English Catholic Schools

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIV, Issue 17, 26 April 1906, Page 2

English Catholic Schools

In Kngjland, as in Australasia, Catholics have proved their sincerity in the matter oi religious education by the test ofi personal sacrifice. In 1829, when the Emancipation Act was passed, they had only (,0 to 70 schools. They have now 1070, built and tunu&hed at a cost of some three millions sterling, and providing accommodation for 40<1, U00 children. With the exception of Government building grants amounting to £50,579, in favor of 87 schools, the whole of that vast sum of money was raised by the iree contributions from the Catholic purse. In its issue of March 15, the ' North-Eastern Daily Gazette ' (Middlesborough) paid the following tribute to the position taken up by Catholics on the matter of religious education : ' The Catholic conception of the indissoluble connection (between religion and education is a high and noble one. The function of education is not to make man merely a clever animal— an animal that knows the multiplication table or the binomial theorem. It is •to give man the power to control bis actions consistent with a rigftlful understanding of his position in the universe,, or (to put it in tlie more common phraseology) consistent with his duty to his fellows and his duty to God. For this reason the atmosphere of a school is of the utmost impoitance. it makes all the difierence in the world it the teacher is a zealous believer in the religious truths he imparts.' * The MiddlesiJJiorough daily dismisses as being not merely useless, I/it mischievous, a proposal which is being pushed in i New Ztealand as the acme of glorified human wisdom in the matter of education. 'We are convinced,' says our* JilngiiVsh ncn-CatliO'lic cotntemporary, ' that m most* cases it would, Irom a religious standpoint, be far Letter to banish all religious instruction thian toi put in the 'hands of teachers a book containing fundamental religious teaching which the teacher dare not explain, and in which he may or may not believe. Ut all the books in the world, the Bible is that which needs most to be explained. To put it in the schools without the lifcierty to explain what it really signifies— to explain whether the. religion is or is not a supernatural revelation, whether the facts are real or imaginary— is to set up a ietish to be blindly worshipped or contemptuously treated as the savages do with their gods.' Most of what our Middlesborough contemporary bas said is practically a paraphrase of the weighty pronouncements oi our Hierarchy on the Bible-in-schools question. Catholics in England are as little disposed as are Catholics in Mew Zealand to accept a State-made leligion, whether it be ' standard ' denominationalism or the dilapidated Unitarianism (or ieti9h-worship, as our Middlesborough contemporary would style it) of the Biblo-in-schools Conlerence. 'Ihe Hinglish Catholic bishops (says the ' Ulaagow Observer ') wisely declare that ' Catholics have not the least objection, to the other creeds of the country formulating or accepting any scheme of religiaus teaching (which pleases them. If " Birreiigion " sa/I/isheg - those who atlvocate it, ,let them have it by all means. That is their concern. We arc concerned only tor ourselves. (Jur plain position is what hasi often been declared, that ,so long as we give Government satisfactory secular results in properlyequipped and emciently-statted schools, we are entitled to the money, whichi tune State pays lor ethcient education. To deny us that money because we teach our own religion to our own children at our own cost — over and above — is simpjyj , tyranny! and cannoti endure.'

And so say ajll ot us. Unlike the sectarian plan of our Biblc-m-sehools League, the principle is good in ethics, sound in policy, lair all round, and applicable to every country rrom Llnaa to l^eru.