RELIGION IN SCHOOLS

Taranaki Daily News, 14 December 1926, Page 10

RELIGION IN SCHOOLS

BISHOP CLEARY’S VIEWS. By Telegraph.—Press AwoolaUan. Auckland, Dec. 13. At the laying of the foundation stone of St. Patrick’s School yesterday afternoon Bishop Cleary strongly criticised Mr. Isitt’s Religious Exercises in Schools’ Bill. He described it as the worst kind of class legislation, and as an effort to create an ascendancy, or privileged class, in the Dominion by erecting a mutilated and shadow Christianity of a strongly sectarian type into an established and endowed State religion for schools, and to force it on the consciences and purses of a great number of declared Protestant, Catholic, Jewish and other objectors. Bishop Cleary quoted the evidence recently given before the Parliamentary committee by Mr. J. Caughley, Director of Education, who is a noted Presbyterian and church "worker, to the effect that Mr. Isitt’s scheme was intended to favour one section at the cost of all, and that if it became law Roman Catholics should, as a matter of justice, receive from the State proportionate financial assistance for religious exercises in schools acceptable to them. “I speak for myself,” Bishop Cleary concluded, “when I say definitely that this claim will be made, though with important differences and pressed upon Parliament.”