ROMAN CATHOLIC SCHOOLS

Evening Star, Issue 14786, 30 January 1912, Page 2

ROMAN CATHOLIC SCHOOLS

STATE AID WANTED. EDUCATION LAW A HARDSHIP. [SrECIAL TO TltE STAR.] AUCKLAND, January 29. Dr Cleary, Roman Catholic Rishop of Auckland, made tho opening of a new con vent yesterday afternoon tho occasion for some remark.-; as to the present educational system, lie said that Catholics dkl not withdraw their schools from the public school system, of which they long formed a part. * i! Our schools were driven out cf that system," he eakl, "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 Edtica tion Act—namely, the dogma that religion has no necessary or useful part in education, ami the* dogma that a political majority has tho moral right to banish religion from the place which it ha-s occupied 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 be the true religion. No political majority can alter or abrogate this dictate of natural law. No political majority has the moral right to formulate a. ruligiou* 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, in this democratic land, wo find politicians, mostly or altogether unskilled in the principles and methods of education, French views of religion in education upon the schools, pressing them upon the conscience and the purses of dissentient*, and turning them in practical effect into an established and State school creed. It 60 happens that this new State J school view of religion quite suits the confciecccs of secularists, agnostics, and such. | But is not the right to believe to be deemed ] as sacrod in education as the right not to j believe? Have not the consciences that reject the State school dogmas tho same right to instructors as the consciences that accept these dogmas? Why in a democratic country make acquiierence in a particular view of religion the test for Slate aid in education ? Why favor one view of religion at the expense- of another new of religion? Why since 1877 jenniise our Catholic schools just because we- Catholics" refuse, as we have ever reiused, to allow any political party to impose- particular views of opinions regarding religion upon us. or to determine any jne 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 relation of one of the groundwork principle* of true democracy."