BIBLE IN SCHOOLS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XLVI, Issue 93, 23 April 1904, Page 3

BIBLE IN SCHOOLS.

CIRCULAR TO THE CLERGY. VIEWS OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC BISHOPS. (Per Press Association). DUNEDIN, April 22. At a meeting of the Catholic Bishops of New Zealand held at Willing-ton on the 20th April, PJUI, the subjoined resolutions were adopted, and are hereby published and recommended to the most earnest consideration of the citizens and government of New Zealand—

I. '■' A sound civilisation depends upon a sound popular education, and sound education consists essentially in the harmonious developments ■ of the physical, the intellectual, and moral faculties of children. For this purpose secular and religious instruction must ever go hand in hand, forming the minds of children to useful knowledge, and their hearts and wills to the civil, social, and domestic virtues, so that each shall contribute the unit of his goodness to form the sum of righteousness that "c.Yaltcth a nation."

H. The future of true education is the formation of high character in children by the knowledgv of divine things and by the acquisition of ih u virtues that perfect their being. Any system of education is therefore defective which relegates live religious and moral training of children to a secondary or unimportant place. Much more so is the system of public instruction prevailing in New Zealand, which divorces religion from education, training the intellect to natural knowledge without inculating those eternal truths and principles of action which are the only real incentives to the individual to keep his life in order. Such a system naturally tends (1) to produce a comparative ignorance of religion and moral duly ; (2) to generate in the minds of the young the false impression that religion is only for the home and the churches and not for the affairs of daily life ; and (3) to weaken or destroy religious and moral sentiment, by training children to pass a notable portion of the lendercst. and most impressionable periods of life without reference to God and without the sense of responsibility to Him as the Supremo Legislator whose will alone can give to every law its binding force upon the hidden conscience; (■!) it oilers no compensating principle to strengthen the rising generation in the hour of temptation ; and (0) it is in the highest degree calculated to pave the way for the decay which overtook every civilisation that allowed religion to die out of the hearts of its people. 111. With a profound conviction of the sacredness of their duly in regard to the education of youth, Catholics in New Zealand have been for more than a generation building, equipping, and maintaining their own schools wherein some 20,000 children of their faith are trained in the higher things of life to come as well as in the full State curriculum of secular knowledge. We endeavour to surround them with an atmosphere of religion, to mould them to virtue, and by making them good Christians to make them good citizens also of our young country. The last of the services which we have been rendering to the State is that of relieving the general taxpayers of the burden of having to provide some £(10,000 a year which, but for our labours ami sacrifices, thev would have to pay for the instruction of those children in the public schools of the colony. We have never asked nor desired a grant for the religious instruction which we impart in our schools. We are compelled to contribute our quota of taxation for the maintenance of a system of public instruction of which from motives both of conscience and of the highest patriotism we cannot, avail ourselves, and until justice is done to us we shall continue to urge our claim to a fair portion of that taxation for the purely secular instruction which in accordance with the Government programme is given in our schools.

JV. Valuing as we do the written word of Cod, ami teaching it. i„ our schools wc would glad I v see it brought home to the mind'of ~v . "'•y child, Catholic and Protestant m New Zealand. We would wjll Imgly see the sucml v.diim.- in us,. in the denominational schools of other creeds. We are in sympatbv with every effort ma(UJ lo j,.,.,„,.',. religious nstriictioti lo non-Culhnl-ic children in tlve State schools alter working hours so long as t hose of our fnilh uro lirst permitted lo retire without taunt or inlcrier v but we strenuously ohject to Ihe intyoduetion of scriptural or other religious lessons or exercises iu public schools as part and parcel of tlie programme of education for this, reason. We wholly disapprove of the following proposals whi'.i> have been for some time before the public of New '/A-ulnnd liumclv • (1) To introduce into the Stalc'schools a programme of scripture lessons, hymns, and prayers which except lor " slight modilicatiions" are identical with the scripture lesson books drawn up four years ago I).V the Victorian Royal Commission on religious instruction in State schools ; (2) to accompany these lessons with " simple explanations of a literary, historical, and ethical character " ; (I-i) to make, these lessons and the'explanations " form part of the school curriculum under the inspectors " with (-1) a conscience clause for pupils and teachers.

