Signs of the Times

P. N. W. Strong

Archbishop P. N. W. Strong
in The Courier-Mail
Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

We are living in an age of what is called permissiveness. Some of the tenets of this are, first, that men and women should be free to judge for themselves what is right and what is wrong.

This soon leads to the idea that nothing is wrong if I want to do it, and little by little we have no standards of life of any value left to us, and the freedom we sought becomes a slavery.

Second, that men and women find happiness and enjoyment by yielding to the full, and following and indulging their physical instincts and impulses—whether of sex, hunger or thirst, or of other passions such as anger, cruelty, hatred and greed.

The ultimate result of this kind of permissiveness, both for individuals and for society, is degeneration. Underlying permissive morality is irresponsibility—irresponsibility both in relation to God, to others, and to ourselves.

The Ten Commandments underlie the basic morals of the Christian Faith and the Christian life.

Our Lord summed up these Ten Commandments by saying: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself." It is those who seek to do this who are making the most powerful positive protest that is possible in the world today.

From an item
in The Christian Century Chicago, Illinois
[© 1969 Christian Century
Foundation. Reprinted by permission
from the August 6, 1969,
issue of The Christian Century]

The University presses of Oxford and Cambridge have announced that translation of The New English Bible has been completed and that the entire work, including the Old Testament and Apocrypha, was published in March, 1970. Since 1961, about 7 million copies of the New Testament in this completely new translation have been sold. Two editions of the finished translation are available: a standard edition of the whole Bible in one volume, issued both with and without Apocrypha, and a three-volume set consisting of the Old Testament, the Apocrypha and a revised edition of the New Testament.

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