ENGLISH PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18323, 13 February 1923, Page 7

ENGLISH PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

CARDINAL BOURNE'S ATTACK. EDUCATION NOT CHRISTIAN. A. and N.Z. LONDON, Feb. 11. Cardinal Bourne, in a Lenten pastoral letter, declares that Roman Catholic boys must not bo sent to non-Catholic public schools. He urges the necessity for truly Christian Catholic education, and says that it would be idle to maintain that boys attending English public schools receivo Christian education. Even among schools founded by Protestant organisations there are very many where religious teaching is so vague that it can rarely succeed in leaving a definitely Christian impression on the boys' minds. No nonCatholio teacher, however high his moral character or extensive his knowledge, could ever stand in loco parentis to Catholic children. Cardinal Bourne admits that the comparative rarity of Catholic secondary schools almost compels parents in c„.tain social grades to seek the secondary education of their children in Protestant schools. He does not object to Catholics being sent to the universities, because he is of opinion that youths of 18 ought to be able to hold their own in religious principle and conviction. Ho declrifs that he can conceive no more thoughtless moral cruelty than deliberately to deprive a Catholic boy in his most impressionable years of the atmosphere, influence, and surroundings of a Catholic school, and subject him to associations alien to Catholic practice and tradition, and in many cases imbued with principles no "Catholic can accept even as Christian.