THE "DAILY TIMES" ON GODLESS EDUCATION.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume V, Issue 251, 22 February 1878, Page 9

THE " DAILY TIMES" ON GODLESS EDUCATION.

WE clip the following passages "from a leader in the Otago Daily Times, adding the reply of his Lordship the Bishop of Dunedin : — Is it clear then that Father Henncbery's cause is the true cause ? This is where the difference of opinion comes in. Now there are many tests that can be applied. We can compare nation with nation, city with city, or State with State. Or' we may search the registers of the gaols and see if the prisoners belong to the infidel class that has been trained in the secular school, or whether they are religious people who know their catechisms from tuition in church schools. Father Hennebery cannot object to this test. If we compare the purely Catholic parts of Ireland with the purely Presbyterian parts of Scotland, or with the most infidel parts of New England, we do JK>t think the comparison will help Father Hennebery's argument. Is W , safer or more respected in Catholic Ireland than it is in Piesbyterian Scotland or in Unitarian New England ? There can be only one answer to such a question. Or let us glance at Catholic Spain, or at Italy or France, do we find in those parts where the Catholic Church is all powerful, and where education is practically controlled by the priests, that ignorance vanishes and crime is unknown 1 Again the answer would not be assuring to the Reverend Father. Nor have we any objection to go to the United States. What party, we ask, supported the Tammany Ring of New York ? Again the reply is against the Reverend Father's argument. But we have statistics also that we can quote. Mr. W. Hawkins, a well-known member of the New York Bar, prepared some time ago statistics as to the effect of so-called " Godless schools"— and for the benefit of the Sectarians we quote some of them — adding that bis statistics have not yet been proved erroneous. He found that in the twenty-one States where the " Godless schools" existed there were -about 20,000,000 persons bom in America and brought up in these, schools, and that there were 5,500,000 persons of foreign countries — by far the greater portion of whom had received their training in denominational or sectarian schools, and this is the result : Mr. Hawkins found :— Sectarian schools produce 1400 illiterates, 410 paupers, 160 criminals, in every 10,000 inhabitants ; the " Godjess 1 ' schools produce 350 illiterates, 170 paupers, and 75 criminals to every 10,000 inhabitants ; whilst in the most infidel State, and where the " Godless " schools are the most efficient, the result is as foil >ws :— 7l illiterates, 49 paupers, and 11 criminals to every 10,000 inhabitants. These figures need no comment, nor need we emulate the Reverend Father by consigning to "endless woe" those who differ with us and them. There is another test. Take tbe City of New York during the quinquennial period from 1871 to 1875 : For every American-born pauper there were 3-50 Irish, 1-33 Germans, and 1-50 of other nationalities:: - while the arrests for offences for a period of 15 years showed that for every American-born criminal there were 3-28 of Irish, birth, 1-07 of German, SI 1 A" of otller nationalities. And while we add that the bulk of the German paupers and criminals were from the Roman Catholic kmgdom of Bavaria, we have only stated an tuipleasaut fact. But let us take statistics from nearer home. We have not complete returns of the Dunedin Gaol, but we have those of Invercargill, and we find that ot 183 males in that gaol during the year 1875-76, 58 were Catholics. 119 Protestants, and only 6 infidels; whilst of the 31 females 17 were Catholics and 14 Protestants. Now, what do all these figures show; We submit they conclusively prove that Catholics are no better than Protestants, and that those who have been drilled into catechism, are not better, but, if anything, worse than those who have been trained in « Godless" schools. Now, will the Reverend Father lurnisn us with statistics from any recognised official census which will in any way go to prove the assertions he has made ? there is another way of viewing the Education question. All admit the teaching of secular subjects can be separated from the inculcating of religious dogma. The Catholic clergy admit this. For are we not told that Protestants and Jews can attend the Convent schools and their faith as Protestants or Jews not be hurt or disturbed? lnis being so in Convent schools, secular subjects must be taught apart from those theological. And what do the Government schools provide? They do the same as is done in the Convent schools : the secular subjects are taught by themselves— the religious are left to the parents o& the clergy. To the Editor of the Daily Tvincs. 14. •'r"? our leader of this morning calls for a reply. You find tault with Father Hennebery's sermon on the subject of education, and endeavour to elude the inferences to be necessarily drawn from Ins facts, not by controverting those facts, but by a rehearsal of unfair against Catholics, particularly Irish Catholics. Father Hennebery stated that there were 57,000 divorces annually in the United States of America. Is this true or false ? Can you deny the statement ? He also stated that there were five millions of cases of infanticide annually in the United States. Can you deny this fact ? Well if you deny it, you contradict the best informed physicians m that country. Further, he stated that the United States Treasury was plundered to the extent of 400,000,000 dols. by its own officials Can you deny this fact ? If so, how account for the official report presented to Congress ? * No amount of special pleading can get rid of the inference, that a nation which, after 30 years of Godless education, has produced such results, has been very badly educated. "You speak of the Tammany Ring, as if Catholics and Catholic education were responsible for its misdeeds, forgetting that native Americans, brought up in anti-Catho-lic and Godless schools were the chief agents in its frauds. As usual, you lug in Ireland as a stalking horse, and ask, Is life more secure in Ireland than in Protestant countries ? Our answer is emphatically, Yes. The returns of the Assizes for a long series of years prove this. True, occasionally bad landlords have been murdered in Ireland, but this does not prove a greater insecurity of life there than elsewhere. In our poor opinion one man's lif cis as precious m itself as another's, and it is as criminal to murder one's wife or husband, for example, as it is to kill an Irish landlord, though the contrary, we know, is the theory prevailing to certain quarters. Examine the original statistics of England, Ireland, and Scotland

.and yqu.wilj find that for a long series of years there have been more murders-committed in London in a month than in Ireland in tw&ye months. Then take the returnsof illegitimate births^ and *cc how the. .. case stands as regards Irelanir~WHy7^reland stands at the headTpf/. the nations as regards female virtue: the best' test of the morality of a ' people ; and in Ireland itself you wall find that the more Catholic the locality the purer its morals in this respect. Ido not deny the crimes of Irishmen and Catholics. On the contrary, I acknowledge, deplore, and denounce them. But I must say it comes badly from an advocate of Protestant ascendancy in Ireland, to taunt its people with crimes which are the direct issue of the cruel and insane legislation of their persecutors and tyrants. If Irish Catholics have been guilty of the crimes unsparingly laid to their charge it has, been in spite of their religion, and in consequence of penal laws im-i posed upon them by English Protestants, which made the education of Irish Catholics a crime of high treason, and which even to the present hour denies them justice in education — legislation which designedly reduced them to beggary and ignorance, in order to demoralise and degrade them. But this immorality of the United States, which is shocking and appalling, is the direct and inevitable result of Godlesss education — a truth which is now very generally recognised by the thinking portion of the American people. The system of education which huddles grown boys and girls together at the same desk to he taught by young men and women, and which banishes all idea of God from the schoolroom, could not end otherwise than it has ended in the United States.,, You say secular can be separated from religious teaching, as is done in Convent schools, But your statement intended to be an argument contains a fallacy. Convent schools are not Godless schools, they arc professedly religious ; and surely it is unfair to argue from an exception as if it were the rule. Pew sittings in churches, prove nothing as to attendance in Catholic churches, inasmuch as in these churches the same seats are occupied from early morning to mid-day by large congregations succeeding each other every hour during that time. — I am, &c., t^ P. MoKAN, Roman Catholic Bishop of Dunedin. Dunedin, loth February, 1878.