BIBLE IN SCHOOLS

New Zealand Tablet, 10 December 1914, Page 15

BIBLE IN SCHOOLS

EVIDENCE BEFORE THE EDUCATION COMMITTEE.

CROSS-EXAMINATION OF BISHOP CLEARY.

(Continued.) Perhaps Bishop Cleary would say why the Roman Catholic Bishops in Australia. have not forbidden the Roman Catholic teachers in the State schools to give these lessons. The fact is, that they do. Is the Bisiiop aware that Roman Catholics do not abstain from entering the service, but enter it as freely as anybody else does ?

I do not know whether Catholics enter the Public Service as freely as anyone else. I do not know that the Bishops have refrained from condemning sectarian instruction in the State schools by Catholics. I do know that there is with us a tribunal called the tribunal of penance, before which the individual teacher, if he is a practical Catholic, presents himself periodically for personal direction ; and I do know, furthermore, that if personal direction is asked or needed in this matter the priest in charge must give it, and his personal direction can only take one turn. ‘ You cannot conduct these so-called “Unsectarian” religious lessons.’ But, Mr. Chairman, it is one thing to give a direction to a mail with a family of six or seven children, that he must either leave the Public ‘Service or continue giving these lessons. It puts him upon the horns of a dilemma. He practically says to the teacher, ‘ Get out of the service. Go without your bread and butter.’ And the man with six or seven children will begin to think whether it is for him a lesser evil to disobey the law of the Church or to face the starvation of himself and his little ones. So you see the position in which the wretched law there puts the man. It penalises him worse than' it would penalise the magsman or the coiner. I need not ask the committee if that is a fair position to put any ■ teacher it-—a position where he must either starve or go against his conscience. I will say more. If a law were passed in New Zealand tomorrow offering place and pay and position to Jews who would work on Saturday and eat pork, there would be many Jews who would take the position and eat the pork. And that is no reflection upon the body of the Jewish people; it merely is ' a statement of the frailty and weakness of human nature. The law in New South Wales, in putting a similar alternative before Catholic teachers, counts, not upon the fidelity to conscience of the ’ great body of Catholics, but it counts upon the frailty of a certain number of them, and it invites them into the service on these conditions — 1 We buy your conscience in open market. You must do what we want you to, whether you obey your conscience or not.’ That is the position in which Catholic teachers are placed in New South Wales, and it is the position in which the League wishes to place every teacher in this Dominion, although it is known to the League that—l suppose■ 90 per cent, of the certificated teachers of this Dominion do not want these lessons.

The Bishop has drawn a picture of the unfortunate teacher with six or seven children falling before his spiritual director and being given a certain choice. But is the Bishop aware that teachers do not enter the service with six or seven children ? The usual rule is to enter in youth.

I am more and more puzzled with the attitude of Canon Garland upon this matter. What is he driving at? Is he defending this sort of law which will compel people either to keep out of the Public Service or to violate their conscience? Is he defending a law which practically scores up I No Popery’ over every school in the copntfy, or ‘ Papists not wanted here’ ? Is he defending that? If he is let him speak out and say so. Or - is he - defending what . St. Paul declares to be a

