Christian Principles The Only Solution
Fr. Owen Dudley At Liverpool
Putting the world right was the title of a lecture by Fr. Owen Dudley last Sunday in Liverpool.
It was futile for man alone to try and put the world right. Manmade morals were not real and were bound to be ineffectual. All problems, international, social, etc., could be solved only by the application of hristian principles.
And by that I mean Catholic principles. There is only one body of thought that is clear thinking and that is Catholic thought. I am going to try to appl): the Catholic mind to these problems of the moment," he said.
The League of Nations failed because it depended on a moral without an authority for the moral. It presented a moral without any national basis, except a consensus of human opinion, based on pragmatical and utilitarian grounds.
"The League appealed on the false notion that we are responsible to humanity for Peace and War.
" Why should I be responsible to my fellow-men? Under what obligation are we to abstain from War for the sake of humanity?
"What obligatory value can humanity give to moral sanctions isolated frotn religion "Let the League proclaim the Divine code of moral law."
The Prelude to War " A few years ago they were proclaiming the only way to keep peace was Disarmamen 1V
t. e are now being told that the only 4 way to eep peace is Rearmament. We are reaching that state of fully-armed peace which is the prelude to War."
Father Dudley, continuing, said that it -was our solemn duty before God to raise our voios against the makers of War, until public opinion is so rapidly set against war that no Government would dare to enforce conscription. With the breaking once and for all ol conscription the first step towards internati nal peace would be won.
Wh* Doesn't God Stop War?
" 'W4 doesn't God stop war '? is a question that I have often been asked," said Fr. Dudley.
"My answer is you are asking Almighty God to protect us from ourselves. To stop war the Almighty would have to override us and deprive human nature of its supreme prerogatiVe—freewill."
Wars will stop when we, with our freewills united, stop the War-makers making it.
We shall never be able to act effectively unless we are quite clear on the Christian
principle of Justice and Charity. It is Christian Charity, as the Holy Father has so often said, which will remove social injustices and the causes of War.
Charity is not sentimentality. It is not toleration, for toleration of will can be most uncharitable. Denunciation can be an act Of charity. There is a righteous anger Which contains no hate, only charity.
Pax Mundi or Pax Christi
Father Dudley asked if this generation was going to have God or not. Mr. H. G. Wells in The Shape of Things to Come, wanted tSe world put right without God. Man was to be his own saviour. The Pax Mutt& instead of the Pax Christi.
" Why is this generation holding back from God? Because it has an imaginary grievance against God for not running this world better; blaming God instead of blaming itself; because it is being gulled by materialistic science which cannot find God, and thirdly, because of a widespread sensuality. The soul of man cannot rise to the spiritual whilst drugged with the lusts of the flesh.
This generation is Agnostic, not only about God, but about itself, about its own human nature, and what it involves.
The Love of God
" Until this generation faces fearlessly what God is, and what we are—the why and the wherefore of human endeavour, the world will not be set aright. The only world worth while is the world put right with God. That is what we have to attain.
The ' way of God' or 'the way of Man'? The latter leads to disillusion; the former to the Pax Christi in Regus Christi —the peace of Christ in his Kingdom.
In that Kingdom the common brotherhood of all men will be realised, as it only can be realised—in the love of God.
For how can men love one another unless they first love God?"