Roman Catholic Schools.

Cromwell Argus, Volume XLIII, Issue 2283, 5 February 1912, Page 6

Roman Catholic Schools.

STATE AID WANTED, ELECTION LAW A HARDSHIP. Dr* Oleary, Roman Catholic Bishop of Auckland,! made the opening of a new convent the occasion of some remarks as so the present educational system, says the Auckland correspondent of the “ Star.” He said that Catholics did not withdraw their schools from the public school system, of which they long formed a pa it. “Our schools were driven out of that Bvstem,” he said, “on what was in effect a religious test —driven ' out because we believe in the inseparable union of religion with education ; driven out because our consciences cannot accept the new sectarian dogmas that underlie our Education Act —namely, the dogma that religion has no necessary or useful part in education, and the dogma that a political majority has the moral right to banish religion from the place which it has pccupied from immemorial ages in the school. It is the right and duty of parents to watch over and secure the education of their children in what they conscientiously believe to he the true religion. No politica 1 majority can alter or abrogate thU dictate of natural law. No politica! majority has the moral right to formulate a religious faith or to define a religious doctrine. These things belong to the spiritual domain. They are outside the proper functions of the civil power. Yet.here is the democratic land, we find politicians, mostly or altogether unskilled in the principles and methods of education, forcing French views of religion in education upon the schools, pressing them upon the conscience and purses of dissentients, and turning them in practical efi’ect into an established and State school creed. It so happens that this new State school view of religion quite suits the consciences of secularists, agnostics, and such. But is not the right to believe to be deemed as sacred in education as the right not to believe? Have not the consciences that reject the State school dogmas the same right to free instructors as the consciences that accept these dogmas ? Why in a democratic country make acquiescence in a particular view of religion? Why since 1877 penalise our Catholic schools just because we Catholics refuse, as we have ever refused, to allow any political party to impose particular views or opinions regarding religion upon us, or to determine any one of our articles of faith ? Our education law is a hardship to the conscientious objector, It represents a highly regrettable form of sectional legislation—namely, legislation grounded upon what is in reality a highly sectarian view of religion. It is the negation of one of the groundwork principles of true democracy.”