THE SECULAR PHASE OF OUR EDUCATION SYSTEM.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 14441, 6 February 1909, Page 4

THE SECULAR PHASE OF OUR EDUCATION SYSTEM.

V.-THE ARGUMENT FROM RESULTS' CATHOLIC SCHOOLS AND CRIME STATISTICS. By the Editor of the New Zealand Tablet. The advocates ot ti.e occlusion of religion fuiin tmi schools advance a (touble-larrellcd mini lvstilw. This may bo summarily staled as toilows:—The secular system has not- clearly increased the nuniUr t.f crimes (wiui whie.ii, ior convenience, "l include olteiicos) committed in tlns i)o----miuion; Catholics, on tne oilier hand, despite tueir religious system of education, snow in iho statistical returns a greatly disproportionate number of crimes. Tjie interencc is sutiiciently obvious. The first pan. of this argument lias been tested and louiKt wanting; the second is heie under

As shown in the fourth article of this series, the whole ol this statistical argument is dominated by the. following consideration Good principles of action must, be assumed to produce geed leaults in action, except, in so far as these results may bo hindered by external obstacles, sucu H5 / Human frailty or malio", etc. An anii-Chrisiiati philosophy may indeed contend thai Clii'isr.i.iii truths and principles are bad in themselves, and lead to bad results. Hut throughout these articles 1 assume that t.lic defenders of t.lic srculnr system are Iwlievois in at least the fundamental verities of Christian faith. WitJt tho non-Christian philosophies one argues along difl'oronr lines. Now, Oat-holic schools, like other truly Christian schools, put into

tho place of fot importance t3ic Ten Com-

mandments, the love and worship of a Personal Hod and His Christ, and the assiduous training of the conscience and the will to virtue. If all this leads of itself to the prison coll or the hangman's slipknot. it. i s high i.inie to dynamite Christian churches, r,nd to send the Christian clei-Tv on tumbrils to tho boneniill. Besides, oil philosophic grounds, we must iu\t assume that, pious Cat-holies aw, as a body, so beef-witted as to make greal sacrifices for

a generation to maintain a .system of schools, which, I'"fee Pagan's den in ''Oliver

Twist,'' are practically academies of crime. The argument proves a vast d«il too much. Here is a charming variety of ils '"fallacies of figures." which show that it. is nearly as dangerous to handle statistics without logic as it is lo handie a "live" wire without protected nulnirt. v

I.—'Flic crime argument against religion in tho school ass.inics liic completeness of our records of crime ami of crime by religions denominations. But whole classes of crime (including mic!i provalont (moralities as pre-natal murder) ar? seldom discovered; only a relatively small number of aricst.s are made for crimes discovered; not. imicli more iluin half the persons chargcd with crime are convicted; and only a fraction of ihoso convicted have their religious dcnonii-. nariou enloivd upon our statistics of law

ffid crime-namely, those who, after conviction, are sent to prison. Thus, out of 27,561 persons convicted in the Supreme, Hi-strict, and Magislrate's Courts of New Zealand in l f Job, only 2439 received sen-kMinc-i of "peremptory imprisonment,' 1 v.hile 3<176 had the option of escaping durance by payment (if a iinc. — (New Kcalaud Official Year Bool;, 1903, p. 230.) Why draw wide conclusions against religious schools upon a fractional part of the facts o! t.ho care? 2. The crime argument against religion in education, i>- staled (e.g.. Olago Daily Tituss, ,sanitary 6, 1909), is lused, not upon a coniparw.ii of tho bravitv of tho crimes commuted, "lor evrMi upon the total xuxbek of crimes, hut only l upon THK XliMIIK!! Or (SHIES THAT AI!K l'lIXISIIDl) !IT ACTK.It. JMI'KTSr.XMKNT. This

argument makes n. goose quill count for as much as « warship—it assumes ihat it is the numbor. ami not thffl weight, of the delinquencies lino iips ;he balance of legal wrongdoing to this side or to that. The denominational crime table in the Official Vear Jsook (1905. p. 250) lumps together,' for instance, undo:- heading "ConvicUyj on Indictment," large classc* 0 f legal misdeeds, from onack surgery on an ulcer np to wilful murder and to abominations of aii unmentionable kmc!.'lt gives.no details as lo ihe distribution of specific otloiiees and crime/! amongst !ho different religious itrnoniillations.

