The Godless System

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIII, Issue 3, 19 January 1905, Page 1

The Godless System

The godless school-system, that has been for a generation a fad among ou* politicians, is one of the results of tihe French Revolution. In France it was in its origin, a nd is to-day, frankly anti-Christian. In New South Wales it was frankly anti-Catholic. Sir Henry Farkes, holding aloft his draft Bill on Public Instruction at a public meeting, declared : ' I hold in my haod what will be death to the calling of tihe priesthood of the Church of Home.' The framers of the godless system in Victoria made a still nearer approach to the French revolutionary ideal. Mr. Stephens, the AttorneyGeneral, was refreshingly outspoken as to the ultimate aim of secularism- in the public schools : it was (he said)', to ' purge Mie ,colony or clericalism ' and tip lead tho yoittig generation by sure but gradual steps to ' worship m common at the shrine of one neutral-tinted deity sanctioned by the State Department.'

In tiie same way, the Association Law in France wa3 avowedly a declaration of war against religion in France. ' The leaders ol the Extreme Left,' said the ' Temps ' at tine time of the passing of the Act, ' make iyo pretence ot demy ing that it is against the Catholic religion itself that they are making an attack. They proclaim aloud tfiat the suppression of the Congregations, whick tihey sp passionately long for, will be, to their thinking, not only tihe iirst blow of the pick in the structure of t;he Concordat, but the first steip in the work of the radical extinction of the religious spirit, or— as it is called— in the de-ehristianisation of France.' Quite recently one M. Diquaire, a French Government school inspect)or, set forth the policy of his employers in the ftollowinT terms m a statement made to the ' Journal de Kochechouart : ' The lay (secular) school has for object to form thinkers, it would deceive the hopes that we have built om it if it kept within the bounds of a respectful neutrality. The lay school teaches the rejection of dogma. When at thirteen years the child leaves school, don't think that he has profited by the teaching of his masters if he remains a believer. But if he has freeti himself from dogma, if he has rejected the faith of his fathers, if he has renounced the Catholic religion, then only will tihe lay school have borne the proper fruit and given the real me'asur|- of its effect. The lay school is a mfbuld into which is thrown the sion of a Christian and from which turns out a renegade. And as things would riot march quick enough for our wishes, in order that the apostasy become general, we shall seize on the monopoly of teaching. We shall refuse the brotherhooWsi and sisterhoods the right of keeping a school. We shall close their establishments. The backward families

will be obliged to conlide to us ttieir children, and to these children, become ours, we shall hold that we have taught them nothing until they are in open revolt against the clergy.'

What a falling-off from the days when the hardy spirit of faith and sacrifice justified the old Crusader cry : ' Ges-ta Dei per Francos ! '—the wonderful things which God was pleased to do through the instrumentality of Uhe Fi cinch ! The godless— or, rather, the atheisitic — school is to be the chief trial of the faith in France. Bui it has oiten served a people to be placed, as French Catholics are now placed, in tihe crucible. G-,od can take goold out of apparent evil, as Sampson found meat in the eater and in the lion's mouth honey. And there shi-nefi for France a bright star cf 'hope from beyond the Rhine, where the Church in the Fatherland issued from her long wrestling with the civil power with addend strength and vigor.