The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, JUNE 19, 1913. A PUBLIC SCANDAL

New Zealand Tablet, 19 June 1913, Page 33

The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, JUNE 19, 1913. A PUBLIC SCANDAL

" 11 *' wg”* .' & *——— E printed in last week’s issue the Bible in XE State, Schools League’s official reply in State Schools League’s official reply to jfiWiw/* f the charges of serious misrepresentation • and grave controversial dishonesty made by Bishop Cleary against the Organising * Secretary of the League. We had hoped to refer to the subject in some detail, but at the last moment pressure of other I v jtf matter rendered this impossible; and it must now suffice for us to indicate in as few words as possible the nature of the charges laid by Bishop Cleary, and to comment briefly on the way in which those charges have been met. The total charges made, and to be made, by Bishop Cleary against the League organiser cover a wide range of distortion and suppression of facts; but so far there are three which have been specially stressed in Bishop Cleary’s communications. The first is a matter affecting Bishop Cleary's personal honor. Biship Cleary’s charge is that in an official League pamphlet-entitled Methods of Opposition Canon . Garland • distinctly conveyed the impression—which was absolutely contrary to factthat he (Bishop Cleary) had received on December 2, 1912, a cable message (with a letter a few days later) from the Tasmanian Director of Education on the subject of- the working of the Education system in that country contradicting an item of information previously published by Bishop Cleary, and that his Lordship had withheld publication of the official contradiction from December 2, 1912, till January 4, 1913. In the letter making the charge, Bishop Cleary pointed out that he had not received the cable and letter until his return home on December 24; that on January 4 he made matters right ,in the columns of the Auckland Star, and intimated that he was then awaiting further elucidating correspondence and would make a public pronouncement on it at an early date;

that in January-February he had 13 times dealt with the subject matter of the letter from press and platform; and that all these facts were withheld in the League pamphlet referred to as it was officially circulated in April. Canon Garland’s defence —accepted by the Leagueis as follows: ‘Not until April 12, when he wrote his letter to the executive, did Bishop Cleary state he did not receive the cablegram sent to him on December 2 till his return to Auckland at Christmas Eve, so that the letter written on January .4 by Canon Garland, as organising secretary, stated the facts as they then existed.’ Both of these statements are untrue. The information as to the date of receiving the cable and letter was repeatedly published by Bishop Cleary in January-February, but was nevertheless withheld in the League leaflet officially circulated in April. The letter written on January 4 by Canon Garland did not state the facts as they then existed.’ It stated the facts as Canon Garland may have supposed them to exist, but the supposition, as it happened, was not in this case correct, and the inference based upon it was entirely erroneous and without foundation. Nevertheless, it was repeated in the League leaflet cir- - culated in April, and even in the official resolution W now adopted by the League there is no frank withdrawal of the imputation. * Bishop Cleary’s second charge also related to the subject-matter of the Tasmanian document, signed by some official in the Tasmanian Education Department, and much paraded by Canon Garland. This pronouncement contained the flagrant misstatement that ‘ the system existing in Tasmania is regarded by all denominations as a happy solution to the religious difficulty.’ Tasmanian Bible-in-schools systemand the specific Official evidence of’ undying Catholic hostility to the grounds thereofhave been repeatedly placed before the League and the public since early in November, : 1912, by 'Bishop Cleary and his second charge is that this evidence also has been withheld in the League leaflet, and that the League is still officially circulating the grotesque untruth that the Tasmanian Catholic ‘ denomination ’ finds that system ‘ a happy solution to the religious difficulty.’ To this latter charge Canon Garland has never made, and the League’s white-wash resolution does not contain, a syllable of reply. * Bishop Cleary’s third charge is even more serious; and relates to nothing less than the deliberate ‘ faking ’ —by an official of the Leagueof an official return and of official statistical matter issued by the Government of New South fWales. The ‘ cooked ’ statistics were advanced to ‘prove’ Bishop Cleary a reckless prevaricator in accusing the League of aiming at ‘ prohibiting the Roman Catholic religion ’ by reviving ‘ the penal code of Ireland.’ To begin with, Bishop Cleary never made the accusations attributed to him, which are sheer fabrications on the part of the League writer. The penal code ‘ of Ireland ’ was not mentioned by Bishop Cleary. He neither said nor suggested that the League was intent on ‘ prohibiting the Roman Catholic religion.’ He did not (as also alleged) treat as a revival of the penal code’ the Catholic clergy’s right of ‘visiting and instructing’ Catholic children in the public schools of New South Wales. In his two utterances touching the ‘ penal code ’ he specified the penal principles advocated by the League —majority rule of consciences, enforced contributions from conscientious objectors for State ‘ religious teaching,’ compulsion of teachers’ consciences, and the Irish proselytising conscience clause. There was no accusation of ‘ prohibiting the Roman Catholic religion.’ The League writer, nevertheless, proceeds to ‘ prove ’ Bishop Cleary a prevaricator by ‘ proving ’ that ‘ the Roman Catholic religion’ is not prohibited’ in New South Wales! * For this purpose he professed to quote ‘ official statistics of New South Wales’ to show that ‘Roman Catholic priests ’ there have been ‘ visiting and instructing in seven years an annual average of 31,423 Roman Catholic children ’ in the public schools; and

