New Catholic School at Kaponga

New Zealand Tablet, 27 April 1922, Page 22

New Catholic School at Kaponga

Blessed and Opened by Archbishop Redwood

, The splendid new Catholic school at Kaponga, in the parochial district of Eltham, of which Rev. Father Nicholas Moore is pastor, was solemnly blessed and opened on Thursday, the 20th inst., by his Grace Archbishop Redwood, in the presence of a great gathering.' Favored by fine weather, the important function was an unqualified success. ADDRESS BY THE ARCHBISHOP. On the occasion of the opening of this splendid new school (said his Grace) I wish to address the Catholics of Kaponga, and of all the Province of Taranaki, a few words of earnest exhortation upon the vital question of Catholic education. Catholic education concerns not only the parents of Catholio children and these children themselves, but every individual member of the Catholic body. All Catholics are bound to be interested in Catholic education, for the sake of the Catholic Church herself, from whose welfare they cannot conscientiously dissociate themselves. The Church of Christ is established by the Incarnate God to last until the end of ages in the pursuit of the salvation of souls. That Church is the oracle of the truths brought by the Incarnate God to the earth, the treasure-house of the graces merited in favor of souls as the Cross of Calvary. As Christ loves the Church, which is His own creation, as He loves souls for whose salvation Ho died, so Ho wishes the Church to grow and 'prosper, to widen out her tabernacles amid people and nations. "Go," He said, "teach all nations, preach the Gospel to every creature." He could—had He so willed—have made the growth and spread of His Church His own exclusive work; but He condescendingly calls for our co-operation and remits very much to our doing. Whatever each one of us may do, or refuse to do, the Church must last and reign. Nevertheless, it is a fact in the divine dispensation that the more we do for the Church, the wider her Catholicity, the greater her prosperity. How, then, can you best aid the Church in this fair land of New Zealand? In no way better than in assisting her in her great work of educating the rising generation, in so fortifying their minds and hearts in her teaching and practices, that, later on, no storm shall uproot or injure their faith. In other words, the means to assure for the Church in New Zealand a hopeful and brilliant future is the Catholic school and college. We move amid serious dangers to our Faith. We, grown up people, must daily and hourly battle with these dangers. The world around us is the slave of religious error: it is militant in defence of error. The atmosphere it compels us to breathe is charged with materialism, with indifference towards God. Difficult it is even for ourselves, whom years of loyalty have strengthened in the Faith, to withstand the attack; heroic is the struggle in which we must engage. What, then, will it be with the children of to-day, who will, : be the men and women of to-morrow, if they grow up without the salutary training which sweetly compels them to be valiant Catholics, whatever the war waged against their Faith? The men and women of the future will be what the boys and girls of to-day are made to be. Theirs is the waxen age: impressions easily sink into them and become their permanent inheritance. To make them the valiant Catholics of the future, they must be thoroughly drilled, fully prepared in infancy and youth. Now, as things are in New Zealand, the school practically is the sole efficient means by which childhood and youth are formed for their future duties and future battles. It is absolute futility to speak of parental care in homes, or of hurried hours in the so-called Sunday-school. Not to hours, not to spare hours in the week, is the physical or commercial. education of childhood entrusted. The school is the all in all: and the school, even more so, is the all m all in that most difficult of formation—religion and morals. Day by day the child must have the lessons of divine truth, hour by hour the child should breathe the atmosphere that will bring into it religious life, blood, vitality, and strength. But the child in the school where wrong principles and wrong practices are , taught, where wrong principles and wrong practices are intimated by word and sign, by lowest whisperings—the child will not

be the armed soldier to defend the truth. The mere silence in the schoolroom, during five or six days in the week, on divine faith, soon stills and kills its vigor. Forbid the mention of God and of Our Saviour in the schoolroom, and forthwith in the thoughts of the child God and Our Saviour become unimportant. Religious indifference, scepticism, positivism—all 'the forms of modern irreligion —are impressed inedlibly upon the mind and the heart of the child. ' Let us speak out the patent fact. As the effect of the exclusion of religion from the schools of New Zealand, New Zealand, with all its pretended material progress, is on the high and broad road to what at best is only cultured paganism. God and Christ are being blocked out, crushed out of the lives of its citizens, because God and Christ are being blocked out, crushed out from the schoolrooms into which are thrust the childhood and the youth of the land. No greater disaster could befall it. No war, no pestilence, no famine is an evil equal to it. It makes one despair of the future. Therefore, if you wish that your men and your women of the future be valiant Catholics, champions of their Faith, put your children into Catholic schools, such as this school is and in many another place of the Dominion, taught by devoted teachers trained to teach religion by instruction and example—teachers whose prayers, whose teaching, whose lives are the pride and strength of the Church in this country and throughout Australia, the United States of America, and every other place hallowed by their presence and devotion. Help to maintain and develop such schools. The Church knows well her needs; she shirks no effort, no sacrifice, to bring to all her little ones a thoroughly Catholic education. Catholic parents, send your children to Catholic schools. Catholics all, parents and others, take the deepest interest in the work of Catholic education, whether or not your children are its immediate beneficiaries. It is the Church that makes the appeal for her own sake, for her own welfare. Let us care for the Catholic children of to-day: the morrow of the Church will be provided for in New Zealand. Let us neglect Catholic education, and then we must despair of the Church in New Zealand. Such is the dread alternative that faces us. We may have ever so fine churches, ever so fine religious services in all the townships and populated centres. Does that give us solid hopes for the future? By no means. Our hope lies in our Catholic schools and colleges. Thank God, these so far are not wanting. In various places throughout the Dominion, we have our preparatory schools; and over and above them are our high schools for boys and girls, taught by our Marist and Christian Brothers, and by our self-sacrificing Sisters; and over and above all loom our colleges in Wellington, Christchurch, and Auckland. And how have we been able to build our fine schools and colleges? I give the reply. They are are fruits of Catholic self-denial. There is the self-denial of the parents who, from their scanty earnings, are willing to set aside the money needed to build schoolhouses, and to defray therein the expenses of the education of their children. There is the self-denial of (priests and Brothers and Sisters, who work without thought of worldly remuneration, convinced, as they are, that their cause is the cause of the Church, the cause of God. For assistance to priests, and Brothers and Sisters in their magnificent work of Catholic education, I call on every Catholic in the land to make their work his own work, to value that work as his highest charity, the most precious gift to be made to the Church, to be made to God. It is the very life of the Church that is at stake when we speak to you of Catholic education. Catholic education is the vital question of the day. Shall the Church live and work among us as God wishes she should live and work? Do you wish to see the sure signs of a happy future for the Church in New Zealand, look to you* schools and convents and colleges, look to your children flocking to their classrooms, where, together with sciences needed for their worldly success, they hearken to the sweet words so necessary for their life beyond the grave—God the Creator, Jesus Christ the Saviour, the Catholic Church the harbinger of the truth and graces of the Incarnation and Redemption. . *