The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, AUGUST 23, 1906. AN AUDACIOUS PROPOSAL

New Zealand Tablet, 23 August 1906, Page 21

The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, AUGUST 23, 1906.

AN AUDACIOUS PROPOSAL

tORMANT rihftious animosities, hue sleeping dogs, are best, left to lie still and take their forty winks in peace. For this reason we believe that the Young Men's Christian Association in Invercargill (a Protestant oiganisationj has sadly blundered in applying to be placed upon the local rates. On August in, a deputation from the Association waited upon the Borough Council. The deputationists explained that the Association ' had outlined a forward movement ' ; that ' their present premises weie not sufficient to carry out the programme they had in view ' ; and ' that their Board ha<l.« therefore resolved to petition for a lease of the present Council Chambers ' 'at a nominal rate ' (its present letting value being estimated at £80 a year). It was furthermore explained that if the Association succeeded in getting a lease of the ratepayers' pro-

periy at a. peppercorn rental, they would, in return, ' institute a free public reading-room,' under their'owri management ; and that they would likewise be graciously pleased to carry out, in the Chambers, the social and religious work which other denominations are doing as a matter of course and of duty ■ all over New Zealand without asking for a subsidy in the form of a building leased to them rent-free, or almost rent-free, by the ratepayers. * Such is the substance of what is, perhaps, the most audacious proposal that has ever yet been placed before a Civic Council in New Zealand. Be it known tlia.t we have nothing but words of commendation for the work of the Young Men's Christian Association, when carried out within its proper sphere and iin the proper way. We should, for instance-, most heartily approve of their applying for and receiving a subsidy from the public purse, if their ' forwaid movement ' was a btate work— if, for instance, they erected and opened an orphanage, and fed, clothed,' housed and educated the destitute State-wards of their own creeds. In that case, they would be legally and morally entitled to a share of the public funds. And— so long as the work was faithfully .done— cavillers an-rt Paul Piys would have no more right to object to their piaying and reading their Bible during the process, than they would have to object to a contractor putting up his oiisons a dozen times a day, if he so chose, so long as his railway bridge or post-office is ■built soundly and in at coi dance with specifications. But the new ' forward movement ' of the Invercarffill branch of the Young Men's Christian Association does not represent a State work. Neither tloe.s it represent a municipal enterprise such as, in fairness to other denominations, might 'be entrusted 1 o a sec taii an organisation. For the Association merely lepu'sents a commonplace social activity of a group of more 01 less allied Reformed denominations. The Association's new ' forwaul movement ' in Invercargill is simply a movement, U> pick the pockets of their neighliois—to put in their thumbs and pick seventy or eighty golden plums annually out of the public pie for the support and extension of a phase of churcli"W'oik that Catholic and other denominations in Invercaigill, and all o\er Mew Zealand and Australia are catrying on at their own expense. * The proposal to conduct ' a free public readingmom 'is merely the poking of the Assoc-uit ion's thumb into the public eye in order to cover the proposed theft from the municipal till. For reasons that should be sufficiently obuous to the most leadenwitted ratepayer in the Southland capital, the conducting of a public libiaiy or reading-room by a sectanan oigjanisation bulges with possibilities of even deeper and moie exasperating mischief than the placing of a mixed public school entirely at the mercy of a denominational association. For Catholics" this new phase of the ' foiward movement ' presents specially odious possibilities. We cannot for a moment suppose that the Civic Fathers of so important a centre of population and commerce as Invercargill, would — even if they legally could— thus, in effect, create and endow a Municipal Church by making a to one group of denominations (in the shape of remitted rents) values amounting, perhaps, to £70 or £80 a year. Such a proceeding as the Association suggests would open a Pandora's box of nagging jealousies and sectional ill-feeling. And it would bfe highly calculated to provoke, on the part of dissidents, a Passive Resistance movement, such as the V.M.C.A. creeds have conducted with a certain measuie of success in Great Britain. Catholics do not ask to have their Young Men movements pauperised by being placed upon the rates. And they wauld not quietly submit -to be rated for the municipalisation of a like commonplace church activity among other creeds.

Like Wilton Lackay, of the Lambs' Club, we have little faith in those spineless souls ' Who talk beneath the stars, An-d sleep beneath the sun, And lead the life of going to do And die with nothing done.' ' Earnestness is best proved by the test of personal effort and self-sacrifice. The Invercargill Branch of the Young Men's Christian Association have (they say) ' outlined a forward movement.' Well and good. Let their zeal in the matter take its normal path of discharge—the path of effort and sacrifice— and not come suing 'in forma paupcris ' for a subsidy from public funds for the work that all oiher denominations are doing at their own expense. The sacrifice should be light irtdeed, and the effort supremely easy, if (>as they claim) they are backed up by the sympathy of ' a considerable section of the community.' It only remains now for this sympathy to take its hand out of other people's pockets and put it in its own.