WELLINGTON TOPICS

Hokitika Guardian, 20 October 1932, Page 5

WELLINGTON TOPICS

BIBLE IN SCHOOLS. AN OLD CONTROVERSY, (Special Correspondent). WELLINGTON, October 17. Last week the Legislative Council, which the Prime Minister, the Right Hon. G. W. Forbes, says is not likely to be strengthened in the numbefi of its members during the present session of Parliament, devoted the greater part of its time- to a somewhat dreary debate upon the second reading of the Religious instruction in Schools Enabling Bill. This measure, which under one title or another has engaged the attention of either the House or the Council in various, forms during the last fifty years, is understood to be the product of the Hon L. M. Isitt, who when a member of the other branch of the Legislature pioclaimed himself as an out and out supporter of the “free, secular and compulsory system” of education. “This Bill,” Mr Isitt told his fellow councillors the other day, “is the most reasonable, -the most national and the most considerate pill of the kind we ever faced.” To this he added that tho Bill was the joint work of the Catholic Hierarchy and the Bible in Schools League. A PROTECT.

Both Sir James Allen and Mr Isitt appear to have been more than a little astray In 'regard to this matter. ‘The Archbishop of Wellington and the Bishops of Christchurch, Dunedin and Auckland,” was telegraphed from the Auckland See on Satuday, “are in charge of the Catholic Church in New Zealand, and they have, in public pronouncements, jointly and severally recorded their emphatic protest against many Bills; produced by the supporters of the Bible in Schools movement, and if Sir James Allen has mad e the statement attributed to him, i; trust he will now correct it publicly.” As for Mr Isitt’s statement, Catholics, it ia frankly stated, will gladly follow the guidance of their Bishops in this matter; but the Bishop:! have not yet agreed to the Bill and have made no promise in private or public- This is a very different thing from the understanding Mr Isitt has assumed.

FOR THE DEFENCE. A striking speech in the Legislative Council on Bible in Schools came from the Right Hon. Sir Francis Bell last week, and no excuse uted be made, for quoting one or two of its passages. “What has been said' about- the youth of New. Zealand is a libel.” declared Sir Francis with the emphasis of conviction. “It is untrue. The supporters of this Bill quote some magistrate or clergyman and ask us to declare,, our reason for passing this Bill that the youth of this country are immoral, that their lives are discreditable, end that hope for them and their successors is extinct unless we place before them something their parents omitted, rightly or wrongly, deliberately or otherwise to do. I believe that there, is no country in the world; where the young men and young women are more worthy of resnertj than they are in New Zealand.” Sir Francis himself is a New Zealander, one of the Dominion’s early sons, and he will not have its youth' roalign-

MEASURE-S OF DEVOTION. ■ Warming to his subject in he proceeded Sir Francis protested against the suggestion that a devout man, who displayed his truth and loyalty and honesty, was entitled to a greater measure of approbation than was the less devout man who exercised the same virtues in private. Religion, he said, did not begin oii'v nineteen hundred years ago. It had existed since mankind had existed. “The men who have promoted, this Bill «ny wo are going to hnv > religion without dogma.. lher<* c-m be no such thing,” th« doyen of the Council insisted. “Without dogma there wouTd be no difference between one religion and -another. The whole thing depends upon dogma. To state that the Bill can provide religion without dogma is to state what is absurdly incorrect.” A week ago there iseemed to be a prospect of the “Re-

l'.orious Instruction in Schools Enabling Rill passing through the attenuated Second Chamber unscathed, but the stirring protest of th e doyen of that body is bound to affect the casting of the voting this week,