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James K. Baxter Complete Prose Volume 3

New Zealand ‘Trinity’

New Zealand ‘Trinity’

The Trinity many New Zealanders worshipped was not the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, but the dollar note, respectability, and the School Certificate examination, the New Zealand poet and Roman Catholic layman, James K. Baxter, said in Christchurch Cathedral yesterday. Mr Baxter was preaching at the University of Canterbury annual graduation service. About eight hundred persons attended, mainly students.

Each year a certain percentage of School Certificate candidates passed, but what of those who failed, Mr Baxter asked, were they worse or more stupid than those who passed? It was absurd to think so, but many people did – and they passed it on to their children through the false god of education.

Most young people, particularly university students, had an ambiguous relationship with their parents or guardians. This was the struggle for self-determination, but obedience was not the answer to it. ‘Obedience cannot tell you who you are and it cannot tell you your vocation,’ he said.

The vocation given by God was always a vocation of love, whatever form it might take. God urged the students, however, that if their vocation was fed by such things as habit and prestige to get out while the going was good, otherwise it would lead them to spiritual paralysis.

Civilisation today was riddled from top to bottom with obscure and intimate agonies which all belonged to the heartless, depersonalised, desacralised, decentralised society. This affected people in all walks of life – the housewife, the headmaster and the factory worker.

‘Christianity is a lens through which we may look at this contemporary world and see some meaning in it,’ he said. ‘But without Christ, Christianity is like a body without a heart.’

Speaking on voluntary poverty, which he himself practises, Mr Baxter said that the coat, trousers and shirt he was wearing had been given to him by page 182 friends, but the sandals he had, unfortunately, bought for half price.

While he had no wish to convert or reform people, he suggested that some Christians or non-Christians might consider it. ‘Are we to become tired, stale and ritualistic?’ he asked. This practice had not made him chaste, wise or humble, but it had opened up roads to other people. . . .

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