TO THE EDITOR.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XIV, Issue 36, 31 December 1886, Page 11

TO THE EDITOR.

Sib,— Bishop Moran has put three questions to me. I am not aware whether it is his custom, when asked to give authorities for his statements on Sunday evenings or on other occasions, to reply. I am afraid if he did so he might have a considerable correspondence to attend to. There is, however, no objection in my quoting from documents published by the late Pope to show that my statements were amply warranted. I may add that your report is substantially correct, though, it being in the third person, my words are not used, and what I said has been condensed. The first two questions may be grouped together. They are :— " Where, when, and under what circumstances, and in what sense, has the Pope said that the State is bound to support religion ? What is his authority for saying 'they went further by condemning as an error that all religions Bhould be free in a State?"' . _ , I quote from the Syllabus and Encyclical, dated Btb December 1864, issued before the Vatican Council. They were issued, a Catholic theologian states, "as the remote preparation for the Council, and I have not heard that the Roman Catholic Church has withdrawn from the position the Pope then took up. I gather from the way the first question is put that the Bishop may contend that so far as the propositions in the Syllabus are concerned, they are quotations from allocutions, etc., addressed at different times to different Bishops. This is true, but I hardly think it will be said that the errors condemned, for example, in New Grenada are truths in New Zealand. The following propositions are condemned as errors by the "Prop XV Everyman is free to embrace and profess that religion which, led by the light of reason, he may have thought true. " Prop. LV. The Church should be separated from the State, and the State from the Church." '• Prop. LXXVIL— In this our age, it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion should be treated as the only religion of the State, all other worships whatsoever being excluded." ..... II Prop LXXVIII —Hence it has been laudably provided by law in some Catholic countries that men thither immigrating should be permitted the public exercise of their own several worships. I also quote from the " Encyclical " :— " Fot you well know, Venerable Brethren, that at this time men are found not a few who, applying to civil society the impious and absurd principle of naturalism as they call it, dare to teach that the best constitution of public society and (also) civil progress altogether required that human society be conducted and governed withouc regard being had to religion any more than if it did not exist ; or at least without any distinction being made between the true religion and false ones." And against the doctrine of Scripture, of the Church, and of the Holy Fathers, they do not hesitate to assert that that is the best condition of society, in which no duty is recogaised, as attached to the civil power of restraining by enacted penalties, offenders against Catholic religion, except so far as public peace may require ; from wbich totally false idea of social government they do not fear to fostor that erroneous opinion, most fatal in its effects on the Catholic Church and the salvation of souls called by our predecessor, Gregory XVI., an insanity, viz., that « liberty of conscience and worship is each man's personal right, which ought to be legally proclaimed and asserted in every rightly-constituted society ; and that a right resides in the citizens to an absolute liberty, which should be restrained by no authority, whether ecclesiastical or civil, whereby they may be able openly and publicly to manifest and declare any of their ideas whatever, either by word of mouth, by the Press, or in any other way." I may add that the translations of the Syllabus and Encyclical are those of a Catholic theologian. In the same " Encyclical " the right of the Catholic Church to punish those who may have violated her laws iB expressly claimed. And in the Syllabus it is declared an error to say that "the laws of a State" should "withdraw themselves from the jurisdiction ot Divine and ecclesiastical authority "~of course, that is Romftu Catholic Church authority. I have not thought it necessary to refer to what the Catholic Church has done in the past, nor to the way, when the Pope had temporal power in Rome, in which the Proteßtants and Jews were treated in. that city— how they were

deprived of the rights Catholics have, for example, in England or New Zealand. The last question put to me is :—": — " When and where have the Catholics of this Colony demanded aid to enable them to teach their religion, and not secular matters ? " I reply, they no doubt asked aid to teach secular matters, as well as religion, but if it were aid for the teaching of secular matters alone that was asked from the State, the Catholic children could have got that in the State schools. la many education distiicts Catholics are teachers in the State schools. In Auckland the chief inspector is a Catholic. Why do the Catholics hare separate schools, and why do they wish aid from the State for their separate schools but that their creed may be taught in the schools? I assume that secular and religious education can be separated, and this I suppose no Catholic will deny. I believe Protestant and Jewish children attend convent schools, and I feel sure that they are only taught secular matters. If, then, these two branches of education may be separated, why are the State schools not utilised by the Catholic people ? Is it not because, as the Pope said in 1864, in a letter to a Continental Bishop, that secular education should be considered secondary to religious instruction? — I am, etc.,

Robeet Stout.