BIBLE IN SCHOOLS

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 140, 10 December 1926, Page 6

BIBLE IN SCHOOLS

CONSCIENCE CLAUSE

CATHOLIC BISHOP'S COMMENT.

(By Telegraph.) (Special t» "The Evening Port.")

AUCKLAND,. This Day. .Reference to the statement made in the Legislative Council last session by the Hon. L. M. Isitt, M.L.C., to the effect that the Irish conscience clause for children embodied in the Religious Exercises in Schools Bill had not caused trouble or protest, was made by Bishop Cleary at the prize-giving ceremony of the Sacred Heart College last evening. "A considerable number of Koman Catholic pupils have won junior and senior National Scholarships since these have been made available only for State secondary schools, Bishop Cleary said. "In a great number of instances Catholic parents have forfeited the valuable financial benefit of these scholarships. They have paid or are paying, their children's fees m Catholic secondary schools, rather than expose them to the sectarianism of State institutions, aggravated enormously as it is by the Irish proselytising conscience clause, which Mr. Isitt's Bill now seeks to inflict by ( Act o£ Parliament upon this Dominion. "I have before me the names of no fewer than twenty-one winners of junior and senior National Scholarships in the Sacred Heart College. Tha parents of these boys retained them in the college as a matter of conscience. They refused to accept the free places and monetary grants and expose their children to the sectarianism- of the supposed neutral Stats secondary schools, and the odious triikery of their Irish conscience proselytising clause. For the same reasons, seven winners of State scholarships in St. J"«-y'» Convent, Auckland, were not allowed by their parents to take either free place* or monetary grants. These are only twa schools in one city. There must be hundreds of these striking forms of protest within the Dominion." Bishop Cleary stated that the working of the conscience clause had given rise to numerous complaints and bitter feeling on the part of both Catholic parents and pupils, and these had been voiced to him on many occasions.