SUGGESTION DENIED

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 250, 19 July 1937, Page 5

SUGGESTION DENIED

Education Conference and Catholic Schools LEADER’S REPLY TO PRIEST By Telegraph—Press Association. Christchurch, July 18. “I must make a complete and categorical denial of the suggestion,” said Rektor L. Zilliacus, leader of the New Education Fellowship conference, when he was told later this evening of Father Timoney’s statement, in a sermon at the Christchurch Roman Catholic cathedral to-night that delegates to the conference had refrained from referring to the work done in Roman Catholic schools because they had been told not to do so. “Nobody made the slightest suggestion to us that we should adopt such an attitude. We have been aware and been greatly pleased to see so many men and women in holy orders attending meetings and taking an extremely intelligent and active part in them. The other delegates must also have noticed their presence as I have. “We have not mentioned the work of any group of schools in particular in our remarks because we have not regarded it as our function to pass comment on any group of institutions, or indeed on any part of the system of education here. If any of our delegates had been asked a direct question on this or any other subject we would have been quite willing to go into it “Possibly Father Timoney has misunderstood the comment I made in one interview when I remarked that we had been warned by our New Zealand hosts that the question of the Bible in Schools movement was at the moment highly controversial, but so far as I am aware not one of us has received any suggestion that we should not speak of the work of the Roman Catholic schools. Unfortunately, except for one member, none of us has had the opportunity of following the work in any of the schools since landing in New Zealand owing to lack of time. Under those it is still more obvious that we would not comment.” (Father Timoney’s statement appears on page 10.)