THE BIBLE IN SCHOOLS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19781, 31 October 1927, Page 12

THE BIBLE IN SCHOOLS.

CATHOLIC VIEW OF BILL. STATE-ENDOWED RELIGION. CLAIM OF EQUAL RIGHTS. BISHOP CLEARY'S DECLARATION. Catholic opposition to the proposals in the Religious Exercises in Schools Bill were reaffirmed by Bishop Cleary in an address to a large congregation at St. Patrick's Cathedral last evening. lie deplored the league clergy's neglect of the children in schools, and said their substitution of political activities was a confession of lost faith in the pulpit and pastoral service and spiritual guidance. By the threat of imaginary "huge majorities," they were trying to stampede legislators into passing a bill that would create a new State religion, set creed age»insfc creed, and provide three serious penalties for the crime of dissent. Catholics would never surrender their just claim to grants for the State work of secular instruction given in their schools by State-certificated teachers according to the State programme, and under State inspection, with enormous annual savings to the State finances. Therein they claimed less than the Government was still giving or had given for other and much lesser State work to the Salvation Army, the Girls' Friendly Society, the Y.M.C.A., and the mission school at Tereora. New Situation Created. For 25 years they had not pressed that claim for secular instruction on Parliamentary candidates or legislators. But an entirely new situation had been created by the Bible-in-schools clergy. These continued to demand huge State grants from the common purse, not for secular instruction or any other secular service, but for the support of an established and endowed and State-conducted State religion for the exclusive benefit of themselves and their friends and allies. They also demanded the equivalent of compulsory tithes from great masses of conscientious dissenters. On the mere proportion of time to be spent by the State on the exercises of that exclusive religion, the scheme of 1911-1914 was estimated to cost £120,000 a year; that of the present bill £175,000 a year; but these sums did not include the enormous net cost of compiling, printing, storing and distribution of the series of sectarian manuals intended for the league's exclusive benefit. State Grants to One Section. The Catholic prelates had never ceased to protest against the gross injustice of these exclusive religious grants to one section of the people at the cost of all. Catholics had a natural right to a fair share of the grants for religion in school which the league had all along demanded as its own sole perquisite. On his own personal account the speaker had begun both privately and publicly in 1911 to press for equality of treatment for Catholics in connection with this demand of the league for religious grants. He had spoken later and often with the voice of the whole Catholic body in New Zealand when he said publicly: "In peace and war we Catholics bear our full share of the burdens of our Dominion's civic life. We are entitled to our equal share of its protection and its privileges Hence I declare once again in the name of my co-religionists: If public moneys are expended upon religious exercises suited to any form of Protestant conscience in State schools, then we will exhaust every proper means m our power to secure a fair share of such funds for the conducting of religious exercises suited to the Catholic conscience in those same State schools." The Offer of a Conference. The speaker added that the Catholics' older claim for grants for their State work of secular instruction would also be pressed again "with a new force and a wider extension." But they had officially and publicly engaged not to allow that old claim to interfere in the least degree with any form of religious exercises the league might desire on its own formerly professed but now abandoned basis of equal rights" for all. The Catholic prelates' oners for a conference on that basis were admittedly refused even an acknowledgment of receipt by the league executive. Now, as in ISII- - that offer was open to other denominations, whether singly or in groups, or to the league aa a whole. It was widely admitted in and out of the daily press that if the present bill became law the Catholics' claim for grants would be irresistible. On this account well-meaning friends within and outside the league had repeatedly pressed them to aid in passing the bill, or at least not to oppose its progress. To all such proposals the same answer had been returned, both privately and publicly: "What we gain herein, we will not gain by a subterfuge; what we lose we will not lose by an ignoble silence when the defence of sacred rights demands that we should speak, and speak loudly enough to be heard. In all New Zealand there is not enough wealth to bribe us into acceptance of the league's Irish proselytising conscience clause; in all New Zealand there is not enough wealth to buy our consent to tampering with the faith of even one Catholic teacher or one Catholic child, by our agreeing to his taking an active part even once in the exercises of the league's new 'common-denominator' religion—which flip present Anglican Primate once described as 'an emasculated caricature' of Bible teaching." Under cover of Parlirmentary privilege, Mr Isitt had said of the Catholic prelates' offer of a conference: "The league regarded that offer as the veriest propaganda, made only for the purpose of misleading members of the Cat hoi ir Church and snch people as were unfami liar with the facts of the case." On October 21 a reqnest had been made for either a withdrawal of that imputation of wanton and deliberate deception, or s>n npportiinifv to vindicate the preacher's honour. Neither request had yet been complied with.