BIBLE-IN-SCHOOLS.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 19145, 31 October 1927, Page 10

BIBLE-IN-SCHOOLS.

THE CATHOLIC ATTITUDE. ADDRESS BY BISHOP CLEARY. From i Special CorsbmokmktAUCKLAND. October 30. This evening at St. Patrick's Cathedral, Bishop Cleary addressed a large congregation on the Religious Exer-eises-iruSchools Bill. His Lordship deplored the League clergy's neglect of the children in the schools, and said that their substitution of political activities was a confession of lost faith in the pulpit and pastoral service and spiritual guidance. • By the threat of an imaginary '•huge majority" they were trying to stampede legislators into passing a Bill that would create a new State religion, set creed against creed. and provide three serious penalties for the crime of dissent. Tlie Question of Grants.

Catholics would never surrender their just claim, to grants for the State work of secular instruction given iii their schools by State-certificated teachers according to the State programme and under State inspection, with enormous annual savings to the State finances. Therein they claimed less than the Government was still giving or had given for other and much lesser State work to the Salvation Army, the Girls' Friendly Society, the Y.M.C.A., and the Mission School at Tereora. For 25 years they had not pressed that claim for secular instruction on Parliamentary candidates or legislators, but an entirely new situation had been created by the Bible-in-Schools clergy. These continued to demand huge State grants From the common purse, not for secular instruction or any other secular service, but for the support of ah established and endowed and State-con-ducted State religion. They also demanded the equivalent of compulsory tithes from great masses of conscientious dissenters. On the mere proportion of time to be spent by the State on the exercises of that exclusive religion the scheme of 1911-1914 waestimated to cost £120,000 a year; .thai of the present Bill £175,000 a yenr: but these sums did not include flu enormous net cost of compiling, printing, storing, and distribution of the series of manuals intended for tHe League's exclusive benefit. Equality of Treatment. The Catholic prelates had never ceased to protest against the gross injustice of these exclusive religious grants to one section of the people at the cost of all. Catholics had a natural right to a fair share of the grants for religion in schools, which the League had all along demanded as its own sole perquisite. On his own personal account. the speaker had begun, both privately and publicly, in 1911 to press for equality of treatment for Catholics. In connexion with this demand of the League for religious grants, he had spoken late and often with the voi.ce of the whole Catholic body in New' Zealand when' he said publicly, "in peace and war we Catholics "bear our full share of the burdens of our Dominion's civic l life. We are entitled to our equal 1 share pf its protection and its privileges. Henco 1 declare once again in the name of my co-religionists: If public moneys are' expended upon religious exercises suited to any form of Protestant conscience in State schools, then we will exhaust every proper means in our power'to secure a fair share of such funds for the conducting of religious exercises suited to the Catholic conscience in those same State schools."

the speaker added that the Catholics' older claim for grants for State work of secular instruction would also be pressed again '"with a new force and a wider extension." But they had officially and publicly engaged not to allow that old claim to interfere in the least degree with any form of religious exercises the League might desire on its own formerly professed hut now abandoned basis of "equal rights" for aIJ. Offers Not Accepted. The Catholic prelates' offer for. a conference on that basis were admittedly refused even an acknowledgment of receipt by the League executive. Now, as in 1911 to 1914, that offer was open to other denominations, whether singly or )n groups or to the League as a whole. It was widely admitted in and out of the daily Press that if the present Bill became law the Catholics' claim for grants would be irresistible. On this account. : well-meaning friends within and outside' the League had repeatedly pressed them to aid in passing the Bill or, at least, not to oppose its progress. To all such proposals the same answer had been returned both privately,and publicly: "What wo gain herein, we will not gain by a sublorfuge. What we lose we will not lose by an ignoble silence when the defence of sacred rights demands that we should speak, and speak loudly enough to be heard. In all New Zealand thora is not enough wealth to bribe us into acceptance of the League's proselytising conscience clause. In all New Zealand there is not enough wealth to buy our consent to tampering with the faith of even one Catholic teacher or one Catholic child by our agreeing to his taking an active part even once in the exercise of the League's new common denominator religion "which the present Anglican Primate once described as.'an emasculated caricature' of Bible teaching." Under cover of Parliamentary privilege Mr Isitt had said, of the Catholic prelates' offer of a conference.- "The League regarded that offer as the veriest propaganda made only for the purpose of misleading members of the Catholic Church and such people as were unfamiliar with the facts of th» case." On October 21st a request had been made for either a withdrawal of that imputation of wanton and deliberate deception or an opportunity to vindicate the preacher's honour.' Neither request had yet been complied with.