BIBLE IN SCHOOLS.

Clutha Leader, Volume XXXIX, Issue 56, 25 February 1913, Page 2

BIBLE IN SCHOOLS.

THE ROMAN CATHOLIC VIEW. I' AUCKLAND, Fob. 21. I An address was given in tho Town |H Hall to-night by the Roman Catholic Bishop of Auckland on tho Biblc-in* B schools question. H| Bishop Clearv stated that the "Aus- H tralian" system demanded bv the H Leaguo expressly provided by Act of H Parliament for "religious instruction H and general religious teaching" as pari H of the regular class work of the public H schools. The Government set up a.s a R teacher of religion _by determining tho H type of "religious instruction" by em- H bodying it in a manual of Scripture ox H tracts and by compelling Government H officials to teach it. The League paniph- B let by Rev. A. Don was quoted to show that offic-ial religious teaching in Aus- H tralia was specific, dogmatic and thoo- H logical, including "a definition of H prayer" and proofs of tho divine mis* H sion of St. Paul. The same LcagiM H pamplilet showed that teachers con- H ducted formal secular and denoiiiina- H tional religious worship, including the. H singing of denominational hymns atid> H tlie reciting of a denominational version of the Lord's Prayer. It was proposed to have that sectarian and denominational religion taught by the State at the expense of the common purse. Mr Caughley, M.A., had estimated that- £IOO,OOO would he the loss by introducing that sectional system. It was the very negation of a "national" system, and was a soctional and denominational system. In it was a most objectionable form, namely, a State-taught religion endorsed at the cost of the whole nation for the benefit of only a section of the nation. At New Plymouth delegates representing 2S()0 teachers voted down the League's proposals by -12 to 7. The League officially refused the conscience clause to "duty" of Biblical teaching on exactly the same footing as geography, grammar, or any other subject, and th« League pamphlets and orators were quoted hv tho speaker with a view to showing that dismissal would ho the penalty for conscientiously objecting teachers. The League placed before the conscientiously objecting teachers three alternatives: proselytism to tho League views, hypocrisy, or dismissal. "A British Teacher" in the Queensland Parliament had written: "One must get a living somehow, so T shall personally comply with the tor in a of my agreement with my employers, and let conscience go hang." The league s conscience clause was devised lor the express purpose of weaning the Irish from the. abuses of Popery. Its oppressive working in Ireland and Otago was described from official documents, and in Australia from the testimony o! | bishops and others and from what was described as "coitions official evidence" in the League's chief pamphlet entitled "Opinions of Educational Experts." The official organiser of the League ! boasted at the Presbyterian Assembly lin Wellington that ".'12,000 Woman Catholic children with hardly an exception road the Scripture lessons in the | schools of New South Wales," or in other words that they had been successfully proselytised into violation of tho faith and disciplineof tho Church oi their baptism and into participating in : the Protestant religious worship deI scribed. In Rev. A. Don's League pamphlet the League had made it painfully clear that it demanded the legal rigth to tamper with the. consciences of dissentient pupils and teachers.