DEAN FITCHETT'S 'REPLY' TO BISHOP CLEARY

New Zealand Tablet, 14 August 1913, Page 23

DEAN FITCHETT'S 'REPLY' TO BISHOP CLEARY

The following letter from his Lordship . Bishop Geary appeared in the Otago Daily Times of August 6 :— ; ' • •'■'- ; - . ; " . . ' .-■- °< ".,:'. Sir, —The Bible-in-Schools League is agitating for the "Australian" "system of religious, instruction," devised by the Government, on sectarian lines, and taught compulsorily at public cost by teachers of all faiths and none. Dean Fitchett acknowledges as wrong and indefensible the Government teaching of any kind of religion. He represents the Queensland. Act of 1910 (section 22a) as " expressly forbidding the State teacher to give religious instruction." The Act provides the contrary, (a). The instruction given under section 22a, by teachers as well as by clergy, is described in the official marginal summary as " provision -for religious instruction in school hours." (b) The " selected Bible lessons to be given by State teachers, under section 22a, contain a mass of mutilated religious, "doctrine concerning God-' and of moral obligation based upon expressed or implied religious doctrine, (c) The third clause of section 22a gives the right to withdraw children " from all religious instruction "—showing thereby that the Government Scripture lessons and the clergy's teaching are both regarded as, and intended to be, "religious instruction." (d) The certificate of exemption of pupil from religious instruction"; in schedule XVIII. of the Act applies alike to the Government religious lessons and the clergy's denominational teaching, (e) The, League (as already shown).officially "describes" this Government Biblical teaching as. "religious instruction." . . -■■ (p. 7) Dean Fitchett will find further evidence from New South Wales inspectors that (through the teachers) the Government ducts " reverent" hymn-singing in the public schools and' doctrinal religious teaching on the "divine power, wisdom and benevolence";. that "morality", is, "for five days of the week," "preached" (by the Government) in such a way that " the average bush school" "is really a church"; and that a clear distinction is several times made between Scriptural moral, and "religious instruction" and moral instruction from " other " sources. See also Tasmanian regulations 98-99, 139-140 (1910). 'On the Dean's theory, religion is not religion when you call it " unsectarian," "undenominational," "undogmatic"—in other words (as the Queensland law expresses it) when it is free from "the distinctive tenets or doctrines of any religious society or denomination." This is mere sectarian jargon, adopted by a sectarian law and system, (a) It is a sectarian misdescription of what an official League leaflet describes as " a common Christian faith beneath all our sects and churches, a common morality beneath all our doctrinal differences." This is, in reality, a new sect, an unhistorical "Christianity," a compromise to suit sections of four denominations. To formulate it, the. Government flings out of the Bible everything (including the Virgin-Birth of Christ) which may be deemed objectionable to a section of the clergy who are, herein, too commonly unwilling to do their own proper duty or to induce like-minded parents in their congregations to do theirs. In this

sectarian and improper sense the. Sydney Orange organ, the Watchman, lately described itself as "unsectarian." Even a well-known Anglican clergyman, the Rev. C. L. ;.Drawbridge, M.A., declares that the Church of England is "not sectarian" {Religious Education and &W to Improve It, London, 1908, p. 234). (b) I have already shown, by appeal to the contents of the "Australian" State Religion ' manuals, and to the League's official descriptions of its actual working, that it is dogmatic and intensely sectarian, in the proper sense.of these terms, (c) In God or No-God in the School (pp. 79-95) and elsewhere, the present writer Has also shown, on Protestant and other testimony, that' there can be no such thing as a neutral," "unsectarian," :. " undogmatic," . or , " undenominational " religion or religious teaching. And (d) why a conscience clause for children if the Government Biblical lessons are degraded into mere" literature" and purely secular and non-religious "moral-" instruction? , In my lecture, and in my last letter, I cited overwhelming legal and League evidence to show(a) that the Irish proselytising conscience clause is the only conscience clause in operation under the " Australian " system demanded by the League; (b) that this same clauseand no otheris officially demanded or supposed by the League in its official publications; (c) that, in effect, a standing argument of the League for the "Australian" system is its alleged success in proselytising dissident teachers and pupils from loyalty to the doctrines, principles, and discipline of their various faiths into at least outward conformity with the State religion. There is terrible significance in the Dean's failure to touch this deadly testimony. 'Dean Fitchett tells us what he personally fancies our Parliament would do in regard to the conscience clause and the Government teaching of religion. The Dean's private surmise hereon is not in issue. We are dealing with the facts of the League's official demand and of the Australian system which it officially demands. : 'Catholics would rejoice to see Biblical religious instruction imparted in the public schools, on fair allround conditions, to the children of those desiring it. Speaking personally, I would co-operate with any body of believers who, in this matter, would accept the principle of a proper equal treatment of consciences—of those that desire the education system to be secular as well as of those who desire it to be religious. I have always been convinced that if even one large reformed denomination adopted this Christian and democratic .: principle— alternatively, made a decent fraction of the sacrifices for Christian education that Catholics do—the religious difficulty in education would soon solve itself.— am, etc., ' * Henry W. Cleary, D D. ' , , Bishop of Auckland. 'August 2.'