3._1h0 argument of the goal records against, religion in the schools assumes that religion is Iho only factor in our prisonpunished crime. There are mysteries in crime of which no man holds the key. Hut among Ihe known factors of the problem are the following: The comfortable and well-to-do furnish our prisons with the more detestable criminals—those that sin against the greater light', with less of blind pas-t-ion and more of perverted volition. The poor supply,_ perhaps, the best and brightest examples of every Christian virtue, llut the sins they commit are much more likely lo appear in lhe courts and to earn punishinent in prison. And, numerically, the vastly greater purl: of our convicted 'prisoners come from ihe (liniincially) lower social strata. We lind among the great bulk of our prison population a low social status, poverty in a greater or less degree, undesirable environment, or associations, often some measure of physical or intellectual or moral degeneracy, religious education rare or brief, and (exireinely commonly) practical irreligkm. olten of life-long duration. Why are all these cirnuinstaiiees ignored, and the rare and unlikely factors--religion and religious taken into account! A child religiously educated 'inay, Unload, grow up a criminal—but onlv by disregarding the truths and principles of conduct instilled into him at school. The vast bulk of our criminals become sinners lirst and criminals afterwards, chiefly because they push Ihe secular principle of our public school system to its logical issuo —by banishing Cod and religion from Ihe whole of Utviiv livos. So far us our prime statistics may bo an argument against any school system, they |p|l ugainst the secular system, and plains); that alone. 4. Tho argument of the prison statistics.! jails into tho further error ot supposing thai Catholics are an intkohal seventh of the population of Now Zoalaml. As a niullm* of fact, they arc only a numekicaj, seventh, lo Ik? an integral seventh ('atholicn should ho ;i sgvont.li of all the principal sections ot f.ie population—of the hindowNnrs, tho mnr-' tile farmers, the manufacturers, the | professional classes, tho Hiinc-ownerc, tho ! shopkeepers, and the rest. But this is ! notoriously not. tho casa. Tho vastJy ' p«irt of New Zealand Catholics are of Trish birth and of Ihe lirst generation of Irish dwnt, Owing to tho statutory destruction of Trish industries, the official starvation of irjsh education, and ihe wholesale Irish land law confiscations which hiivo been earned out almost, continuously till a comparatively few years back, tho Catholic tliiise countries belongs in an overwhelmingly high proportion 1o tho poorer ;tnd ihe poorest classes—namely, to those that furnish the numerically greatest (but, not necessarily the worst.) part of our prison population. For purposes of comparison Catholics should, therefore, be eontrustod in the matter of crime, not with the total population of the country, but i" proper proportion and class by c\m with the classes to which thev belong. Catholics number about one iu seven of our total population. What proportion do they hold among our poorer and poorest classes? Sta» tisticiaus do not say. But. il: is probably sate to say Ihat they are, proportionately, twice, or over twice, as numerous in these classes as the members of other chief denominations taken collectively. Are Catholics in this Dominion represented on Ihe crime calendar, or iu Ihe prison returns, above t neir proper proportion of those sections of the population to which they belong? There IS nothing whatever in our statistics of crime to suggest, much less to prove, this. 0. the goal return argument against rengion in the school assumes tho equal allround liability of olfenrierp to imprisonment, nut this is not so. The mercurial disposition Of tho Western Celt (which is a racial, not a religious, trait) impels him, when tipsy, more than his phlegmatic,- neighbours to Ouences of pugnacity; while his greater comparative poverty makes him do his lelatively more liable lo arrest, and exposes him relatively more to imprisonment, on account of his greater inability to pay a me Ho , S; ~, so fari r( ,] ll( j vr ]y moip ( , x . posed to onuineratiofi on the denominational h?; | °g a ' c,imc - Moreover, tho lusli Aational School system in not properlv a religious system, at least in the Catholic meaning of dm lomi. • . 6- The prison argument against religion '<>. the school assumes ihat Catholio criminals become criminals precisely I/;.cause of the religious principles and practices Which limy learned in tho Catholic sonool'3. Jiut (a) this takes it for granted that, ail tlw 'Vboliie prison population hue Itcer. trained in Catholic schools. As a matter of fact, onlv in rare cases have they been t0 trained. For a cor-xiderable limo past, for instunec. there have been very fow ex-pupi!* of f'lt.holic schools' in the Div iwlin I'ris.ui. Not m:>e among 30 alleged Catholics in lh" liyttolton Prison on January 10 claims to have had the training of a Cathc.lie seho!. and only eight (mimes available, bet statnuirnh not verified) who

vi eV'Cii li-i-f at <i CVitliolic school. In WeKingU.il I 1 risen, in March, ISDB, there iv?rc 36 reputed "Roman Catholic" priwjwrs .(jiames &U .available);.

