BIBLE IN SCHOOLS

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 420, 31 July 1928, Page 13

BIBLE IN SCHOOLS

BISHOP CLEARY APPEALS TO ANGLICAN PRIMATE CANON JAMES’S ATTACKS Bishop Cleary, speaking authoritatively on behalf of the Roman Catholic Church, writes as follows to the Anglican Primate (Dr. Averill) in regard to recent charges made by Canon James in connection with the Bible-in-Schools controversy: “On July 2 the Auckland daily newspapers published a clear, though greatly condensed, report of my 'emphatic, documented and authoritative denial of the following statement made by Canon James, vicar of your cathedral: That the Labour Party everywhere has ‘gone to the utmost limits to prevent the discussion of this (Religious Exercises in Schools) measure in Parliament’; that the reason is ‘well known; they are obeying the orders of their masters, the Roman Catholic Church; this is the price of Roman Catholic support at the polls.’ Copies of a pamphlet containing the full text of my remarks were mailed to your Grace and to Canon James. “In all its implications and attendant controversial circumstances, that dishonouring charge demanded, on the part of the accuser either adequate proof or frank and manly and expressed abandonment. There was no other honourable course open to your cathedral vicar and canon. He chose, instead, to keep silent in the public Pres wherein his deliberately penned assertions had been made. At the end of a fortnight he broke the cold chain of silence’ and repeated his charge—again without an atom of evidence —at a meeting held under the auspices of the bitterly partisan and violently anti-Catholie Irish Orange secret society ‘co-operating with the Bible-tn-Schools League.’ A meeting of that underground Irish society was surely inappropriate company for your Grace’s Church dignitary to select for the purpose of flinging at the heads of my Church in this Dominion the charge of ‘subterranean intrigue.’ “SUBTERRANEAN INTRIGUE’* “I am one of the four official heads and spiritual rulers of the Church in this country whose honour has been individually and collectively assailed by your cathedral vicar and canon. lam also the appointed representative of all our prelates in matters relating to the Bible-in-Schools League. In either capacity and in both, I cannot in conscience let your vicar-canon’s widely published accusation rest where he has left it. Our Church’s declared principle and law and practice of strict neutrality in party politics has long been on public record in this Dominion. In complete accord with this, and also on public record, is a stated declaration of our united episcopate. “On the part of the official heads of our faith *in New Zealand there has never once been so much as a suggestion from any source of any departure therefrom And I have publicly exploded your canon s charges with well documented evidence (which could be readily amplified; and with intimate and complete personal knowledge. Not even one of the official heads—much less the whole body, as charged by your Grace’s cathedral vicar and canon—has ever yat been quoted, or can bo quoted, in a contrary, or contradictory. or otherwise different, sense Four weeks have elapsed s?!ice my reply. In the meantime, your vicarcanon s quoted and dishonouring accusation against a high-placed body of Uhristian men has penetrated from end to end of New Zealand. He has had more than ample time to retract or to substantiate what my absolute personal knowledge compels me to describe as base and calumnious assertions. He has done ne . l . t i er , one thing nor the other. He holds not alone two high positions K . U i r - Grace’s diocese, which together bung him into close personal association with you, but he is also, under your Grace, chairman of the Auckland branch oi the Bible-in-Schools League: and when I was recently in Wellington I was assured, cn what wa* described to me as the highest league authority that he is also a fellow*-member, with your Grace of the executive or ruling body of the league, of which you are the official head. “lour Grace personally, the Auckland branch of the league, and the Wsue executive have all been well aware, for many weeks past, of the nature and widespread publication of your vicar-canon s deliberately penned charges. But to this moment no sleps have been taken to dissociate the Auckland branch from the considered action of its chairman. Canon James; nor have any steps been takep by the league executive (of which your Grace is the official head) to dissociate itself from the deliberately penned up published charge of its member, Canon James. «On hand, your Grace's high-placed dignitary has written and spoken in terms perfectly consistent with supposition that he has been acting all along on behalf of the league as such. In view of all the circumstances of the case; it is not surprising that your vicar-canon's quoted charge of traffic in Labour Party votes has been widely interpreted as coming before the public with the open or tacit approval, or at least with the connivance, of the league executive. “I cannot associate myself personally with this as a conclusion following naturally or necessarily from the facts narrated. But this I do know: We Catholics are by natural right entitled to know, and to know definitely, who are our real accusers, and to face them in the full open of God's day That is why I appeal to your Grace, as the official chief of both Canon James and of the Bible-in-Schools League, to favour me at your earliest convenience, with the following information: (1) Did Canon Jaynes publish the above-quoted accusations on his own sole account and merely on his private or personal initiative? or (2> did he do so as

representing in any way or degree the league executive or any branch or pare of that league?*’ “PUBLIC ACCUSER” In the event of Canon James’s having acted in a strictly private and unrepresentative capacity, it is not for me to suggest to your Grace how* ho should be brought to a sense of the moral and social obligations that weigh upon laymen—and still more upon clerics —who jump into the role of more or less sensational public accusers. 1 forbear comment of any kind on the suggestion that the accuser should settle down foo* a month’s penitential study of the law of evidence and the duties of a public prosecutor. It. on the other hand, the abovestated accusation of party-votes jobbery has emanated from the league executive, or from any branch or section of the league. I feel that I can count upon your Grace's high sense of justice and personal honour to see that the charge will either be promptly supported by adequate evidence or that it will be manfully withdrawn. The writing of this letter has been considerably delayed, partly owing to my absence from Auckland, partly to the results of a serious motor accident from which I am still suffering. I approach your Grace on this subject with extreme reluctance. I do so because the personal and corporate honour of the church-heads whom I repre# sent herein, as well as my own reputation for veracity, are assailed through the direct and considered action of a high dignitary who is closely associated with you both in the church and in the supreme control of tho Bible-in-Schools League. In view of the urgency and importance of his widelypublished charges. I am handing this correspondence to the Press after it has first been mailed to you, and I desire that the same arrangement be made in regard to any reply with which you may favour me. I have also, though again reluctantly, approached your Grace directly instead of addressing this correspondence to the league executive. My reasons for doing so are soon told. On former occasions I addressed courteous registered letter after letter to “My Lords’ Bishops’* and other members of the league executive. In not a solitary instance did I ever receive even the bare courtesy of an acknowledgment of receipt. That, too. was the fate of a* very friendly registered letter to the executive, embodying the public official offer of our whole episcopate, hundreds of times repeated and ever spurned—for a round-table conference. Wo publicly offered—and still offer —to agree to the introduction of absolutely any religion your league desired or may desire into the State schools, on the basis of the proper equality of religious consciences all round before the law. I cannot bo expected again to expose myself and those whom I represent to a similar rebuff on this now* urgesntly important occasion. Your Grace’s high reputation for courtesy leaves me with, the conviction that I shall fare much better at your hand 3.