SECOND EDITION THE STATE SCHOOLS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLI, Issue 9135, 7 February 1910, Page 8

SECOND EDITION THE STATE SCHOOLS.

CARDINAL MORAN'S CRITICISMS. REPLIED TO BY THE MINISTER FOR EDUCATION. (By Electhic Telegraph—Copyright.) (Per Press Association.) . Received Fob. 7. 10.45 a.m. SYDNEY, Feb. 7. • The Minister for Education, the Hon. J. A. Ilogue. says:—"The Cardinal has broken out again, once more breathing out denunciation of myself. After a. fortnight or so of muffins and meditation he has come forth spiritually refreshed from his beatified retreat, and as a result of his communings with the Saints and the Prince of Peace he has invited me to tread on the tail of his episcopal coat. He keeps on damning our educational system with all the renewed strength cloister training can give him. Our system of non-sectarian education was " a stereotyped brand of infidelity and agnosticism." They had heard nonsense of this kind before. It had been sufficiently convincingly answered, and it was enough to say that the system of education was based on the deliberately. expressed will of the people. The Cardinal _had charged him with deliberate falsenood. He had scarcely expected such language from one who htid come clothed in the special sanctity of a spiritual retreat, and supposed that if ho were to tell the Cardinal that such language was antiChristian the latter would reply that that was a matter he (Mr Hogue) knew nothing about. He doubted whether the people would accept Cardinal Moran as an authority on the qualifications of an Education Minister. The Cardinal would wait many weary days and take many prayerful retreats before he saw Australian legislature so fast in the grip of his or any other Church as to hand over the work of education from the State to religious denominations. The Cardinal found faults with the books used. It might bo very agreeable all round if, say. the history'of Europe was treated without reference to the Reformation by Martin Luther, the Huguenot massacres, the sale of indulgences, the Armada, the Inquisition, and such things, but it would not. bo a history. It might be agreeable if it were solemnly taught that the Reformation was unnecessary, that Luther was a crank, a sort of discontented strike agitator, that the sale of indulgences was a myth, and .that the Catholic priesthood of the sixteenth century was as pure and spotless as those who went into retreat in the! twentieth century, that the ""sending out of the Armada was a defensive act, that the Church had nothing to do with the St. Bartholomew massacres, and that the Pope never ordered the striking of a modal to commemorate the butchery. Cardinal Moran declared ho had no fear of Catholic children being proselytised. Then what did he complain of? He was constantly attacking the State schools. If his accusations against the .schools were true would Catholic teachers remain in the service or Catholic parents allow their children to attend? Assuredly not. They knew that the fulminations against the schools wore not justified. Such attacks did no service to Christianity and no harm to the State schools."

Cardinal Moran's statement appears on page 2.