From Our Vaults 71 Years Ago: July 8, 1953

by Admin · July 16, 2024

Cover of The Southern Cross Newspaper, July 8, 1953

McCann condemns voting ban

Addressing the annual conference of the National Catholic Federation of Students, Archbishop Owen McCann stated his opposition to the apartheid government’s decision to strip Coloured South Africans of their right to vote. He noted that the “deciding factor here should be the common good; the fundamental rights of human persons would always be in accord with the common good, and if there was any abolition of [primary] rights, it was not good for the common good”.

Mass for Catholic nurses

Ninety-five members of the Catholic Nurses’ Guild, black and white, paraded together at Emmanuel cathedral in Durban for the annual Nurses’ Sunday Mass. Archbishop Denis Hurley preached a special sermon.

Robots as teachers?

In an article as part of an education feature, “Custos” writes: “A robot cannot teach a child. They’ll try it some day. You wait and see. And when they have raised a generation of misfits and morons of a new kind, they’ll admit that the teacher with a head and a heart and a soul is the only one after all who can do the job.”

Comics lead to stupidity

In his editorial, editor Fr Louis Stubbs warns against exposing children to violent comic strips, saying that their influence “on immature minds cannot but be deplorable”. Moreover, the comic strip “engenders mental laziness and stupidity, as the readers (or glancers?) of comics are inclined to look at nothing else”.