BIBLE IN SCHOOLS BILL

Taranaki Daily News, 25 July 1931, Page 8

BIBLE IN SCHOOLS BILL

VIEWS OF ARCHBISHOP.

OPPOSITION NOT STRONG.

The objects of the Religious Instruction in Public Schools Enabling Bill were referred to by Archbishop Averill, when moving the adoption of the report and balance-sheet at the annual meeting of the Mothers’ Union for the Diocese of Auckland on Wednesday afternoon. “For over 50,years the educational system of this country has been in accord only with the religious or lack of religious opinions of factions of people called secularists,” the Archbishop said. He contended that it was very unfair that the large majority of people in the Dominion should have to abide by the opinions of a small number.

The promoters of the bill did not want the objectors to it to be penalised in any way, and ample scope had been made for the teachers or parents to claim exemption without stating any reasons. In cases where the Nelson system was in present use in a school, and it was considered satisfactory by the school committee, arrangements were made in the bill that this system could continue in place of the one provided under the bill. t

Judging by a recent meeting of secularists in Auckland, at which there were only about 40 people present, the Archbishop said he considered that opposition to the bill was not very strong in Auckland. ‘‘l feel that if only the Government ■would have the moral courage to take a referendum throughout the country there would be an overwhelming majority in favour of religious instruction in schools,” he said. “We have come to a working arrangement with the Roman Catholics, w-ho have withdrawn their official opposition to the bill on condition that Roman Catholic teachers and Roman Catholic children should be exempt from the scheme and that Catholics should not be called on to pay anything toward the cost of carrying it out. Teachers had been interviewed throughout New Zealand at their meetings, and although the majority of meetings did not pass a vote in favour of the bill, where an adverse vote was passed in many cases those in opposition were very little greater in number than those in favour it of. -One Auckland teacher had said that the real opposition on the part of the teachers was because they did not want religious instruction given by them to be inspected. “I do not want their work inspected either,” the Archbishop said. “I am quite prepared to trust them to do it honourably and well without inspection.”