Evening Post. MONDAY, APRIL 17, 1911. RELIGION AND THE SCHOOLS.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 89, 17 April 1911, Page 6

Evening Post. MONDAY, APRIL 17, 1911. RELIGION AND THE SCHOOLS.

"Even the weariest river," said a modern poet with a sigh of relief, "winds somewhere safe to sea." It will doubtless be with a similar sense of relief that our readers will welcome the conclusion of our long and tedious controversy on the education question with the Roman, Catholic Bishop of Auckland. We credit our correspondent with a genuine desire to get at the truth and not to obscure it, and in spite of the sweeping charges of failure and evasion which he has brought against us he would probably be willing to credit us with equally good intentions. Yet, as we pointed out two or three weeks ago, the divergence between Dr. Cleary and ourselves is such that -we almost seem to have been talking a language which he does not understand, while the language used by him has been equally unintelligible to us. One result of this misunderstanding has been, an immense amount of repetition, which might with equal profit have been extended ad infmitum. We have intentionally evaded no difficulty, yet a large part of our correspondent's voluminous has consisted of a repetition of points which we had already met but which he- declared to have been completely ignored. Repetition has been in tho same way forced upon ourselves to a wearisome extent, though, having a tenderer regard than our opponent for the limits of our space, we have contented ourselves with a shorter measure. But it has been impossible <to avoid a deal of repetition, and the same unpalatable necessity is. again forced upon us now. We exposed- in our last article the fallacy of the Bishop's contention that New Zealand had effected "the banishment of religion by Act of Parliament from the school-training of children." We do not wonder at so voluble a controversialist committing himeelf to this rhetorical statement, but it is amazing that after a serious blunder has been pointed out he- should repeat it and glory in it. In the letter which we publish to-day he actually says that in New Zealand the State "makes it an offence against the law for any person "whomsoever to 'teach religion' to Christ's 'little ones' during school hours." For the fifth time we must protest against the loose and misleading language which gravely misrepresents the attitude of the State. The State has not declared war against religion, as this language implies. It has decided not to provide religious teaching in its own schools, and this omission, which has brought upon its head the severe censura of many Protestant critics, is commended by Dr. Cleary. A feakire which thesa Protestants call "Godless" the Roman Catholics approve, yet there is no other sense in which there is 1 any foundation for the language above' quoted. Dr. Cleary continues to make charges which would only be justified if the State had instituted a vendetta against religion on the French Revolutionary model, and it is singular that he should persist in them after our repeated protests. It is not true that in New Zealand it is* "an offence against the law for any person whomsoever to 'teach religion' to Christ's 'little ones:' during school hours." The law say& to the clerics of every denomination : "Hands off the State schools !" but it leaves every denomination free either to provide religious teaching in its own schools, or to supplement the secular edueatioa of the State by such religious teaching as it prefers. If Dr. Cleary 's accusations were true, the State would be justly chargeable with hostility to religion ; but its actual attitude is one of perfectly neutrality and detachment which' involves nobody in injustice. ,W© have

left ourselves little space to deal wit 1 * other points in our correspondent's letter, but they fortunately break no new ground. He is, of course, not satisfied with, the "philosophy of life" which we borrowed for the purpose from Dr. Parker, as quoted by Professor Mackenzie in his valuable pamphlet in "Defence of the Secular Solution." We believe with Dr. Parker that "religion is personal, sacred, varying its aspects and claims according to various convictions, and that to support it by rates and taxes, and thus by possible penalties, is to vex and offend its characteristic and essential spirit." The laborious ingenuity with which Dr. Cleary endeavours to explain this away and leave us stranded in no better company than that of the atheists and sans-cu-lottes of the French Revolution is worthy of his high reputation as a dialectician. "You always get back to this," says our correspondent in his. final paragraph : "the burden of proof is upon you." The burden of proof is •surely on those who attack a system which has been firmly Tooted in the popular approval by the uninterrupted growth of more than thirty years, and even the zeal and the acumen of the Roman Catholic Bishop of Auckland have not enabled him to discharge the burden.