'Undenominationalism'

New Zealand Tablet, Volume 19, Issue 16, 19 April 1906, Page 2

'Undenominationalism '

Mr. Birrell introduced into the House of Commons last week his long-expected Education Bill. It requires ' the ordinary staff ' to ' give simple BiMe-teaching,' on Protestant principles, from a mutilated Protestant version of the Holy Scriptures, and is a retrograde attempt to make pandenomiriational Protestantism the State-endowed creed of the primary schools of England. ' There is,' we are told, 'to be no catechism or distinct formularies.' It is, in fact, the good old myth of ' undenoniinabionalism ' or ' unsectarianism, 1 with Avhich ithe public ha\e been for some years past nauseated in New Zealand. As an agnostic member of the London School Board said in the ' Fortnightly Review ' some years ago, it is ' a new form of religion, which has nothing to do with Historical Christianity or any other form of Christian teaching. By taking away everything to which any one objects, they leave soraethmg} which is raaljy (worthless, d hey 'say they will have no creed and no catechism, and the result is that every teacher is his own creed and fiis own catechism. The result of " unsectarian " deacmng is a colorless residuum, which I should think would be as objectionable to the earnest Clnistian as it is contemptible to the earnest unbeliever."' But the Birrell Bill by no means proposes to ' take away everything to which any one objects/ Catholics, Jews, and even some Protestants, for instance, object to the sectarian version of the Bible which o it is proposed to use. And the events of the past week show that there are in England, as there are in New Zealand, people a-plenty who will object, both on grounds of conscience and of public right, to this ' lifeless, noiled-down, mechanical, unreal teaching ' of a sort of dilapidated Unitarianism at the expense of the taxpayers of the country. There are lively times in store for England now. * The exclusion of catechisms and formularies is apparently supposed by Mr. Birrell to make his new Stateschool creed undogmatic and undenominational. As a matter of fact, it is neither. The existence of God, and the divine authority of the Bible, no matter in how attenuated a form they may be taught, are as much dogmas as are those of the Real Presence with Catholics and. the Real x\bsence and Justification by Faith alcne with many Protestants. And Mr. Birrell's new school religion is just as denominational as "Unitarianism. It resembles "Unitarianism, --too, in the fewness of its peculiar dogmas, the manner in which it is proposed to avoid dbl'.xudi'ng them, atod leave the hapless school-children to conjecture and to the 'Reformed' device of private judgment, or to the tender mercies of teachers many of wKom may be bitterly' sectarian or openly agnostic. With— the . experience of the United States and Australia before them, Ca/bholics have no difficulty in imagining what a wide scope for sectarianism is afforded'^by Bible teaching,' by Protestants, •4 "

on Protestant principles, from a Protestant version of the Scriptures. Even secular subjects have been made to subserve sectarian purposes. Our readers will recall the case of the Scottish-rate-aided high school in which a Catholic was not 'allowed to teach history, as it was a ' sectarian subject.' Archliishop Whately made logic the medium of all sorts of cuts and gibes at ' Rome,' and misrepresentations cf Catholic teaching. And have not our German friends discovered that even so innocent and un3uspicious-iGO.--ing a subject as arithmetic may be made the \ chicle of sugg-esting or obtruding denominationalism. An English contemporary tells how, at a meeting of Catholic teachers during the recent Catholic Congress at Strassburg, the rector of a college in the Rhine Pro\ince spoke of mixed schools, and showed that even arithmetic, drawing, and writing might assume, according to the manner in which they are taught, a denominational character. P"or example — a teacher set his pupils the following problem •" It costs a wcrkman se\enty-fi\e pfennings a day to i supply meat for his family „ how much would that come to in a week '! " The boys sent up to the master two sets of answers to a sum whi-h seems so simple. Some found it was five marks twenty-five pfennings ; others, four marks fifty pfennings only. One of the latter, on being questioned, replied correctly : " For us Catholics there are only six da} s in the week on which we eat meat, since Friday is a day of abstinence." But, nowadays, the fact that neutrality as to religion is impossible in schools no longer requires proof.'