THURSDAY, JULY 16, 1903. THE PROPOSED REFERENDUM

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXI, Issue 29, 16 July 1903, Page 17

THURSDAY, JULY 16, 1903. THE PROPOSED REFERENDUM

HEN a former Earl of Argyle was executing a masterly retreat before MoNTROSE,he realised that there are occasions on which one pair of legs is worth two pair of hands. For a retreat from an untenable position may be, and often v, like Xenophon's, a gallant feat of arms ; and in politics, as in war, an "honorable defeat is preferable to a dishonorable victory which, like that of Chseronea, is ' fatal to liberty.' There is at present before our House of Representatives a Bill which, if it should ever find its way upon the statutebook, would be a Berious blow to the liberties which Catholics, Jews, and other religious minorities at present enjoy under the free Constitution of New Zealand. We refer to the Bill 'intituled an Act to provide for taking a Poll of the Elec r ors on the Question of giving L'ible Lessons in the Public Schools of the Colony.' This Bill is a brazen assertion of the principe which lies at the root of religious persecution — namely, the principle of deciding religious -questions and matters of creed and conscience by the brute force of a majority vote. The Bill has been aptly described as 'a subterfuge for pol tical cowardice.' H is, we believe, the first time that such a principle of government has ever been mooted in our legislative Chambers. We earnestly trust that it will be the last, and that this vicious and dan"gerous Bill will speedily meet, not its Chaeronea, but its Marathon, on the floor of our House of Representatives. Briefly, the Bill proposes to Lake, on the second Thursday of March, 1904, a plebiscite on these two issues : ' I vote for

Bible lessons in public schools,* and ' I vote agairni Bibteg" lessons in public schools.* It piovides that ' Bible lessons k: shall include ' simple literary, historical, and ethical explanations,' with a conscience clause in favor of teaohers and of ' children whose parents object.

We may here usefully repeat what hag so often foun(}*. : expression in our editorial columns: 'We Catholics dortfotj object to a system of education because it is religions!. fc&equally needless to say that we are not opposed to denomina» tional schools having the Bible read ana taught in them. ; We teach it in our own schools, under proper direction 1 anil ' with judicious selection, and we wish that a knowledge of its - truths could be imparted, under due supervision, to every - child, Protestant, Jewish, and Catholic, in the Colony. But we do object to Bible lessons in schools of n)ixed religion. We hold that the Bible is the depositary, noli the .* organ, of God's revelation to man. We hold that, therefore, it requires an interpreter ; and we hold that tne Church, through its representatives, is the divinely ;Cpifc., stituted interpreter or organ of revealed truth. ~We hold, too, that dogmatic truth is the basis both of faith and of morality. Our position is, therefore, wholly irreconcileable with that which is taken up by rationalists and agnostics, who abjure dogmatic truth and reject the Bible as the. depositary of revelation, and by Protestants, who reject the living authority of the Catholic Church and adopt, instead, various methods of private interpretation of the Sacred Word.'

As to the plebescite or Referendum Bill itself : It is unsound and dangerous in principle ; and, in the issues which it proposes to lay before tne electors, there lnrk a trickery and disingenuousness that are deserving of the strongest reprobation. We readily acknowledge that there are questions for the decision of which the Referendum may be a political expedient of great value. Such are questions on which the average elector is competent to pass a fair and unbiassed judgment. But there are others which are emphatically not of the submittable kind. Quch, for instance, are, in mixed communities, all religious questions, questions affecting the natural rights of minorities, and all matters on which sectarian, racial, or political passion has been, or is likely to be, aroused to a degree that may cloud the issues and prevent a calm and just verdict. Now the question of Bible-in-schools is a religious question. It is also, uufortunately, one in which the demon of sectarian strife has already shown his tail and cloven hoof. It, moreover, directly affects the rights of conscience of minorities. It is, therefore, not one on which the majority of the electors of the Colony have any right or title whatever to dictate to the minority. Under our Constitution there is no State Church. The religious rights of all are equal. No one creed has the right to determine or dictate what form of religion shall be taught in our public schools. No aggregate of denominations has authority to do so. But the proposal contained in the Bill, with its provision for 'ethical' or moral instruction, is nothing less than an attempt, by the representatives of half-a-dozen discordant denominations, to create a new State creed, to have it crammed into the brain-boxes of the rising generation at the^ general taxpayers' expense, and to change the public school system from free, compulsory, and agnostic into free, compulsory, and Unitarian.

