OUR SECULAR EDUCATION.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXX, Issue 3436, 30 January 1912, Page 5

OUR SECULAR EDUCATION.

HARDSHIP TO THE CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTOR.” VIEWS OF BISHOP CLEARY. “IT SUITS VIEWS OF SECULARISTS AND AGNOSTICS” [.SPECIAL TO TIMES.! AUCKLAND, Jan. 29. .Some strofng comments concerning the present relation of Roman Catholic schools to the public school system ol the Dominion were made by Bishop Oleary in the course of an address at the opening of a new convent at EUerslie yesterday afternoon. ‘ : Wo Catholics did not withdraw our schools from the public school system of which they long formed a part,’'’ he said. '‘Our schools were driven out of that system on what was in effect a religious test, driven out because we believe in the inseparable union of religoin with education, driven out because our consciences cannot accept the new sectarian dogmas that underlie our Education Act, namely, the dogma that religion has no necessary or useful part in education, and the dogma that a- political majority has the moral right to banish religion from the place which at has' occupied from immemorial ages .in the schools.” (Applause.) “It is the right and duty of parents,” continued the Bishop, “to watch over and secure the education of their children in what they consciously believe to be true religion. No political majority lias the moral right to formulate a religion, 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 we find politicians mostly, or altogether, unskilled in the principles and methods of education, forcing French views of religion in education upon the schools, pressing them upon consciences and purees of dissentients, and turning them in practical effect into an established and endowed state school creed. (Applause). “It so happens that this new State .School view of religion,” his Lordship states, “quite suits the consciences of secularists, agnostics and such, but is not the right to be deemed as sacred in education as the right not to believe. Have not the consciences that reject the State school dogmas mentioned before the same right to free instruction, fee t(he bonseienoes that accept these dogmas? Why, in a democratic country, make acquiescence in a particular view of religion the •test for State aid in education ? Why favor one view of religion at the expense of another view of religion? And why, since 1877, penalise our Catholic schools just because we Catholics refuse, as we have ever refused, to allow any political party to impose particular views or opinions regarding religion upon us, or to determine any one 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 notion of one of the ground work principles of true democracy.” (Applause.)