BISHOP GOOLD'S PASTORAL.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 3251, 8 July 1872, Page 2

BISHOP GOOLD'S PASTORAL.

TO THE ED ITO It,

Sir—When reading the Australian news published in your iii.si.ie of .Saturday morning, the striking statement there made that the Roman Catholic Biahop, I)r Goold, had i»» sued a Pastoral with reference to the Ministerial olectionH, "dictating opposition 'even to shedding of blood,'" caused me to mispcctr that your telegraphic correspondent had been indulging in sensationalism. When, the Melbourne papers arrived, I at once set to work to find out if this statement was true, and what did I find ? That Bishop Goold says :—

" In the Pastoral for lant Lent I felt it my solemn duty to advise you that no Ministry governing this Colony cut command our confidence and respect who treat with indifference or ignore our conscientious rights in reference to the great ami vital subject of education. A crisis has now unexpectedly arisen in which you will be called upoa to prove this. It will need all the weight of your electoral and moral influence to save those sacred rights from being crushed by the gentlemen who constitute the present Government. They boldly and defiantly toil you it is their determination to do away with your schools, and substitute for them godless schools, to which they will compel you, under penalty (or imprisonment) to send your children. In one wort?, they threaten the Catholics of this Colony— a fourth part of the entire Christian population — with religious persecution, in the shape of a godless and compulsory system of education. Taking our share of the public revenue, to which the Catholics contribute equally with all others, and applying as much of it as is deemed needful to any system of education in which the Church we belong to declares wo can have no participation, is simply robbing the Catholics of ho much of their public rights. . . . These attempts to heatheniae Christian nations, and to banish God from amongst the peoples of the earth lie made and conserves, have alwaya been met on the part of the Church, with uninterrupted resistance, even to the loss of liberty and the shedding of blood. It is under her instructions I now invite you. to be true to your Christian responsibilities and your rights as parents and citizens, ami withstand this conspiracy against God and religion." After quoting the above, I think I ant, justified in saying that my sutp'cion was well founded ; and that the compiler of the telegram in question has been guilty of a, gross perversion of both tire words and the meaning of Bishop Goold's pastoral.—l am, &c.

A Roman Catholic.