RELIGIOUS EDUCATION

New Zealand Tablet, 9 February 1911, Page 245

RELIGIOUS EDUCATION

ADDRESS BY THE ARCHBISHOP OF WELLINGTON A new school-chapel was opened on Sunday afternoon, at Wadestown by his Grace the Archbishop of Wellington. The Rev. Father Hickson, S.M., Adm., made a statement as to tlie financial position. He stated that the total expenditure on land and buildings had been £9OO, of winch £650 had been received, leaving a debt of £250. His Grace the Archbishop then addressed the meeting. He said : • —Education is a preparation for life —the life of the child, the youth, the man —consequently the true goal of education is determined by the true goal of life. What, then, is the true goal of life, what is man's ultimate or last end ? Has man no other life-aims than some form or other of utilitarianism or of mere enjoyment, and then the blackness of extinction? Has man no other ultimate destiny than that of the ape, or the ox, or the pig? No, he has not, if we are to credit that shifting 'Proteus' called modern philosophy, in the shape of positivism, pantheism, agnosticism. Yeshe has according to Christianity, according to that noble system based upon the deep-seated religious instincts and intellectual needs of man, and the beliefs and practices which are the immemorial possession of our race. Man is made for a supernatural end, to serve God for a time in this world .and to be happy with Him for ever in the other world to come. The child, then, has a religious as well as a social nature and destiny. Therefore, in any complete education, the religious nature of the child, still more than the social, must receive its due development and direction; the child must share in the spiritual as well as the domestic and social and political inheritance of the human race. And the first, the greatest, the most precious of the spiritual inheritances of mankind is that of entering into right relations with God, our Creator, our Preserver, our Judge, our first beginning and last end.

Thus religion is no mere part of general education, no mere department of life, no mere special training as for law or medicine. Religion belongs to man as man. It deals with the ultimate ground of our being and of all contingent things; with the Divine plan of the universe, the fundamental idea by which we are to understand and measure everything that is; it penetrates into every relation of man, and touches his every ideal and aim and act. It should therefore penetrate the preparation of life (education) as it' penetrates life itself. Religion is simply education in the complete sense of that term. It is the bone of the bone ana the flesh of the flesh of education. Rich or poor, beggar or king, bond or free, the child is the heir to heaven. All his faculties physical, intellectual, moral, religious—were given to him as a means to that end, ami are to be developed harmoniously not with the lop-sided development of the Spartan or the Athenian, but with the full perfection of Christian manhood and womanhood. No doubt physical and intellectual training have their importance in education. But vastly more important is the formation of character by the training of the will in habits of virtue. Bodily weakness and ignorance are evils, but Aice is a far greater evil. To us Christians the knowledge of duty and its grounds comes to us through Christian philosophy and the Divine Revelation with which it is in full harmony and ultimate association. That Revelation is a body of truths respecting God and our relations to Him; and, flowing from them, a collection of duties which have God for their primary object. The duties towards God affect and color all other human duties. The doctrines define and provide an intellectual basis for duty, and are the' only solid foundation of morality. The whole training of the child is bounded by Christian Revelation. The Christian idea of child-progress is to ‘ seek the kingdom of God and His justice,* to ‘ advance in wisdom and grace before God and men ’ ; and the highest wisdom is to ‘ know Christ and Him crucified.’ The training of the Christian child centres round the personality of Christ. He loved children, tenderly caressed them, blessed them, and declared that ‘ of such is the kingdom of heaven.’ Re is the peerlessly perfect ideal to set before children, the highest inspiration of noble thought and

endeavor. , Philosophy,’ says Balfour in his Decadence, has never yet touched the mass of men except through religion. The child must be treated chiefly as a moral and-religious being. Education is not . chiefly a scholastic affair. The mere knowledge of accumulated facts is not ethical; because a man may be gorged with knowledge ana yet really uneducated. Even the knowledge of the doctrines of religion is not education or religion; for a man may be a master of theological science, and yet be thoroughly irreligious. Of course religious truths must be taught as the necessary basis of morality. But religion is more than mere instruction. Religion is not a mere lesson, like a lesson of geography. Religious doctrine, I grant, is a lesson; but religious doctrine is not religion, though religion cannot stand without doctrine. Religion is a virtue ; and virtue being a habit, and a habit being formed by a repetition of acts (and that formation going on when "the child’s and the youth’s nature is plastic), it should be a main object of the educator to form his charge to the virtue of religion. _ The child is not born with habits, either of virtue or vice. But he comes into the world with capacities, propensities, and predispositions towards both virtue and vice, and the main function of education is to guide these capacities and predispositions into the right course, to convert them into habits, and habits of virtue, by the free and repeated acts of the child. The habit thus acquired perfects the child’s capacity for good, and enables it to act equally, readily, and to good effect. The virtue of religion is the virtue of justice towards God, the great Being upon Whom all that is depends, to Whom we owe all that we are or have or hope for, and Who has rights over us without limitation. He claims in strict justice the observance of His will, the keeping of His commandments, so that every sin against the law of God is a violation of justice towards God, and is according] called iniquity; and perfect justice towards God would imply the perfect observance of His law, and the exercise of all the virtues enjoined by that law. One thing, howeyer, God particularly insists on, namely, the recognition of pur sense of dependence by a sensible and external sign. This recognition and sensible signification of the same is called worship. Justice towards God is all summed up a,ml specialised in the payment of religions worship. Worship, indeed, is not the observance of the whole law of Ge-d; but it is at least a recognition that we ought to observe it. Recognition of a debt is the first step to payment. The worship of God, thou, is the matter of a special virtue of justice towards God, which is called the virtue of religion. Now the worship that counts, the wor. ship which is true and acceptable, is no mere drill or formalism; it should be the outpouring of a heart that is docile, submissive, and steeped in the love of the living God. __ It must, too, not only be carried on in private, but in united devotions, as in the public prayers and ceremonies of the Church. For religion is not for solitude alone, but for society as well, as being a function of social man. In worship every faculty of body, mind, soul, is united in God’s service, and through its arduous practice through prayers, the Sacraments, etc.— virtue or habit or religion is formed in the child, and his conduct and his character (which is the sum of his habits) are moulded along the lines of his great, eternal destiny. Religion must enter into all the processes of education. This is what Catholics mean by the ‘ religious atmosphere ’ in the school to which they attach so much importance. This means that children s ‘ training must he permeated bv religious principles (Leo XIII.). And in every stage of development the child s young life is strengthened ‘by the "race of the Great Exemplar.’ Who ‘ enlighteneth every man that cometh into the world ’ It will need no effort to see at a glance that the secular system of education prevalent in this Dominion is at utter variance with the true principles of religious education, and therefore we Catholics own Children 1 U 1 P rillci P le °PP°sed to it as regards our • W® , a K ain . P rot( ' against the injustice done to Catholics in that they have to pay double taxation for the education of their children—the payment for the State system hv wav of taxation, and the payment for the education of'their children. The present State system is a piece of irreligious craft, because it has the fatal skill of takiim the money of a Christian people to un-christianise them" , ln At the conclusion of the address a collection was taken up, with the result that just over £SO was handed in.