THURSDAY, JULY 5, 1906 'BIRREUGION'

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIV, Issue 27, 5 July 1906, Page 17

THURSDAY, JULY 5, 1906 'BIRREUGION'

§HE Catholic struggle for e.sual religious rights in education goes on bravely in England. Mr. Bixreil's Bill has 1 Kirfd'led the dead coals of wars And brought in matter that should feed this The chief matter that feeds the fire of Catholic opposition to the measure is the proposal to arrange the public control of the schools in such a way as to give N<on-~ conformists and a section of Anglicans what they; are satisfied with int religious -instruction in public schools

maintained out of the public purse, while the same right is to be denied to "Catholics. ' §imple Bible - teaching ' —of which wo, have heard so much in New Zealandconstitutes what is now 1 nown in England as • Birreligion.' And in England" as /here if is proposed that the l simple Bible teaching ' be taken from Protestant and sectarian versions' or the Scriptures and imparted to Protestant children by (in the vastly greater number of cases) Protestant teachers at the: public expense. And Catholics, Jewish, and Protestant dissidents are (by the provisions of the Bill) to be forced to pay for the support of this new State creed or suffer distraint of goods or go to gaol,. In this underlying principle of the Bill, it is substantially like the proposals that have from time to time been advocated by the Bible-in-•schools party in New Zealand. * The proposed State school religion is, of course, termed ' undenominational ' and ' unsectarian '—on the facile principle^ worn so threadbare in New Zealand, that what is Jewish or Catholic is ' sectarian,' and what is Protestant is ' unsectarian.' There is, of course, no such thing as unsectarian religious instruction. In a letter dated January 14, 1004, Mr. Balfour, dealing with ' the confusion of ideas underlying " undenominational teaching " ', said : ' It is clear that, from the point of view of the Jew, all Christian teaching, and, from the point of view of the Roman Catholic, all Protesbant teaching, is denominational m the only sense relevant to the present issue.' In the course of a formal manifesto, the BiMe-in-schools party in New Zealand (190.4), admitted that their attitude, and that of the Catholic Church, towards God's Written Revelation, are irreconcilably ' sectarian ' in regard to each other. Here is how the ' Church Times ' (Anglican) views the effort to reduce all the Reformed creeds, for school purposes, to a common denominator :— ' Our objection to undenominationalism is that it is a State-manufactured religion, and as Churchmen we will ha\e none of it. We regard it as an adulterated article, unwholesome, and unfit for consumption. If other people want it for their children, they are welcome to\ it, but; we will give something better to our children. If the State will provide us all alike with the means of getting what we want, well and good; if riot', we must provide it ourselves in the buildings which are our joint property, and in the hours allotted to education.' Mr. Birrell is not sohing the school difficulty. _He is merely intensifying it by creating a now sect, and endowing it as the Established Church of the Schools. In his Bill, the State is out on a rainbow chase after points of agreement on which the endless Reformed creeds in England may stand on common ground. It will never find them. Aral even if it did, it would not have established ' nmdenominatnonalism ' or ' unsectarianism.' It would merely add another new sect to the hundreds that are already in discordant competition in the country. In England, as in America, Australia, and, .New Zealand, Catholics have made great sacrifices in the cause of Christian education. They^ erected their schools (1070 all told) and, until recently, maintained them at their own expense. Some 400,000 children are receiving in them the education of the heart and conscience as well as the training of mind and hand, and eye. It has been computed -by those' best competent to judge that since 1870 the Catholic body in England contributed as much as £6^00,000 (or at the rate of about- £171,428 a year) from 1870 to 1905. ' Without -these -schools,' as Bishop McQuaid said of America, ' in, a few -generations our magnificent cathedrals and churches .would remain as samples of monumental folly— of- the unwisdom of a capitalist who consumes his fortune year -by year without putting it out at interest" or allowing It" to increase*.' Catholics in 'England, as nearer- home, to us, will think twice before bearing the double burden of maintaining their own schools, and at the same time

contributing directly for^the teaching of a Unitarian or Nonconformist State school creed. And (says the ' Catholic Times ') 'so strong is the feeling ' among Catholics at this hour, that" we doubt whether any" authority could persuade them to ' pay rates for schools which in fact are Nonconformist schools, and keep up, their own schools as well. They have done that long enough now, ever since 1870, and they are tired of~paying twice. That they will struggle "to support their own schools we can easily "believe.^ But, knowing their poverty, and their hatred of the treatment they have received during the past thirty-five years, we are less easily able to believe that they will consent to a continuance of the double burden. If they do resist, our idea is that their resistance will not always he passive ; and the Government had bet/ter recognise the danger.'"