grievous sin—that is, for a man to do what he knows to be morally wrong Is he defending that ? He asks — ‘ Why do Catholic teachers enter the Public Service ? Why did Captain Scott and his companions go to the South Pole?’ Why do men go into all sorts of hazardous undertakingsexploring, facing peril of wild beasts, and so on? Why are the volunteer soldiers of England ready to go far away and expose their lives for 4d a day? The fact is just as I have stated, and if you hold out a bribe, to men to be unfaithful to principle and conscience you will find plenty of men and women who will accept the bribe and compound with their conscience as best they can. The greater number, so far as I understand, of these Catholic teachers who go into the State schools of New- South Wales are young ■girls; and it is in the heart of all such young girls that after a year or two they will be living in a cottage with roses round the windows. It is love’s young dream. Very few of these probably expect that the time will come when they will have to decide between conscience and cash. They hope that- being merely assistant teachers and so on they will be able to escape this hated duty of teaching an ‘ emasculated caricature ’ of the Bible which the League wants. They hope also that if the time comes when they must teach they will be able to compound with their consciences, either by giving a silent lesson or by giving a perfunctory lesson,' or some other lesson, but always compounding with conscience. Or they hope to escape, as the man who goes into battle hopes to escape ; or if they come to the direct peril they hope to get around it and not face it squarely. Will the Bishop tell me if he has ever heard of a Roman Catholic Archbishop saying that he saw no objection to the Roman Catholic teachers giving; these lessonswithout implying that Archbishop’s approval? Will the Rev. Canon be good enough to quote the exact words of that Roman Catholic Archbishop and give me the reference to them? I cannot quote his exact words, but I believe that Archbishop Duhig, of Brisbane, when the system was introduced there, while protesting against it gave something in the nature of a formal permission to Roman Catholic teachers to give these lessons, to show that he accepted the situation, but not because he thereby approved of it ? I will only say that any Catholic Bishop dispensing a Catholic teacher to teach so-called ‘ unsectarian ’ religious lessons would, consciously or unconsciously, display a double mind. He is too good a man to do that. And, being a good man, then he, presumably, did not do just that, which I believe he would be incapable of doing. I had some time ago a communication from Archbishop Duhig, and I know that he was one of the few men who put up a determined fight against this scheme, which was carried in Queensland, not by a 75 per cent, majority of votes, but by about 26 per cent, of the voters; I know that he is still a determined opponent of it and I know that the question of Catholic truths and Catholic rights and Catholic principles and Catholic laws bearing upon so-called ‘ unsectarian ’ religion, remains even if a whole episcopate were to fail herein. I know that it is not in the power of any Bishop to set aside these laws of his Church it is not in the power of any Bishop to give a dispensation to any man to teach'this wretched ‘unsectarian’ religion. It is not in the power 'of any Bishop in the Church to give such permission, and any such permission given is void and of no effect. There is a higher power in the Church: a higher power than a whole bench of Bishops. The higher power resides elsewhere, and our principles hereon are the same all the world over. We believe that God does not go backward in revealing Himself but rather goes forward, and that the true faith is not to be discovered by hacking and cutting and flinging out of the Bible points upon which this or that or the other denomination arc not agreed. We accept the whole Bible, and not this sectarian * unsectarian ’ com-

promise on it. I, personally, do not believe that Archbishop Duhig gave this permission, and .before night falls 1 shall probably have a communication from him. The Bishop spoke of the Roman Catholic clergy in New South Wales paying something like 900 visits last year, or in some recent year, and taking children out to neighboring houses. May I ask him if he. considers that our League is doing an unjust act towards his Church in obtaining a privilege which would allow 900 visits to be paid by his clergy, to take the .children out of school to give them their own religious instruction ? When I spoke of the injustice of the League’s scheme 1 . left entirely out of consideration this question of right of entry. At the same time, I pointed out in my principal evidence that this right of entry does not give, as alleged by the League, ‘ equal opportunities to all.’ It gives a marked advantage to the creeds that have most money and most men. I was only asking if we were doing an injustice to the Roman Catholic Church in New Zealand by seeking to obtain for it, in common with others, a privilege by which it could go 900 times to the State schools and take its own children out for religious instruction? In dealing with the question of injustice I did not touch at all upon that, except as showing that it does not give equal opportunities. I did not at any time, and I do not now, say that that is an injustice. Much less did I say what was attributed to; me.. by Canon Garland in.a League leaflet--that I regarded this right of entry in New South Wales as a revival of the penal code. That was Canon Garland’s statement, not mine.

The Bishop spoke a good deal about a conference. I should have supposed that those anxious for a conference would call it. I should like to ask the Bishop why, if the Roman Catholic Bishops are so anxious for a conference on the subject, they have never called one, with their friends' of the National Schools League, for instance, or with the churches that are concerned ?

