THURSDAY, MAY 12, 1904. SOME DISLOCATED THEORIES

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXII, Issue 19, 12 May 1904, Page 17

THURSDAY, MAY 12, 1904. SOME DISLOCATED THEORIES

<n£ji¥je^ HE promised reply of the Bible-m-schnls tr* llv"* League to the manifesto of the Ca'holio Liig& j|» t shops is, like Bonnie Prince Charlie, ' long a-comin'.' In the meantime two clerical *v v**^jj* smooth-bores of the League have been bangiffi^tuSb in^ in ran^ om fashion at the pronounceX ment, wit/h little regard for the amenities r of civilised newspaper and pulpit controvorsial warfare. Last week we made brief ieference to the fanatical outbreak of one of the ' par nobile fratrum.' He declared, in effect, that, in tins matter of education, the Catholic minority in New Zealand has no rights of conscience that tihe non-Cath-olic majority need respect ; that it is rank impenitence for us to criticise the projects of the Bible-in-siohools League ; and that it is our diuty to ' handsup ' and look pleasant when dur pockets are rifled lor contributions (in the shape of taxes) towards the cost of turning the State schools (as our Bishops truly said) into Protestant Sunday schools awl institutes for the proselytising of the children of our faith. Such outbreaks, however, serve the same useful purpose as the unmasking of an enemy's batteries in war. A good

cause may be served by the indiscretion amd violence o/ its enemies as well as by the able and earnest advocacy of its friends.

The other skirmisher of the League is a Presbyterian clergyman in Ohris-tchuroh. He walked ro,un.d the manifesto at a safe distance ; <he took back-sights ; he took front-sights ; he took an elevation here and there; he tried the range once or twice and failed to get it ; he did pretty nearly everything he could do excefpt to settle down to a serious attack upon the Catholic position. For the Bishops carried too much metal for line worthy man. Some of his polemical oratory may have been— to him, at least—magnificept ; but it was not war. Its crescendo of verbal hostility reminds one of Alice's polite inquiry to the Queen as she crossed the little brook in Looking-glass Land. ' " I hope your finger is better now," said Alice, kindly. " Oh, mjuch better ! " cried tihe Queen, her voice rising into a squeak as she went on. " Much be-etter ! Be-etter ! Be-e-e-etter ! Be-e-ehh ! " The last word,' says Lewis Carroll, ' ended in a long bleat, so much like a sheep that Alice quite started.' The Christchurcn critic of the manifesto began his two lectures on the manifesto cooing as gently as a sucking dove. But his voice, like that of Alice's Queen, rose as he proceeded. It wojund up on last Sunday evening with the following inspiring whoop :—: —

'If the referendum should protve that the vast majority of common-sense people was against the introduction of the book(the Victorian Scrijpture lesson book) into the State school, then, he said, the only way ojut of the difficulty was just to separate from the State and create denominational schools. If Protestants were to follow the example of Roman Catholics, they would be disloyal to the State. The Stat? had established a great school system, and it wo,uld be disloyal to do as the Roman Catholics were doing without at first trying all tihey could to gain those reasonable ends sought for by so many.'

We are not responsible for this report of the leverend preacher's words. It is taken from Monday's ' Press.' But the average newspaper reader will feel over it as Artemus Ward did over the moody and mysterious stranger whom he met in the ' Green Lion.' ' This man puzzled me,' said the exhibitor of ' moral wax nggers.' ' I'd been puzzled afore several times, but nejver so severally as now.' We may, however. tease out the lawyer-vine tangle of interlaced ideas and set them forth in the following series of propositions :— 1. That the State has the right to educate—that is, not alone to instruct in secular knowledge, but also to form the minds of children to a knowledge of (its views of) divine things and their hearts and wills to (its 'view of) virtue. 2. That this right is primary and inherent, so that no individual, and no group of individuals, have any right as against the State ; and when the State has set up a ' school system ' of its own— even a godless o,ne— all citizens are bound to abide by it Under pain of the sin of ' disloyalty ' or disobedience to that lawlully constituted authority which conies from God.

Starting with those Spartan and pagan principles, it would naturally follow (3) that New Zealand Catholics are ' disloyal to -tfhe State ' because -they do not accept its godless system of public instruction ; and that New Zealand Protestants would also be ' disloyal to the State ' if, in this matter, they were to ' follow the example of the Roman Catholics.'

The preacher emerged from ttfie mental tangle with an idea that, taken in connection with those that preceded it, is a dialectic gem of purest ray serene, it amounts to this : (4) that Protestants (meaning, apparently, the Bible-in-sctiools League) would NOT be ' disloyal to the State 'if (a) after an unsuccessful referendum, they were, like Catholics, to ' create denominational schools ' ; or if they were to upset our 1 great school system ' by turning it from free, com-

pulsory. and secular, into free, compulsory, and Unitarian.

The last proposition eats up all the others and icmains itself the sole survivor — like the cannibal naval man of the ' Bab Ballads ' who devoured all his shipwrecked fellows and then ' sat alone c*n a piece of a stone ' and ' sang in a minor key ' :—

' Oh, I'm a cook and a captain hold, iAml the male oi the " Nancy " biig, And a bo sun tight, and a midshipmite, And the crew of the captain's gig.'

One cannot be expected to take seriously pronouncements on the education difficulty that rest on such ludicrous substitutes for principles of reasoning. BuT they have their uses. Their sectarian bitterness serves a purpose already indicated in this article. Arid they add to the gaiety of life, producing, in tfiis dull grey world, those wholesome laughs that (in Josh Billings' words) ' cum romping oiut ov a man's mout(h just like a districk school ov young girls let out tew play.' We shall probably have occasion to revert, later on, to the subject of the respective rights and duties of the family, the Church, and the State in the education of youth. .For the present we will merely remark that (1) the idea underlying the quotation given above is the old pagan and Spartan theory that the child does not belong to its parents, but to the State ; (2) that the right and duty of the education of children belong primarily arid by divine sight to parents ; (3) that tihe imparting of even secular instruction can belong only itt a secondary and delegated way to the State ; (4) t^at parents canfnot in conscience delegate to the civil Government the right to determine what religion their qhildren shall be taught ; (5) that the State has neither right or competency to set up as a teacher of religion, or to determine what system of doctrines it shall have taught ; and (6) that the exercise of any such claim on its part is opposed to tihe teaching of, Christ and His Apostles and has ever led, and must ever lead, to injustice, tyranny, and persecution.