Deeds versus Words

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXII, Issue 21, 26 May 1904, Page 18

Deeds versus Words

Words are cheap. It is deeds that tell. ' They people the vacuity of time,' says Carlyle, ' and make it green and worthy.' While the Bible-in-schools League and such-like organisations in New Zealand have been talking hollow-sounding platitudes about- ,the benefits of Christian education, Catholics have been up and doing. They have been spending a million and a half to bring the little ones to Christ, while the others have been wagjging their] tongues and tightening their pursestrings; whining to get tiheir neglected duty done for them' by the State, and to be allowed to pick the pock-

et£ of Catholics, Jews, and thousands of other objectors to provide the cost of turning the public schools into Protestant Sunday-schools. It may be very pious to feel for the sofuls of the little ones with the tip of the tougue. It is certaiftly a very economical form of sympathy. It would be more to the purpose if the Bible-in schools League felt for their children, as Catholics do, in their pockets. This would furnish a practical test of their zeal for t/he souls of the rising generation, and it would save them the humiliation— not to say degradation— of going cap in hand to' the Government to entreat it to become a teacher of religion ab well as a builder of railways and a grader oi Langshang pullets and Aylesburg ducks. Jews, Lutherans, and others are following the example of Catholics in the United States in the matter of Christian education. In a recent address at Notre Dame University, Bishop Stanley (says the • Aye Maria ') declared that a conservative estimate of the cost of the parochial schools in this country would be $25,000,000, while the expenses of our colleges and academies would amount to as much more. " Fifty millions a year in addition to our ordinary taxes paid' for education!" said the Bishop, " Does not that prove the earnestness of our belief in the necessity of education in its true sense ? And ought not this fact alone to silence forever bhe baxking fanatics who call the Catholic Church the foe of knowledge." '