CHURCH NOT MATERIALISTIC.

New Zealand Tablet, 6 November 1919, Page 13

CHURCH NOT MATERIALISTIC.

The Catholic Church is the born enemy of materialism, says Bishop Shahan. Her essential teachings challenge and offend it at every point; thus her teachings about God and man, their relations, the dual nature of man, the nature and. the uses of the world, society, temporal goods, the dominant spiritual tone of her immemorial influence, the specific Christian virtues of humility, modesty, resignation, charity, the meaning and possibility and Uses of personal sanctity, the obligation of self-denial and renouncement. In a word, her attitude on the rule of the spirit as against the rule of matter makes her the arch-enemy of that evil philosophy in whose name Satan once tempted the God-Man, when he, held before ' him the bait of the world’s riches and pleasures. Surely the Catholic Church has suffered during the 19th century; but her way would have been much easier if she had compromised with the current materialistic views of the great pedagogical forces and agencies which have so long sharped educational aims, theories, policies, and instruments. This she could not and cannot now do, since in her eyes education is primarily and profoundly religious, is the projection of religion into the life of the r ,individual and society, is the protecting envelope of religion; , whatever is hostile to Catholic education is of necessity hostile in her eyes to the Christian religion. - Long experience has confirmed the conviction that the fundamental Christian teachings are in constant and certain peril wherever the schools are under purely , secular control, and that the popular outcry of sectarian influence on the one hand and the insistence on the other that moral training without religious convictions is amply sufficient, are only a cover or a screen mpant to hide the working and promote the , success of the deadliest anti-Christian policies and schemes. > | I %-