ESTABLISHED 1866. The Marlborough Express. PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. THURSDAY, JULY 2, 1914. THE CATHOLICS AND THEIR SCHOOLS.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLVIII, Issue 153, 2 July 1914, Page 4

ESTABLISHED 1866. The Marlborough Express PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. THURSDAY, JULY 2, 1914. THE CATHOLICS AND THEIR SCHOOLS.

The Roman Catholics in various centres are "warming up" on the Bible-in-Schools question, and from the tone of the speeches delivered by prominent members of the Church it is evident that the proposal to submit a matter of conscience to the decision of a referendum is considered most objectionable. TJie indignation of our Catholic brethren over the proposed referendum will, however, we may safely assume, be mild indeed compared with what it would be ii, the referendum once being legalised, it should result in a victory for t3ie clericals who desire to capture the State schools and turn them into breeding-grounds of sectarianism. Unless we greatly err in our view of what will then happen, the country will be faced with a universal and insistent demand by the Catholics for State "recognition and State subsidising of their schools. It is difficult, to us at least, to see how such a demand could be justly ignored or met by refusal. For if religious instruction—in plain English, sectarian inj struction—is to be given in the State [ schools, how- could the State justly I deny subsidies to those schools in I which our Catholic friends, at the ; cost of such devotion and financial j self-sacrifice, provide .similar instruction for their ohildren? Canon Garland and his colleagues in his propaganda quietly ignore the possibility—. nay, it is a certainty—of the Catholics, once the State schools become sectarian schools, demanding equal rights with those of the parents of .school children of other faiths. At Pl's? n- t tlwi Catnolies, by providing, at their own expense, schools for their ohildren save the State, so it 3ms been calculated, some £200,000 a year. Would the followers of Canon txarland : agree to find this extra expenditure? Of course nab. All they are after is to "capture the schools' 5 j for the clericals. The social and financial aftermath of such a wolution- ■ ary event they do not trouble one jot j about. J