RELIGION AND EDUCATION.

Gisborne Times, Volume XII, Issue 1079, 22 December 1903, Page 4

RELIGION AND EDUCATION.

SPEECH BY, BISHOP, BEN 111 AN

REPLY TO SIR ROBERT STOUT.

(Special to Times); 'AUCKLAND, last Bight.. At St.: Benedict’s Hall, His Lordship Bishop Lenihan referred to the remarks of Sir Robert Stout on education. Thy Bishop said that he •was surprised at the uncalled-for insuit coming from one in so responsible a position as Sir Robert Stout. He (the Chief Justice) declared that all those who differed from him as regards the mode of education enforced upon the colony were traitors to their country. He, professedly without religious belief, decried the tenets of those who had sacrificed practically their all to enable the children under their care to be brought up in a system of faith, i. if ahl tvniclT mnK'O

which, if carried out, must make them moral and law-abiding citizens. Roman Catholics had no quarrel with the methods which were ordinarily adopted in the State schools for 'tiie teaching of arithmetic, geography, and grammar. They believed they were as good, often better, than in far olde.r and more pretentious parts of tiie world. But they said it was rank rebellion against our good God to take the young generation—the future men and women of tiie country—to keep them in schools all the waking hours of the day for the whole term of their childhood and youth, and during that time to rigidly exclude from them all knowledge of the Supreme Being. A respect for their teachers was im-

pressed upon the children's minds, •an affection and a loyalty to their country were inculcated through every page of their earliest history, an esteem for the Mother Country, •and a sisterly affection for the surrounding colonies were, through their reading, and other text hooks, unceasingly instilled into their hearts. This was, of course, right and just. • But from the whole of this training, covering, as it did the principal years of a child’s life, to exclude all mention of God, ali recognition of His supremacy, and all instruction as to their duties towards Him, was disloyalty to the Creator and dishonesty to the child. The Catholic Church could not for one single hour be accessory to such a wrong. No plan which clever slintpsinan nniild devise to nVPri'nnif 1

statesman coum uevise to overcome the opposition of the Church had been omitted. Palatial school buildings liad been everywhere erected by the State ; scholarships and other large money prizes had been lavishly offered, but the reply of the Catholic to-day had been all through, as that of the Hebrew children long ago : “ Thy gods, 0 King, we \siii not worship, and before the golden statue.we will not bow down.” It was hoped to weary out the faith of the •Church and the funds of the people ; and statesmen have said : “It may be a matter of time, hut Catholics will have to succumb as well as the rest.” But in no place had they succumbed : and least of all, perhaps here in New Zealand. The Chief Justice, in his speech, advised his hearers to “ have backbone, and not he afraid to assert themselves, and they should dare to speak out what they believed, and speak it honestly, though they might) be in the.minor-ity,"-and yet lie laid/hi s’, curse (upon Catholics for acting in this manner. •They upheld the law of the land, but how hard it was to respect the interpreters of the law when they insulted Catholics and wounded their most cherished feelings in so wanton a fashion.

REMARKS BY ARCHBISHOP REDWOOD.

At the presentation of prizes to the hoys of the Marist Brothers’ School, Wellington, Archbishop Reelwood said the Catholic schools were ujj to the mark, and they ought to he proud of them and support them by sending their children to them. Every Catholic worthy of the name ought; to be ashamed who did not send his children to a Catholic school. When they heard the efficiency and moral tone of these schools —testified 1o as they had been—such considerations were calculated to inspire them with pride and that determination that they would never suffer religion in their schools to he divorced from secular knowledge. (Applause. They wanted their system of education to be perfect and harmonious from bottom to top. They required that religion should bo the very basis of their education, that it should permeate the whole of it that it should come in not once in the week but every day in the week, that there should be a religious atmosphere in which the children breathed, that they might direct every action .to Almighty' God as Ihey should in after life. Religion was the basis of a thorough education. They wanted every' quality of the children brought to the front and developed satisfactorily, • and that could not he done while they had religion- divorced from education.' (Applause.)