INSULT ADDED TO INJURY.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume VI, Issue 301, 7 February 1879, Page 17

INSULT ADDED TO INJURY.

(From the JUana train Time*,') It is with some degree of hesitancy that we enter upon a subject which we hold is scarcely fitting in the columns of a secular paper ; still we feel we should be wanting in our duty were we to pass by the subject without placing our opinions on record. It is well known that the present Education Act is felt to be an unjust tyranny by a large number of our fellow-colonists, for while they in common with persons of other denominations, are taxed for the education of the youth of the colony, the system of instruction impaited is of such a nature as conscientiously they cannot endorse. True to those principles, Catholics have consequently refrained from making use of the schools towards which they are called upon to contribute, so that a double burden has been placed upon their shoulders, which hitherto they have borne under protest. So far a gross injury and injustice had been done to them, but it remained for Mr. E. B. Cargill and a quartette of rev. Dunedin doctors to put on the screw and add insult to injury. Not satisfied with injustice of a passive nature, those worthy doctors of a dominant Church, by their spokesman the Rev. Lindsay Mackie assert that inasmuch as any system of education which does not provide for religious instruction is defective, it is desirable that the daily reading of the Bible in the public schools of the colony should become law. Had the rev. gentleman been satisfied with the first portion of the sentence, we would have heartily endorsed his sentiments, holding as we do that education without moral and religious training is worse than useless, but when he seeks by a sidewind to set up a State Church, towards which he would compel denominations of all sorts to contribute, we must meet him with strenuous opposition. The Education Act as it is now framed almost compels the attendance of Catholic children at the State schools, for it is only by complying with a number of harrassing conditions that a penalty can be escaped ; and in face of the fact that tbe schools are supposed to be for the benefit of the youth of the Colony, be they of whatsoever religion they may, a barefaced attempt is made to introduce a regulation which would make it utterly impossible that a Catholic child could enter a State school. Were any such clause to be placed upon the Statute Book of the Colony, it would be a more monstrous piece of tyranny than was the Established Church in Ireland, By that the Catholic was taxed to support the Protestant parson, but in the proposition of Mr. Lindsay Mackie the Catholic is not only taxed to support schools where the Protestant Bible would be taught, but the law would go farther aud say that he must send his children to receive such Protestant instruction. Such a step would not only be setting up a State Church but proselytising by Act of Some of the speakers at the gathering to which we have ■pluded even went so far as to urge that the reading of the Bible should be supplemented by interpretation and explanation by the teachers ; in fact, for the time bsing turning the class into a Sunday school. No doubt persons will be found to say — " Well, supposing all this should come to pass, and that the Bible were read to Catholic children, what then ? Would they learn anything wrong from the book itself or the teacher ?" To those we would reply in a Celtic manner by asking the question : " Why not go further and ask that their parents attend the English Church at once ?" It is just possible that the ball set rolling by the Rev. Mr. Mackie will continue until a change is effected in tbe education system, and while we heartily wish that he and his confreres will be at liberty to impart religious instruction to the children of his congregation by the aid of the school teacher, we think it is not unreasonable to ask that the Catholic portion of the community will be allowed to bring up their children to believe in the faith in which they worship.