only two of these Had a "fairly regular" Catholic school training, four woro mora or less "casual," and 30 never saw the inside of a Catholic school, (b) By implication (ho gaol returns argument puts tlio responsi 1)i 1 iiv of alleged disproportionate crime: upon ilio religious principles a.tvd practiced! taught in the Catholic schools. This means,, in effect, that, tho more loyal children are made to the law and love of (iod, ami the more fervent Catholics they become, the nwro likely they ;i VO to cotijniit crimes that will, mew them up in gaol! 'i'bo obvious remedy would be to teach children to despise Hod's love and defy Ilis law.. Hut this is precisely what the great bulk: of our prison population, Catholic and non« Catholic, have done. Out of 35 allogwi: Roman Catholics" in AVeliingiou Frison in March, 1908, 25 (names available) admitted not. even having nicdo their first commmiion. Out of 30 m Lvttolton Prison on January 10, 27 (names available) admit that, they grossly neglected or novel- practised theii gaol religion. The alienee of the Catholic chaplain prevents mj giving the figures for the Dunedin I'rison. In plain terms, the great, bulk of our ]>rison population have! adopted-and pushed to its logical conclusion-the secular school principle of occluding religion and its truths and principles and influences from the real business of life. And in doing so, they liave Ixxxfiue do-christianised ami demoralised pari passu. 7. The gaol returns arguftieut against, religion in the schools assumes that statistic*., .not of total crime, lint of prison-punished, crime, afford an accurate criterion of lire moral condition of a people—or, rather, of the moral results of systems of education or religion. This fallacious contention was sufficiently dealt with in t.lio last preceding article of this series. Legal misdeed doss not Jim,warily corniclc sin (moral guilt).

And even if it woie proved up lo the hiit. that tho pupils or ex-pupils of Catholic; schools committed a. greater iiumerie-.ril proportion of legal crime., class for class, thaw the adherents of "other c'.vcde.. it would not necessarily follow that titer were tlie-.'sc-foro worse sinners in tire sight, of God.

i 5. The gaol roll argument, assumes that religious denominations of prisoners arei correctly siatod. Hut. they arts not. And even if they were, this would not provo « disproportionate amount of crime, class for class, among Catholics. Baton what ba.iis aro the vague <leuoiiiiuatioual returns of crime made? Simply on the unchallengwi and iniverilied non-oath statements of oonvided persons—many of tliem criminals. wlkm uncorroborated oaths would mot be wrepiod in any court of justice in tho Doniinicn. Tha same remark applies, within limits, as regards age, nationality, dc.

Wrongful entries of religious belief on the prison registers may. of course, operate against any given creed. A ten years' in-5 vesication of this phenomenon has, however, convinced me that Catholic prisoners very rarely deny their faith, however much thay may have fallen away from its practice. Ivor it is. I think. as well-known to police and prison officials as to Catholic prison chaplains in t.lieso countries that the balance of denominational misdescription is made to fell greatly against Catholics, and that the return of the alleged religious beliefs 01 prisoners arc worthless, and worse, for purposes of statistical information and comparison.

The Eastern mind is proverbially a riddle to the Western. A far deeper riddle to East, and West, alike is the psychology (or study of the mind-working) of the criminal. J'"or we arc here dealing largely, iviili tho' irreligious, and to a greater or lesser extent, with the physical, morally, or mentally degenerate or abnormal. The selection of a temporary creed is. with them, often motived by considerations quite apart from religious conviction. Criminals have no doubt their reasons for wrongly themselves as " Roman Catholics" on tho prison registers. Bui these reasons are not necessarily always cogent, or even intelligible, to persons of normal mentality and normal moral sense. Years of investigation have, however, convinced me that the following are among tho less recondite motives; of denominational misdescription: Motives; founded on the relatively high percentage of Catholics in tho police and prison services in these countries (a sort, of offset to their under-representation in other State deixirlmeiits); motives connected with the nature, duration, and frequency of religious services in prisons (the Catholic service being, on various grounds, often quite unconnected with, religion, usually much appreciated); I lie tramp's and criminal's usually strong faith m Ihe sweet, accessibility of l lie priest's pocket; occasionally a desire to shield their own faith—this was, for instance, the plea advanced by Knox, the \\ illianistown murderer (who was a Sunday school teacher) for falsely (Inscribing himself as a " Roman Catholic." Among ihe " Roman Catholic" population of our prisons we constantly lind the following classes:—