Bishop Cleary’s charge is that he attempts to accomplish this by deliberately tampering' with the. official statistics as they were actually issued. . The seven genuine sets of 1 official statistics ’ have each a column headed ‘ Number of children enrolled ’ (in the public schools). Over 31,000 Roman Catholics are set down among the ‘number of children enrolled.’ In each of these seven separate statistical returns the League writer strikes out the words ‘ Number of children enrolled ’; he inserts in their place ‘children instructed’ (‘ by Roman Catholic priests’); and he foists upon the public the following utterly false conclusion, based upon the words of the heading as he had himself deliberately altered them: ‘Thus it will be seen from the above figures that the system . . . obtained for. the Roman Catholic Church the valued opportunity of ‘ visiting and instructing ’ an annual average of 31,423 children.’ 6 .v. The League’s official answer to this very grave charge—which was made in the public press as far back as the middle of Marchis as follows: ‘ln the leaflet of which complaint is made the Roman Catholic children are described as Children instructed,” whereas the numbers specified are the total of these children attending the public schools of that State. This error was corrected by Canon Garland as soon as his attention was called to it. The leaflet was withdrawn and destroyed; a fresh leaflet was published, and forwarded to those to whom the first issue had been sent. Further, in the columns of the Dominion of March 27 Canon Garland plainly acknowledged the error and corrected it. The members of the executive are of opinion that the Roman Catholic Bishop of Auckland’s charges are an instance of “much ado about nothing,” or at the most about very little. If the error had not been corrected there would have been some cause of complaint. . . . But the error was corrected, and all reasonable ground of complaint removed.' Here once again the League states the thing that is not. (1) The leaflet was not withdrawn and destroyed ‘as soon as Canon Garland’s attention was drawn to it.’ According to the Wanganui Herald of May 30, it was not withdrawn in that district until May 29, or more than two months after Canon Garland’s attention was drawn to it. (2) The alleged correction in the Dominion newspaper consisted of a bare, bald statement to the effect that in a set of figures published by the League the words ‘ children instructed ’ should read | children enrolled ’ —a ‘ correction ’ that was entirely inadequate, and that would be utterly unintelligible to the ordinary reader. (3) The ‘ error ’ has not been . corrected in any real sense of the wordin the revised edition of the leaflet. It is true that (over the figure column) the falsified words ‘ children instructed’ have been replaced, in small, thin type, by the words ‘children enrolled,' and no attention is called to the alteration. But the text following expressly states, in heavy, black type, the same old falsehood that all these thirty-one thousand odd children are being ‘ visited ’ and ‘ instructed ’ by ‘ the Roman catholic Church; and the two fabrications against Bishop Cleary, mentioned above, are brazenly repeated. Another previous statistical falsification is plainly suggested again in the ‘ corrected ‘ statement ‘that all the schools cannot be visited by the priests.’ ‘The League’s officially “cooked” statistics,’ says Bishop Cleary, in his letter to the League, ‘ are thus cunningly repeated in a manner which precluded all possible doubt as to the perfect deliberateness of the falsification.’ In regard to another outrageous misrepresentation charged against the League by Bishop Cleary—in relation to the attitude of the late Cardinal Moran towards the New South Wales system the League pronouncement is absolutely silent. * Considering, the short period which the foregoing list covers, it furnishes, we are safe in saying, a unique record for any public movement, and most of all for a movement which professes to be religious; and the facts which it discloses constitute a grave public scandal. It is not a personal question between Bishop Cleary

and Canon Garland ; it is a question of .the truth, of the executive's own official facts,' and of the general honor and veracity of the League. The serious feature of the situation is the fact that the dishonorable and deplorable tactics of the Organising Secretary should have been condoned, and it may almost be said, endorsed, by the League, Facilis'descensus Averni. The League began badly by following Canon Garland's lead in turning their propaganda into a shameless NoPopery campaign. They have gone from bad to worse; and they now bid fair to turn the Bible-in-schools organisation in this Dominion into a by-word and a reproach amongst honest and honorable men.