instead of removing the wall facing the street. “But, seriously, this championing by ministers of a Christian Church of principles that violate the Christian and civil codes is the most distressing occurrence in New Zealand religious life for many years. It is the concern of all the Churches, for a blow suffered by one is felt all. There are many men outside or on the fringes of the Christian Church, men leading honest lives and dealing kindly and charitably with their fellows, in whom this sort of thing excites disgust with the whole Church. It is easy to prove they are foolish and wrong, but there is the feeling, and it must be reckoned with. And with this wrong reasoning or sentiment goes a strain of sound instinct. They feel rightly that men who can harbor these thoughts of fellow-Christians, who can forget the Scriptural injunction about charity, are not real Christians. For the lack of charity in this sorry business is its worst feature. A small example of it is the reasoning that the Commissioner was not impartial because he was a High Churchman, and had been an inmate of a Roman Catholic nursing home. What is one to do with such people We shall next hear that a judge is not fit to sit on a Roman Catholic case because he has been staying at a hotel kept by a man named Patrick Kelly, or is shaved by a barber named Murphy. Members of the Church of England should be doubly grateful to the Bishop for keeping the Church

clear of the Protestant Defence Association. That body has a perfect right to organise in defence of the principles of the Reformation and against political activity on the part of the Roman Catholic Church; but if it wishes to command respect, it must cease to have anything to do with an unrepentant dealer in slander, of whom it has made a hero.— am, etc., "Disgusted Protestant." To the foregoing the editor attaches this footnote: —"Since the above was written, the executive of the Baptist Union has passed the following resolution, among others, in respect to the Postal enquiry : 'That it entertains no doubt of Mr. Elliott's sincerity, but dissociates itself entirely from the charges and insinuations contained in letters which caused much public discussion, and condemns the use and publication of them in a controversy with the Roman Catholic Church.' "