(a) Roman Catholics" by baptism, religious belief, and, lo a greater or lesser extent, by practice. These are comparatively few. and are usually " in " for the smaller classes of legal misdeeds. (b) "Roman Catholics" whose only, or almost only, connection with the Church was the rite of baptism in their infancy. Ihe vast majority of the (approximately) genuine "Roman Catholics" of our prisons belong (as already stated) to this class. Many of them are tlie children of mixed marriages or of vicious homes, and not. one of them had the benefit of training in a _ Catholic school. The Church's idea of this class of courtesy " Roman Catholics" is sufficiently expressed in the decree of Iha thirteenth session of the Council of Trent: '' Living let him bo prevented from entering the Church, and" dead let liini want Christian burial."

(c) Other ''Roman Catholics" of our prisons :ire doubtful—the balance of suspicion licinjf often, if not, generally, ngninsfc the correctness of their religious designation. •

(d) A varying, but always appreciable, proportion of gaol " Komitn Catholics" have never been such at any period of their lives. Some of these frankly admit, llioir fraud ; others among them ure shown to no certainly not '' Roman Catholics." partly by the known facts of their personal history, partly by their (greater or less) familiarity with lion-Catholic forms of prayer and expicssion, coupled with a bountiful' ignorunee of the uio.it. elementary ncliona of Catholic worship or devotional exercises. Several bogus "'Roman Catholics" are at present, on the register of the Dunedin prison. Koine of them (mimes available—one of them never a Christian) admit their misdescription. The complete list will not. be available till Ihe return' of the chaplain; but I may slate that, some time ago he expressed the conviction Ihat little more than half of the ''Roman Catholics" then on the register had any real title to the name. In Wellington Prison, early in 1908, Ihe three worst "Roman Catholic" criminals (names available) admitted to lh« chaplain (Rev. 0. ,1. Venning) thai they hail never been Catholics; other alleged " Roman Catholics" were betrayed by their tongue.'i; still others were doubtful. Some three months ago there were 30 alleged " Roman Catholics" in the Wellington Prison. "Not a dozen out of the 30," said K prisoner to the Rev. (,'. ,1. Venning, "aro Catholics at all; I hear them talking alxmt it jjvery day ''—(New Zealand Tablet, December 24, 3903.) Thai is, of cour.-e, a. in if.oner's sluletnenl. In itself, it is probably as rooil as I hat of the others. And in. every cuse it broadly iliusliatcs a tendency to a particular denominational misdescription of which every prison in New Zealand furnishe-, ennie—few or many-examples. Some very interesting present-lime cases iu lioint are promised to me from the Wellington Prison.

Even if a, higher crime lvtord were clearly established (and it cannot Ik;), class by class of our population, against Catholics, this would in no way affcct the moralising value of the truths and principles taught in their churches and schools. Bcandal 3 were foretold iu the Church of Christ. And the -lews were Cod's chosen people even at ihe lime when, owing to their wickedness, His sacred name was

" bhi.sphemed among the tiGntilos."--(l8., lii, 5; Mali., xxiii, 23.) Their wickcdness artv-5 through deliunce of Cod's law, not through Iklolilv io it. And mj il is with t':e children <:f the new dis|wnsation.

Our Biaf.ij.tics contain whatever to indicate—(;i) that Catholics in i.his Doii;iiiion urn luujiorticjti.iicly irioi'o criminal, class for c!a?s, !,h;in tho adherents of other crec<k; or (lj) that they are loss moral, cla.-s fur clue... And ivo must- a priori (litni'/V ( ' v , oll '"tliprously apiinM the proh.tl/ililies. the inference that tho religious truths and principles instilled ill their schools toml of themselves to issue in vice nr crime. An educational or religious system is to Ixi judged, ijot by a fractional part of its adherents' sins o{ lostfll ofTonecs or ri'iiues—not by these that cbfv.—but hv I.inse ihu fai ln fully follow its'principles and pvccoots. Thero should ho no need to icuird t, irisnait men and woman what would Impnon, on Uio.ono hand, if all P hi|. dren live,, to 11* toehintr, of '.J„ leliyioii.i H,ool,; nor, on the other hanT v/ha, would ensue if tlio children of tliii Dominion put. into nrncioe. during Z wnole of there livus. the prineiolo of iVenrui;r f.od and Hijion which Hie Stale hw foro:<I upon met i,,„, "w 'J formative y W; 'hereof « 0 I'" 1 ' 0 " " my toml 10 c ' l, i crinio tll.it tendency is to bo sought, not in tho religious, but- in the secular, schos|-