Spiritual Aspect of Rehabilitation.

Waiapu Church Gazette, Volume 35, Issue 6, 1 August 1944, Page 10

Spiritual Aspect of Rehabilitation.

"The whole tendency of the age is to by-pass Christianity as a spent, negligible force,'" said, the Bishop of Wellington (the Rt. Rev. H. St. Barbe Holland) at the session of the Wellington Diocesan Synod after referring to the part the Church could play m the rehabilitation of servicemen, 'fLpb us at last becoime aggressors m the spirit and m the name of Christ and prove that m our ministry to these mien we have a contribution of incalculable value to offer to the nation m what must prove to be the most formative era m modern history." Bishop Holland said a very big task lay ahead. He need not touch on the unsettlement and restlessness and what must be to many the-hate-fulness of settling down to the humdrum routine of the old job or even of a new job. That was all obvious. So, perhaps, was*the difficulty of the. married man m picking up the old fariiily threads' again.* . Perhaps greater still was the difficulty of husbands and wives who had experienced only a week or a fortnight of married life and then, after three or four years' separation, met again and discovered that they hardly knew each other. , For those men material rehabilitation was necessary and essential, but it was only part, and m some sense not the major part, of the process of helping them to take up their place once more m the community from which they had been separated for years. Those men needled friends real friends, and there, it seemed, was the Church's great opportunity and grave responsibility, for the Church could offer them a friendship which might prove to be their salvation. Many of them had learned to look upon their padre m the field as a trusted friend, and then they came back and x never connected their padre at the front with the parish church at home. And, so arose the whole problem of spiritual rehabilitation. He earnestly hoped that m every parish the vicar and a strong group of men, especially younger men, would get together and think out a policy; and that that policy would, above everything else, envisage the creation of real friendships with the returned men, not just a call and an invitation to come to church. A long job lay ahead and there could be no short cuts. He did not think there was any excuse for waiting until final de-

mobilisation took place, for there were already 23,000 returned men m New Zealand. ' Each parish much know what it meant to do m developing a ministry of help, service, and Christian felbwship for all returned men and must begin to practise it. The 7 following resolution was adopted bri the motion of the Veri. Archdeacon E. J. Rich (Wairarapa):— That this , synod heartily commerids the forrriatipn of groups of men 'in all parishes (through the establishment of branches of the ' Church of England Men's Society. or otherwise) for the purpose of fitting into the life, work, and worship, of the Church the servicemen returning to civil life.