Academic mass pomp and ceremony

Mark Von Dadelszen

Pomp and ceremony surrounded this year's Academic Mass—it was a Sung High Mass. Staff, graduates and students packed St Mary of the Angels Church for the service.

The celebrant was the Catholic Archbishop of Wellington, the Most Rev. P. T. B. McKeefry.

Dr. P. M. McKay, in delivering the sermon, proposed a positive course of action for Christian students. To accept the world in which we live, a world where Christianity is "a stone of stumbling and a cross of contradiction." Christians should not be deterred, by their minority status.

Christianity is a religion "personally achieved and constantly renewed amidst perilous surroundings." There is no Christian absolute to hold up in secular fields as the only good. Such an attitude would lead to a ghetto mentality, Fr. McKay said.

Students were urged to achieve "a deep personal commitment to Christ which comes from careful and pondered conviction."