A defence of Abp.

Whelan
SIR,—I strongly protest at the attitude of the CAntotte IlteALD towards the pronouncement of Archbishop Whelan regarding apartheid. Many of us ordinary.Catholics have waited for a long, long time for a calm, clear statement, scrupulously fair to both sides, from someone in authority. The Archbishop's words are . quite easily compatible with those already uttered by his brother archbishops.
Three plain points need to be asserted. Firstly, apartheid (apartness) is a perfectly normal and healthy human practice. We all do it. We English Catholics are, I think, the last people in the world to condemn it.
It was by our religious apartheid that the Faith was preserved in England; it is by our educational apartheid that we seek to pass it on safe to the next generation—a laborious and expensive business indeed.
This apartheid is carried out, as everyone knows, with a perfect charity and courtesy towards those from whom we separate ourselves. We assert our "differentness" without in the least claiming any superiority. Quite the reverse.
If you answer that racial apartheid is essentially different, I thoroughly deny it, Provided it is carried out with justice to other raves and cultures, it is our right and our duty to preserve our racial, national and cultural integrity. Mgr. Whelan declares, "It is utterly immoral to level ethnic into nto amorphous cosrno!Vital mass." How absolutely right he is.
To ridicule Christian patriotism as being opposed to human brotherhood in Christ is complete rubbish. And while exaggerated nationalism can be a great curse, it as not nearly so great a curse as exaggerated internationalism. Pope after Pope has warned us of this.
But there is the important further point, which you seem to miss entirely. Provided it is carried out with humanity, it is not the affair of the Church to direct governments towards either uniracialism or multiracialism; integration or segregation; democracy or paternalism. That is our affair as responsible citizens, acting with a proper Christian-civic sense. Ecclesiastical authority comes in rightly when the matter of justice may be outraged.
The vital distinction, which should have been immediately obvious from thestart for Catholics (and for you, Sir) lies between a perfectly moral principle, and a possible unjust application of it. Mgr. Whelan quietly and authoritatively puts them both before us. I see no important difference between him and his fellow archbishops. I see no confusion, except as existing in the minds of confirmed " race-mi xers".
Harold McCrnne
Laxton.