A Warning Lesson

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIV, Issue 6, 8 February 1906, Page 18

A Warning Lesson

California docs not allow into its public schools the Protestant or any other \ersion of the Bible, or any ' emasculated caricataire ' thereof. But the spirit of our (Protestant) Bible-in-schools movement has got its grip upon the western State. And it ' gets there ' in its own way. The School Board of Pasadena, for instance, makes careful inquiry into the religious beliefs of candidates for appointments to the teaching staffs under its jurisdiction. The religious tests for these public appointments is made to operate so consistently against Catholics in that Catholic region, that for the past ten years not one member of the proscribed creed has held the position of teacher in Pasadena. It seems to be an attempt to perpetuate in the West the open and scandalous boycott of Catholic teachers that constitutes the disgrace of the Bible-in-schools States of Old New England. Catholics in Pasac na are starting a crusade against this \iolation of the national Constitution. If such tilings can happen in the green wood of California, what might not occur in New Zealand under the sectarmnising scheme of Dr. Gibb and his fiiends ?