RELIGIOUS TEACHING IN NEW SOUTH WALES.

Evening Star, Issue 6762, 29 November 1884, Page 2 (Supplement)

RELIGIOUS TEACHING IN NEW SOUTH WALES.

Bishop Barry has kept alive tho question of religions education in public schools by a further letter to the ' Herald,' in whioh ho replies first to a reviewer in that journal who had contested some of the positions laid down in his cathedral sermons, and secondly to Archbishop Moran, who had also commented on those discourses. His two assailants of course strike at him from different points, and in replying to both in the same letter he has to take different ground. His argument to the Catholics is that, being a minority, they have only the rights of a minority—that is, the right of abstention from any religious instruction that is disagreeable. In other words, he treats the 7th clause of our Act as if it were a conscience clause, whioh it does not pretend to be, On the contrary, it tries to provide for religious instruction which does not offend anybody, for it stipulates that it shall be general, as distinguished from doctrinal and polemical teaching. As against the 'Herald* the Bishop contends that this clause practically justifies on earnest Protestant teaching, and he urges that this interpretation is the more necessary because in the scattered districts it will be difficult to make the 17th clause work, and many children will not get religion at all unless they get it from the schoolmaster. The Bishop is strong in his contention that it is fair that the majority should rule, and if the majority want Protestant teaching in the schools they ought to have it, the minority being simply protected against proßelytism. And, apropos of proselytism, Dr Moran has rather put his foot into it. In bis Waverley speech he contended that the Catholics made the best teachers in the schools because they were never guilty of proselytising, while ho had heard of thousands of cases in which Protestant teachers had tried to do so, The Minister for Education promptly wrote, asking him to name any cases that he knew of, that they might be inquired into. He replied that he was not referring to this Colony in particular, but mentioned some unauthenticated rumors he had heard about the Blind Asylum and the Moorcliff Eye Hospital, neither of which institutions is under the Government, and in both of which the religious teaching is voluntary, Dr Moran does not seem to be very judicious in his public utterances, He has been accustomed to talk to exclusively Irish audiences, and he does not quite realise that out here every word he sayß will be subjected to the severest criticism. Ho wants a considerable drill in caution and accuracy of expression, and he seems likely to got it.—'Argus's' Sydney Correspondent. '•