THE "REFERENDUM" AND THE CRISIS.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 3, Issue 254, 8 December 1914, Page 3

THE "REFERENDUM" AND THE CRISIS.

What every Elector should

Know.

Manifesto by the Catholic

Bishops.

The Empire is now passing through the gravest crisis in all its long history. This is the time, above all times, for unity of heart and effort among all creeds and classes. By nothing h that heart union so deeply wounded as bv religious strife. For a time we had hoped that our ccu"try would now be spared this bitter wtund. That was when, at the outbreak of this great war, an ecclesiastical League or curabinatiun, in the declared interests of unity of heart?, requested the withdrawal of the "Referendum' Bill, which has given rise to such deep and widespread religious discord. '1 hat brief hope was soon shattered. And now, for the first time in the history of New Zealand, an effoit is being made to conduct a general election on religious issues involving serious violations of religious liberty and rights of conscience, and promoting intense and bitter divisions among tha people. And this in the Empire's hour of supreme trial! ! All this we deeply deplore. We deplore it as lovers of our country. We deplore it as the spiritual leaders of a religious < body in this Dominion, in whose most sacred official liturgy prayers are offered, day by day, for harmony and for Heaven's protection for our Empire. 1. A demand is made, not for "the Bible'' in the State School Curriculum, but for State-selected, Stata-taugbt scraps and fragments. from a sectarian version of the Bible. This was described by two Leagus leaders as a "mutilated" and "emasculated caricature" of the Bible. In practical effect, the demand is for a sectarian, Statetaught State-religion—to suit only one League or section of the people, at the cost of all sections of the people. This is the anti-democratic principle of taxation without benefit. 2. An overwhelming majority (perhaps some ninety per cent.) of the certificated teachers of this Dominion conscientiously object to teach the proposed sectarian Guvernmeut Biblical fragments. The League wants to force these teachers bv law, either to violate their consciences or to be driven out of the Public Service. This involves a new religious test and a new and terrible civil penalty for a new religious offence, in the Public Service. And this in time of war!

3. The League wants a law to force all children of objectors to attend the Government's Biblical fragment lessons—unless their parents go to the trouble of making written protests agaiDßt this form of State proselytism. And this in the midst of war!

4. fhe League wants majority rule of conscience, it wants to torce its Government Biblical fragments upon the pockets aud the consciences of objecting taxpayers ar.d teachers. In other words, the League wants to iirport into the domain of religion and of private personal conscience, the German militarist principle that might is right. And this while the Empire is in the throes of war!

5. The League stands for its miscalled "Kefeiendum" Bill. That Bill contained six separate, ambiguously worded and highly controversial issues. Hardly two League leaders understand them all in the same sense. Not two electors in a hundred could understand them all in the same sense, yet tbe League wants bewildered electors to decide all these six confused and tangled issues with a single "Yes* 1 or a single "No!" The League wants New Zealand to adopt blindly an unjust, bitterly controversial and partly unintelligible scheme—in the middle of the Empire's greatest war!

With deep sorrow we now see forced upon us, and upon our fellow-countrymen of all other faiths, the necessity of defending some of the elementary citizen rights of religion and conscience. And this in tbe midst of a General Election, and in the most terrible crisis through which the Empire has ever passed. But we should fail in our duty to our faith, to our fellow-citizens of every creed, and to the Empire, if, either in war or peace, our attitude on these lamentable propsals were other than one of uncompromising resistance. We, on our part, have ever heartily supported Biblical religious teaching in our public schools. Over and over again, by ourselves or our representatives, we have expressed our willingness to meet other interested parties in conference hereon. Over and over again we have publicly expressed our willingness to co-operate in any (even a partial) solution of the religious difficulty in education—with only one proviso: the recognition of equal rights of conscience of ail before the law. Given good will, some arrangement could be thus speedily arrived at. Unhappily, our suggestions and representations hereon have been steadily ignored.

The great suras of money expended in fostering sectarian strife at the polls in this great hour of trial, might be more becomingly be devoted to war relief or to the religious instruction of youth in the public schools. The red mist of the world's greatest war seems hardly a suitable time for groops of clergy to try to abdicate, in part, one of the most sacred duties of the Christian miuistery, and to forco it upon conscientiously objecting State officials. Far nearly forty years the vast majority of the League clergy have, in practice, accepted a purely secular scheme of public instruction. In view of this fact, the public can easily estimate, at its proper value, tho threat to damage or "wreck" what they call " the national system " by establishing rival denominational schools, unless the electorti of this Dominion do the League's bidding at the polls. May God preserve this favoured land from tho spirit of religious discord and strife which lias so long embittered social and politcial life in the Australian State whero tho League's schonie has boon longest in operation I

We now conlidontly leave tho menaced cause of national harnonv, of religious peace, of religious iberty, rights of conscience, o every lover of justice, to every over of bis country, to every elector (irrespective of party) who bolds (as