I think it is a very fair proposition to assume that the people who are starting a campaign with a view to introducing the Bible into schools, would, if they wished to be fair all round, themselves be the parties to move in this matter, especially as they themselves are of the larger denominations. As they themselves profess a very great interest in this matter, they would be naturally the persons to move in it. May I tell you, and Canon Garland through you, that I have moved in this matter ? I have many times publicly suggested in newspaper correspondence, even with men of some prominence in the League, that it would be desirable to hold a conference. I did so, before Canon Garland came here, in the secular press, in my own paper, the Tablet, when I was editing it, and at various times since. Only a few days ago I suggested to a reverend League gentleman who is in this room just now that I hoped within a short time to be sitting round a table with him to thresh this question out in a friendly way. We have done all we can in this matter to promote a conference. If the Canon wants a conference he can have it to-morrow morning at 11 o’clock. I regret that the Bishop should have said of me that a statement I made was contrary to fact. . If he had said that I evidently was mistaken I should not have bothered very much about it. I ask him, if he is aware of this book, which he did not quote in is evidence in chief nor in his subsequent evidence— The Referendum in Switzerland, by Simon Deploige, published in 1898 by Longman’s ? In it the writer says : ‘ Of all the popular votes which have taken place since the introduction of the federal referendum, that of the 26th of November, 1882, is unquestionably the most notable, both from the importance of the question voted on and from the large number of electors who went to the polls. The people were called upon to approve a federal decree passed by the Chambers in pursuance of the terms of Article 27 of the Constitution. By that article, “the Cantons shall make provision for elementary education, which must be adequate, and placed exclusively under the direction of the civil authority. Such instruction shall be obligatory, and in the public schools free of charge. The public schools must be so organised that they may be frequented by those belonging to all denominations without prejudice to their

freedom of belief or conscience. The Confederation snail take such measures as may seem necessary against Cantons who do not fulfil tneir obligations in the matter.” Then at page 224—“ The lines upon which this law would be framed were clearly indicated by a federal Councillor when called upon for an explanation from the platform. Elementary education would be made either non-sectarian or secular. The staff would be laymen-, the subjects secular, the methods secular, the school houses secular. Education- would be secular down to the most minute details even in the purely Catholic communes. The publication of the federal resolution was the' signal for a general outcry in protest, ‘God in the Schools’ was the motto adopted bp Catholics and* orthodox Protestants throughout the whole of SwitA land . A vast petition was organised within a short time to which 180,995 signatures were appended. No demand for a referendum had ever been so strongly supported before. It is easy to imagine the energy with which the campaign was conducted up to the day of voting. The. authors and partisans of the resolution used every means in their power to ensure success. They raised a bogus cry against Catholicism, denounced the danger of clericalism, and, as a supreme argument, represented the Jesuits as waiting to enter the country. It was all in vain. The common-sense of the country asserted itself, and could not be exploited as in 1874. All these intrigues were estimated at their real worth, and on the 26th of November the federal resolution was rejected by 318,139 votes to 172,010. Catholics , 1< rdera/ists, orthodox Protestants , and- religious people, generally -united, to vote, “Jo.” The minority mas composed* of German Radicals , Freethinkers, and Socialists. The referendum on this occasion did good service for "Switzerland. It checked the advance of anti-religious Radicalism at the very first step, and saved the country from the educational struggle and its deplorable consequences.’ Now I ask the Bishop if he still repeats his statement in view of what I have readhis statement that my statement as published was contrary to fact. Here is the book for him. Let him look at it himself. Did he never know of it ? I have heard those extracts read. I have not read the book, I have heard the statement of the Canon. He confirms my statement in every particular. His statement was that there was a referendum on a religious issue, on a question of conscience. There never was such a referendum. The question put to the electors never had in itself one reference to religious instruction in the schools. It had only the one reference. The question was—Should the Central Government control the inspection and administration of schools j or should the Cantonal Governments control them ? It was fought out on that.

His Lordship does me an injustice when he says that my statement was incorrect. He tries to water down the statement made regarding the action of the Roman Catholics in Switzerland. They adopted the cry of ‘ God in the schools.’ They did not regard the subject of religious instruction as a side-issue. If someone here wished our question put —‘Are you in favor of an alteration in the secular education system we should not regard that as the right point at all. In the same way the men who carried this resolution carried it framed in their own language; but the people were too intelligent to be misled. They quite understood, as the historian shows here,, that the real question was —‘ Is religion ' to be continued in the schools or is it to be dropped?’ ■ I have already answered the question. The authorities quoted by me show conclusively that this was purely a question of State rights versus Federal rights. It was fought out as such. The religious question was not in issue; it was introduced as a party cry, for . party purposes, just as the Bible-in-schools party have, for party purposes, introduced the cry of ‘ the open Bible ’ and ‘ equal rights for all.’ There was no plebiscite in Switzerland to promote legislation on any subject, religious or non-religious, in 1882, and no referendum (but only a plebiscite) in New Zealand in 1914.