SUPPOSED CONFERENCE BETWEEN A ROMAN CATHOLIC PARENT AND MR. J. SHEEHAN. M.H.R.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IX, Issue 463, 24 February 1882, Page 21

SUPPOSED CONFERENCE BETWEEN A ROMAN CATHOLIC PARENT AND MR. J. SHEEHAN. M.H.R.

Pabent : Do you consider that you were acting a consistent part as a Roman Catholic when, in defiance of the Holy See, you assisted the Civil Government and the enemies of the Catholic Church in general, to take the education of Catholic children out of the hands of their clergy and parents, for the purpose of having these children placed in schools conducted on principles and by teachers hostile to their religion and your own, seeing that the separation of secular from religious education is in practice impossible ? Mr Sheehan : I say that Roman Catholics, either from inability to provide good schools for their children or from culpable neglect in doing so, were allowing them to grow up either in total ignorance or very imperfectly educated in secular knowledge. By this not only the Ptate but the children themselves were suffering a great injury. For this reason I, though a sincere Roman Catholic, did what you think was wrong and inconsistent with my duty as a consistent Roman Catholic. Parent : I allow that there is some little show of reason in what you say in your defence, but there ii still more sophistry and exaggeration and bad policy. The system jou support may, in spite of all its drawbacks, be the only one that can l»e adopted in some remote and thinly peopled parts of the country, though not in all. Necessity has no laws. But you are not content with having your nystem adopted in these places only. In the genuine spirit of a despot of a Henry Bth, or Oliver Cromwell, you also force your system upon the people in the most populous places, without necessity, to the sorrow and disgust of all your co-religionists and of a large section of Protestestants. Also, your system is not merely unjust and arbitrary, but it is, as the Catholic clergy ever maintained it would do, actually defecting the main purpose the Government had in view in dealing with the education of the people at all — I mean their moral progress. It is demoralizing the young ; diminishing in them thosa feelings of religious reverence and respect for their superiors which are the best security for subordination and all Christian virtue among the people. As a parent and a citizen I look into the future with anxiety and terror when I see the evil fruits of your secular system even now, though it has not been in existence here above ten years. Even the great secularist organ, the Herald, now admits that <• moral culture" cannot be had in your schools. The only way of escaping from the mischief into which you are leading us, is to adopt the English system of Government education, ere it be too late. Under proper provision subsidise all efficient private schools, place them all under Government secular inspection. Where no efficient private schools exist — or are too few — then set up your pet purely secular Government schools as a matter of necessity. Do not as now try to run good private schools, either of Catholics, or Protestants, or Jews, off the field with Government money. A most unjust act ; whatever is an unjust act cannot be good policy. Your secular system has been in full swing in America for about 40 years — or something much akin to it— something at least opposed to the English fair system, such as I propose that you support, and which the hierarchy of your own and the English Church would willingly accept. What is the state of morals, political and domestic, in America at this hour 1 God forbid that the state of ours in New Zealand should ever he like it. But if you and your secularist friends in the Press and Parliament are allowed to have your way we shall in due time, no doubt, overtake our American cousins in private and political profligacy. Human nature is at bottom the same in all countries. lam in great hopes, however, that the good sense and Christian feeling of the Protestant people of this colony will, ere many years pass away, lead them to review and amend their present education system, and make it conformable to that of England so far as circumstances will allow. The late justly and deeply lamented President Garfield in his inaugural address alluded to the American system of State education and its fruits, but not in terms of commendation ; quite the reverse. According to him statistics revealed the Startling fact that, despite the enormous sums of public money spent {Or the education of the American people, there prevailed among them an amount of " illiteracy " which was to him perfectly " appaling." These were his very words ; this illiteracy he said was yearly increasing. Illiteracy I presume is an Americanism for ignorance. It is a more polite word than ignorance, and has the merit of novely and ambiguity. How strange that within a few months after thus raising his voice againat this monster national evil the President should have loit bis life by the hand of an asttMin

acting from motives which are still to us shrouded in mystery. The rulers and people of New Zealand may well ponder these things in their hearts. There was another monster social and political American evil against whicli President Garfield raised his voice in sorrow and indignation. That I mean which has its head -sen tre in the State of Utah ; which is threatening to set the authority of the Central Government at defiance, and to spread moral pollution from one end of the Union to the other. Even New Zealand is not exempt from iti influence. No one, probably, who has received his education in a properly conducted Christian school, certainly ho one who has been educated in a Roman Catholic school would ever dream of associating inmself or herself with the Mormon community. That modern abomination, Mormonism, is thedire3t and natural offspring of schools in which religious culture is either entirely ignored, or conducted on Tery erroneous and lax principles. lam sorry to read that Martin Luther justified Christian polygamy, and may therefore be said to be the father of Mormonism as well as of the " Reformation." The Americans admire Luther and non-Catholic schools vastly. The Protestant New Zealanders do the same. England, in spite of her many many grievous faults against religion and justice in the past, is still the natural home of freedom and Christianity. For this, in part, thanki to the Irish Catholic Bishops, clergy, and people ; to Cardinal! Manning and Newman, and even to the Protestant English Bench of Bishops. In that Bench the ancient spirit of Catholic England still lingers to some extent, though much and sadly defaced by Protestant error and avarice. Even that arch-enemy of the Catholic Church, the London Times, some time back admitted that the people of England in the mass cordially hated secular schools and school-rates, and that the business of popular education was stiil being carried on there by private— that is by religious — schools principally. Ever since the days of St. Augustine and St. Thomas a Beckett the noble Anglo-Saxon and Roman race have been a religions people no less than the Irish and Scotish Celt. They are so yet. It is beyond the power of this or any other Government by any education acts to make them otherwise, though by secular schools they may do much to injure their faith and morals. Nobth Briton.