The Church and the Nation

New Zealand Tablet, Volume L, Issue 29, 26 July 1923, Page 30

The Church and the Nation

ff to-day we ask wherein lies the proof of the Church’s special capacity for the promotion of a world peace, what is the answer (asks Cardinal Fischer, of Munich). The proof of the Church’s capacity lies in the fact that she is a gi eat moral power. Peace cannot come in our times if individual men and peoples are not first morally renovated. No effectual . and lasting peace can spring where hatred and the desire for annihilation prevail. Everything that produces hatred and popular egotism provides fuel for the flames of war. The Catholic Church stands before us as the only religions society which grapples with the inward sentiments of the soul, which can effect the moral conversion of the soul, which reforms men of violence, undermines force, and creates a moral current in which right and justice, humanity, charity, and honesty thrive in the relations between nations.