“Emasculated Caricature!”

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 123, 15 August 1927, Page 8

“Emasculated Caricature!”

Catholic Bishop Quotes Primate

Dr. Cleary Replies to Mr. Isitt

THE Roman Catholic Bishop of Auckland, Dr. Cleary, lost no time in taking the Hon. L. M. Isitt severely to task for his recent pamphlet on the Bible in schools question. Although the Bishop only returned from abroad by the Aorangi yesterday afternoon, he spoke at the evening service in St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Never in his 30 years’ experience of rebutting antiCatholic attacks, said Dr. Cleary, had he encountered "more misrepresentation or deeper sectarian bitterness” than that contained in “Shall I Support Bible-Reading in State Schools?” as Mr. Isitt characterised his pamphlet. There was no such thing as a “non-sectarian religion.” The Primate of New Zealand, Dr. Averill, when Archdeacon of Christchurch, had described what Mr. Isitt suggested as “emasculated caricature.”

the Catholic Church would never surrender its right to State grants for its own schools, said Dr. Cleary, it would not let that claim interfere with the restoration of religion to State Schools on terms fair to all. Yet Mr. Isltt’s bill was not as innocent as it seemed. Evidence against It had never been fairly faced . . . certainly never challenged or refuted.

“If this bill becomes law, and public moneys are expended upon the religious exercises suited to the Protestant conscience in State schools, we shall exhaust every proper means in our power to secure a fair share of such funds for the conduct of religious ex-

ercise suited to the Catholic conscience.” Teachers who availed themselves of the conscience cluase provided would suffer, in the Bishop's opinion, by refusing to teach certain of the exercises, and they would not all be Roman Catholic teachers. "It is greatly to the credit of the Protestant clergy and laity that the greater part of them are opposed to such a scheme as that proposed /’ As for Mr. Isitt’s pamphlet, said the Bishop, even in war limits of action were set. For instance, it was forbidden to poison wells. “But Mr. Isitt has poisened them in a wholesale manner,” he declared with emphasis.

“It is quite impossible to deal in one discourse with the swarming misrepresentations that infect this pamphlet. I shall deal with only a few of the ideas that emerge from the confused thinking and highly controversial temperatures of Mr. Isitt’s pamphlet.” The Religious Exercises in Schools Bill was described as “non sectarian and non-doctrinal” ... a mode of just and equal treatment of conscience. The Bishop ridiculed the suggestion that it was the Roman Catholic Church which had prevented the return of the secular system. How could that be, he asked, when it -was said that this church only represented 14 per cent, of the community. Why, he said, it would make it appear “the Protestants of the Dominion were a miraculously stupid people with wills of willow and the brains of the sheep pen.” The Protestant clergy of Xew Zealand had made but feeble protests against the secular system while the Roman Catholics, at enormous expense, had still further increased their own schools, with their system of real and proper religious instruction. The Catholic conscience was quite clear. The offer of the Catholic Church to meet the other bodies in conference for the restoration of religion to the State Schools, provided that “the proper and equal rights of all before the law should be recognised,” had been ignored; likewise the speaker's letters.