The New Zealand TABLET.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXII, Issue 48, 1 December 1904, Page 17

The New Zealand TABLET.

To promote the cause of Religion and Justice by the ivays of Truth and Peace* Leo. XIII, to the N.Z. Tablet""'

prejudicial^ to the faith of Catholic children. And cases might readily occur in which teachers wo/uttl foster scepticism or unbelief.' There is a multitude >of oft-recur-ring Scrilpture terms which have a Protestant as well as a Catholic meaning. Take, for instance, siudh words as ' church,' ' penance,' ' forgiveness.,' ' grace,' ' salviatijon,' ' faith,' etc. Here, in the act of givimg ' hiktorrcial ' or ' ethical ' explanations, a teacher might, consciously or unconsciously, and under the aegi's of the State, as effectually denominationalisc a public school mi certain matters ot doctrine as if it were the Sunday school of a particular sect This, as the Archbishop of Melbourne has Snown, has been done in several flagrant instances in the State schools of Victoria. It was done deliberately, and on a wholesale scale in Ireland, where great numbers of the national schools were turned into proselytising institutions whose express scope and purpose —as avowed by the Anglican Archbishop Whately— was to wean little Irish Papists from the ' errors of Popery.'

A somewhat similar outrage on the consciences of Cat/h'ohcs,, Jews, and others was perpetrated in ' the little red school-houses 'of the United States. The story, was briefly told in tine course of an editorial article iln the ' Biblical World ' for October, 1902. ' The fact,' ltl says, ' that the Bible is generally excluded from the public schools of the United States, where formerly it was used as a booK of devotion and instruction, is not to be attributed tto a growing disregard of religion. . . This situation has , been , creattted by th^ friends bf the Bible rather than by its enemies ; for if the friends of the Bible could have agreed among themselves a$ to how the Bible should be taught vn the schools, their influence would have secured the continuance ot such instruction. B-ut it came to pass that the Bible w>as used in the schools, not only for general and ethical religious instruction, but also for the inculcation of sectarian and theological ideas. Protestant teachers taught the Bible in a way which antagonised the Roman datiholics ; and teachers of the several Protestant denominations interpreted the < Bible to the children from their own point of view. But the public money which is raised by general taxation for the support ot the commion schools comes from men of widely differing ecclesiastical creeds and connections, and cannot therefore be used for the dis&emnnatiion of sectarian tenets.'

But no degree of harmony among the members of Bible-in-schools Leagues could justify the forcible evtraction of taxes trom people for tihe teaching and endowment of a torm ot religion which their conscience cannot accept. Moreover, every tenet of religion is, either to religionists or non-rehgionists, sectarian. ' An unsectarian religion would,' as our Hierarchy remarked, ' in its last analysis, be a religion which takes n!o particular view of, or attitude towards, religion, which is an absiurdity. Take the simplest form of religion— belief in the existence of God. This is sectarian to the Atheist, the Agnostic, and the non-religionist generally, just as their \iews on religion— which are usmally as clearly defined, s.o far as they go, as tihose of Jew or Christian— are, to tne Theist, sectarian.' Learned nonCatiholics of every creed and non-oreeid have torn the idea of an unsectarian or undenominational instruction in religion to tatters and flung it to the winds of heaven. In his l Allgemeine Pecagogik ' (' General Pedagogy,' 1901), for instance, Professor Ziegiler, of the University of Strasgiburg, says : „' An undenominational instruction in religion, which is advocated by some, is nonsense ; for every religion is denominational.' An

English writer (' Fortnightly Review,' May, 1896) scores it as ' a lileless, boiled 'down, mechanical, unreal teaching of religion. 7 The ' non-sectariaAiism ' professedly advocated by the Bible-in-schools League was spoken of as follows by am Agnostic nuemiber of the London School Board in tihe same issaie of tihe ' Fortnightly ' : 'The rcsmlt of unsectiarian teaching is to establish a new form of religion which has, nothing in common with Ilis-

torical Christianity or any other form of Christian teaching. By taking aw>ay everything to which anyone objects, they leave something which is really worthless. They will have no Creed and no Catechism, and ttie result is that every teacher is his own Creed and his own Catechism. Ifhe result ot u,nsectarian teaching is a colorless residuum, which I should think would be -as objectidnable to the earnest Christian as it is cototemptible to the earnest unbeliever.' The teaching of the Protestant or any other version of the Bible by State olhcials in our public schools, with explanations of the text, would as necessArily emerge in outrigftit sectarianism in New Zealand as in other countries. We shall in due course see that the trouble would by no means 1 be remedied by omitting the explanations, whether ' literary,' or ' historical,' or ' ethical.'