ADIO sermon by the Rev. James Kearney, S.J., delivered in the Catholic hour broadcast:;—"Sir," wrote a young graduate to the president of a great securi lar university which might be in 7 any country in the world, "You were trained from your earliest years in an atmosphere of traditional Christianity.
You were taught that there are immutable principles of right and wrong, that-man is superior to brutes and possesses a free will. But what about us, the youth of today?
We have been told that morals are merely relative, that they change from period to period, from place: to place. We have been told that we are merely high-grade. animals, who should smile at the notion of free will.
As a spokesman for our floundering generation, may I ask your help in answering a question so desperately important to us that the whole course off our lives hangs in the balance?
If there is no such thing as absolute right and wren; g, how can anybody or be called wrong? In the light of what is going on in the world of today, will^you please enlighten us Some of our i-a cordi literate the distinction between fo conform with and justify his wrong, new. something introduc Queen Victoria in the middle of 19th cen-duct. An tury. To be moral, therefore, in their estimation, is to be mid-Victorian.
And consequently to be modern, according to old standards, is to be immoral. Sin, of course, is far older than Queen Victoria; unfortunate it is one of the oldest notions world. Favourite 20th century vices were introduced by the frst children of Adam. There enough, a some what different attitude towards sin then. ures ientent concept: sin was something that hurt or offentied munity like that of primarily, not oneself, or other men, the days of Moses. But we are no but an essentially higher being, GOD. primitive people; we are The Natural Law As to what sort of conduct was considered morally wrong in ancient times, history shows that Jew and Gentile were fundamentally at one: and this confirms our contention that the Ten Commandments when they were given to Moses, as Scripture re-century middle cords, were merely a written express chi col youngster? Was "Thou shalt sion of the already existing Natural Law, a law found more or less cleatly in every human being, and therefore binding on all mankind. "I will give my law in their bowels and I will write it in their heart," says God through Jeremias. not kill" an excellent command for the Jews of old because they were not a the habit of killing, but un-out of harmony with the practices of lo for Shanghai is David's Attitude
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.