New Zealand Tablet. Fiat Justitia. SATURDAY, MARCH 21, 1874. STATE VERSUS CHURCH.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume I, Issue 47, 21 March 1874, Page 5

New Zealand Tablet. Fiat Justitia. SATURDAY, MARCH 21, 1874. STATE VERSUS CHURCH.

On Tuesday, the 10th inst., the ' Otago Guardian' published an extract from the ' Australasian,' under the heading " Church versus State." The ' Guardian' made a mistake in its heading. It should have been as we have made ours — State versus Church. The Church is nowhere in antagonism to the State. But unfortunately she is, in many places, compelled by the hostility of secular governments to defend herself, her rights, duties, principles, against the usurpation of the State. This is a contest, however, which the Church has not invited, or in any way provoked. It has been brought about by the State, acting under the influence of men who are intolerant of the very existence of the Church. Everything the Church can or may Jo, short of suicide, not only displeases these men, but actually excites their deadliest anger. Our Dunedin contemporary, by giving this extract without note and comment, under a heading of its own choosing, roust in fairness, we think, be supposed to make it its own. This is to be regretted, for though hostile to the Catholic Church, the ' Guardian' never before appeared to us capable of refusing us the constitutional and legal rights which we had supposed were the common property of all citizens. We have been mistaken, however.

The * Australasian,' following in the footsteps of another contemporary, holds it to be intolerable that Catholics should dare even to think of using " all moral and legal means " to resist a crying injustice, or to take steps so that as much influonce as possible way be brought to bear on candidates for

election on the education question. The ' Lyttleton Times views this action on the part of Catholics as " an assault upon our laws and institutions." And the ( Australasian ' declares it to be " an insolent attempt of a priesthood to intrude on vhat is beyond all question the province of the State." This is very strange indeed. Every one in the community, Catholics excepted, may, even laudably, use " all moral and lagal means" to resist an obnoxious law. Oliver Cromwell m a saint in these worthies 1 eyes, though a rebel and a regicide. The traitors who sold their country and betrayed their King unto the hand of Dutch William are also saints in their eyes, though instead of nsing all moral and legal means, they employed such only as were both immoral and illegal. The • Lyttleton Times' does not, of course, regard either Cromwell or William at Orange as guilty of "an assault upon our laws and institutions ; " but Catholics are, because they propose to use strictly legal and constitutional means to prevent a truculent majority, hounded on by a Godless Press, Irom trampling on their consciences and plundering their pockets. The Press may, it appears, very properly use means not always either moral or legal in resisting laws ; but it is treason for Catholics to dare even think as freemen. The ' Australasian* pronounces the course proposed in the circular of the Canterbury Catholics, as to resistance to the school rate, as "an insolent attempt of the priesthood to intrude on what is beyond all question the province of the State.*' In the above extract the ' Australasian' has made two mistakes. First, there is no evidence to show that the Christchurch circular is other than what it purports to be, — a document drawn up by a Committee composed exclusively of laymen. Why then lug in the priesthood 1 The ' Australasian' no doubt knows the reason, and so too, probabl7, do some of the caadidates for seats in the next Victorian Parliament. The ' Australasian' says " that the organization of the Roman Catholic Church is being used at the present day for the purpose of forwarding a world-wide conspiracy against liberal progress and civil society." We recognise in this the cant of the sects. It i& the language of the Inner Lodges ; and, to borrow an expression from the elegant and veracious Victorian print, mi " insolent" falsehood. We hope that the din, hypocrisy, and falsehood of the * Australasian,' and the bigoted, tyrannical views of the ' Lyttelton Times' will not deter Catholics from persevering in the most determined opposition to Godless schools ; and from employing " all legal and constitutional means" to resist all tyrannical laws, and above all, such laws as compel them to j>ay money to help to destroy their Faith, and Christian society. In the minds of the men who originated it, secular education has for its sole object the destruction of Christianity, and in the first place as an indispensable means to that end, the destruction of the Catholic Churcb.