RELIGIOUS EDUCATION IN IRELAND.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume III, Issue 136, 10 December 1875, Page 14

RELIGIOUS EDUCATION IN IRELAND.

In round numbers there are five and a half millions of a population in Ireland. Of these newly four and a half millions are Catholics. Then about half a million are Episcopal Protestants, and the other half million Presbyterian and Methodists, with a very few Baptists, Congregationalists, and Quakers. Now the Episcopal Protestants never yet joined in with the National School System of Ireland. They have " the Church Education Society Schools." It is only twelve years sinco the Wesleyans of Ireland united with the National Education System. Prior to that they and Cardinal Cullen were in the same boat on this question. The Primitive Wesleyans are still tho very bitterest opponents of the national schools and would not scud their children to them, because the Bible is not allowed to be read at all hours or any hour each day. The entire Orangemen of tho North of Ireland arc opposed to the national schools, as one man, and want denominational schools. These " Northern Protestants,"' then, would not dread a change to denominational schools for them. Their objection is to allowing any other schools, in the whole of Ireland, except intensely Protestant schools where Papists should be whipped into learning passages of tho Bible by the yard ; being daily pointed out therefrom " tho errors of Popery." All that Cardinal Cullen has ever demanded has been a division of the public school funds amongst each religious denomination, pro ml a; and each church or sect to have entire control of their own schools, with general government inspection in secular branches. This is about what the Catholic hierarchy demands also in America. This is the system, too, which practically exists in England, and to which the Cardinal sibvays points as an illustration of all that he desires. — ' N. Y. Independent.'