CATHOLICS AND EDUCATION.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXI, Issue 447, 7 January 1909, Page 4

CATHOLICS AND EDUCATION.

State System “ the road to Perdition.”

Speaking at a gathering in Wellington Archbishop Redwood,after referring to the legislation ol iS76, in consequence of which Catholics were called upon to build their own schools in New Zealand, said that they had obtained the only real and solid system of education in the Dominion. Man’s education ought to be in accordance with what he was made for. Kvery man was made for a supernatural end. If they did not educate a boy or girl to that end, it was a great mistake. That was what the State education in New Zealand did not do. The system was lopsided. It was simply leading'on to the road to perdition. The system of Catholic education in New Zealand was such that a young man could be educated up to the university on Catholic hues and in a Catholic atmosphere. The Bishop of the country, he went on lo say, would one day be a New Zealander. That would come just as it had done in the United States. Already some fifty New Zealanders had come out of St. Patrick’s College to join the ranks of the clergy in the Dominion. The Catholics were stronger to-day than if their school^ had been provided by the Stale. Their adversities had united them, and to-day they were a great force in the country. Continuing, Archbishop Redwood said that demociacy was on its trial, and he believed that in the future the Catholics would be the light of this country. They would be able to grant the working man his rights, ..nd give him justice. If people did not follow the Catholics, they would fall into the gulf of Socialism. Seveneighths of what the Socialists were asking for was right, but in the remaining eighth they wauled lo destroy religion and the home, and if there was no religion people would get what was known as an atheistic- democracy. He could not imagine anything more horrible.