It was asserted by the authors of the new State creed that they had definite and specific proposals to go before the country. But the two bare alternatives that are printed in the schedule are ambiguous to a degree and are* highly calculated, and apparently directly intended, to confuse the issue and to entrap the incautious voter into agreement with proposals that do not appear on the ballot-paper. The issues of the Keferen'lum appear, in fact, to be stated in tf-rins of studied ambiguity. They are a paltry and contemptible sophism. Take, for instance, (1) the word 'Bible.' No hint is given, no mention made, that the ' Bible ' referred to in the Bill is a sectarian and admittedly incorrect version of the Scriptures. King James's Bible is the book which the authors of the new compromise-creed propose to force upon our public schools. And to Catholics and the vast majority of Christians in the world, King

James's Bible, with its mistranslations and its missing books and parts of books, is no more a true Bible than our ' Hansard,' with a dozen volumes left out, would still be ' Hansard.' The reading of this Protestant and sectarian version of the Scriptures in our public suhools would naturally be regarded as a Protestant service, and our rulers have no more right to supply and teach King James's Bible, at the general taxpayers' expense, in our public schools of mixed religion than they have to supply and teach the Douay Bible or the Jewish Bible or the Mormon Bible or the Mohamedan Koran. (2) But the confusion is still worse confounded when we come to the term ' Bible-lessons ' on the proposed ballot-paper. The unexplained term, as it appears there,fhas a sufficient variety of meanings to puzzle a philosopher, much less an average elector, (a) It might, on the face of it, mean that the Bible is to be used as a common text book in our schools, like, for instance, the 1 fourth reader.' Now all Catholics and many thoughtful and intelligent Protestants object to this, as it would almost inevitably lead to the written Word of God being handled by the great majority of pupils with irreverent familiarity. Or (b) it might mean that the ' Bible lessons ' would be given, on the Protestant principle, 'without note or comment.' But this would be an openly sectarian use of an openly sectarian book. Or (c) it might mean that the lessons would be given with general note and comment. This would, In practice, come to the same thing ; for experience shows that it is morally impossible for teachers to give explanations of the Sacred Word without tinging them with their own beliefs or unbeliefs. Again: (d) the unexplained term 'Bible lessons' might mean Bible lessons with merely historical, literary, and geographical explanations. Jf this proposal were strictly carried out, it would reduce the Sacred Volume to the level of an ordinary text-book. But the experience of other countries goes to show that the ' merely historical, literary, and geographical explanations' are, consciously or unconsciously, made the vehicle of distinctively sectarian instruction, (c) The proposal embodied in the Hill (but nowhere mentioned on the ballot-paper) provides for ' simple htcra.y, historical, and ethical explanations ' by the State seliool teachers. 4 Ethical ' ! Wh it percentage of elector umleistand that this Greek derivative means 'moral'? .And why did the framers of this precious Hill go so far o-it of their way to use a word which 'is not understated of the people '—which is, as it were, 'a Hebrew spetch ' to them ? I*-, is plainly p,irt and parcel of the studieJ vagueness, the unworthy playing upon words, the discreditable catchmess which characterise this wretched Bill, a;:d which can have no other object than to confuse the electors of the Colony, and to snatch a victory by ways that are dark and tucks that are vain rather than by a straightforwaid appeal to the country on a clear-cut and definite issue. r l he mine invidious tactics find expression in the ' Outlook,' whose heading for the subject is ' The Battle for the Bible ' ! We may remark that the manual of B.blc lessons proposed to be taught in our schools is, with very slight modifications, that which was drawn up by the Victorian Commission in 1900, and which was thrown out by the Legislative Council in the course of last year.

A mighty parade is made about the ' conscience clause ' for pupils and teachers. But the * conscience clause ' is a delusion and a snare. What right hus any creed, or any aggregate of creeds, or the State itself, to compel Catholic, Jewish, or Protestant children to receive instruction in a residuum of Protestant theology unless their parents si<m a conscience-clause paper ?— to turn little dissidents into pariahs and expose them to the ridicule or ill-treatment of their companions by compelling them to stay outside in rain or sleet or sun while Bible lessons from a sectarian book are going on inside, and to stand up day by day and declare themselves nonconformists to the State religion ? The Rev. Mr. Hinton (Dunedin) has properly denounced the conscience clause as ' a clumsy and inefficient protection to objectors ' ; and this is precisely what Victoria's experience has abundantly proved it to be. If teachers generally took advantage of the clause, it would, in a great measure or altogether, defeat the purpose of the framers of the Bill— to have the new Unitarian creed taught by State officials at the public expense. In practice, however, the result would be the creation and application of a religious test in the

appointment of teachers. For the rest, the proposals of the Bible-in-schools party, even if they found their way into the statute-book, would by no means settle the education difficulty. They would merely substitute half-a-dozen grievances for one, alter our Constitution by the creation of an official or State cieed, and consecrate by Act of Parliament the principle that underlies religious persecution. Protestants in and out of New Zealand are profoundly divided on this subject of Bible-lessons in public schools. And great numbers of them will join with Catholics and Jews in a vigorous protest against being compelled to pay for the State teaching of Unitarianism in the schools. This pettifogging Bill is an odious attempt to catch hostile votes, on an indefinite and confused issue, for an issue which is kept out of the elector's view. The obvious remedy foi our educational difficulty has long been in operation in England, Scotland, Canada, and Germany. It is, apparently, too advanced for the advocates of the Bible-in-Schools. They will, however, probably live long enough to regard it as the only way out of a situation that has become even |more ruinous to them than it is financially burdensome to their Catholic fellow-colonists.