An Object Lesson

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIV, Issue 17, 26 April 1906, Page 18

An Object Lesson

Our New Zealand readers do not require to be told that" there is in Nelson a small and noisy faction of intolerants who regard Catholics as outlawed from the protection of the Ten Commandments. This interesting menagerie seems to have been at the bottom of the

attempt made to run last Monday's School Committee elections on a religious issit<e. The idea was to secure the electicn of a group who would penalise, in the (matter of certificates, pupils attending 'the Catholic schools. The attempt was solidly defeated. But the incident, nevertheless, conveys a moral that Catholics as well as fair-minded Protestants would do well to take to heart. If such .things may happen in the green wood, what may not happen in the dry ? If the flame of religious passion may be kindled under a system that sets up a pretence cf neutrality, what fierce intolerance might we not expect if the public schools of the Colony were (as the Bibierin-sdhools party propose) turned into annexes of the non-Catholic denominational Sunday schools ? Religious tests for teachers and for members of School Committees,' said our Bishops, ' are the natural and inevitable corollary to the scheme that is at present before the country.. But that would only be the beginning o f the ' jehad ' or religious war against recusants frcm the State creed.