V. The following are our chief grounds of objection to the project of scripture lessons outlined above: (1) Under the sanction of tlte State it would introduce into the public schools the wellknown Protestant principle of Hie interpretation of the scripture I y tlie exercise of private judgment.. This is wholly incompatible with the position of Catholics with ngiard to the Bible, which is bncjlv summed up in the following wind's by the Archbishop of Melbourne ■ •' We hold that the ISible is the depository note, the organ of Cod's relation to man. We hold therefore that it ri if aires an interpreter and we hold that the church through its representatives is the divinely constituted interpreter or organ of revealed truth. We hold, too, Hint, dogmatic truth is (hi; 1 aisis l*>th of faith and of morality." (2) The religious education of youth is a fundamental rlulv of parents and of the Christian ' niin-

istry. That, sacred duty thcclergv ran never abdicate, cither whollv or in part, in favour of the Slate Tin: proposals referred to above air an attempt on the part of a. mim.Vr of clergymen of various denominations to renounce one of the most hallowed obligations of their calling, and transfer it to paid ollicial.s of the State, and to net done at the charge of the public Treasury duties which Catholics perform as a mailer of course at I heir own expense. (!■!) It is the fund ion of the Slate to prol.ct the natural ami acefnirrd rights of its ri t i/,.-ns and generally to promote their temporal well being. The Stale can neither rlaim nor exercise any uuhas neither right nor competency to set, up as a teacher of. religion nor to usurp the spiritual duties of any of its subjects. The leading and explanation of the scriptures cannot be regarded as merely a proposed new feature in the course of language of literature in our public schools ; they are exer'cises of religion. ]n the case under consideration they are avowedly intended to afford a certain measure of religious instruction, and that instruction cannot be "unseetarian " for the simple reason that' unsectarian religious teaching is a mental fiction and an ijnposs'i:b)ility. The proposals outlined above aro in fact an invitation to the. civil Government to set up a bureau of religious teaching, viz., to found, establish and endow a new State creed as the official religion of the public schools, and to make good

atj the expense of the general taxpayer the failure of the clergy of some denominations to adetifiulely discharge their duty of the religious instruction of youth. (1) Our objection to the proposed lessons is strengthened by the following facts : (a) They were urawn up as a compromise by the heterogenous assembly of representatives of various reformed denominations who while unanimous ill rejecting the Catholic principles of liil/lical interpretation dilTcrcd profoundly among themselves upon the most [und'uiiiciilal irutlis of the Christian religion ; (b) the scrip! tire lessons are taken from the l'rotestum authorised version o( the Bible and the incorrect Protestant form of the Lord's Prayer is set down for the daily use af Ll.o pupils ; (c)ll.e basic dogma o( Uinsviiurin, that of the incarnation and virgin' birth is outlawed lrom mr New Testament narrative, ami the Christ that is presented to the mental eve of the H.tle ones is not the God man of Holy Writ but the Christ of Ihe Unitarian ; (d) Pirlcslnnt hymns form part of the scheme, and Protestant teaching is suggested throughout the scripture kssons by the lice use of unauthorised heading capital letters, italics, etc., and it has ,l*.m truly obser/ed that "in what is omitted as well as in the general tone of what, is expressed the lessons are made as Protestant as they could well be made in the circumstance ; (5) it would be obviously impossible for the teachers of various creeds (and of no creed) to whom it is proposed to entrust, these lessons to do such watchful and continuous violence to their convietions\as to avoid colouring their "literary, historical, and ethical" explanation with their own beliefs or unbvlh f. In a great number of cases that would no doubt consciously or unconsciously derive from the lessons conclusions prejudicial to the faith of the Catholic children, and cases might readily occur in which a teacher would foster scepticism or unbelief. In a word the projected scheme of scriptural instructions would, under the specious appearance of relieving the consciences of a section of the Protestant clergy, aggravate the double financial burden which we Catholics now bear by adding the greater grievance of compelling us to pay for the conversion of the State schools Into Protestant Sunday Schools.

VI. A conscience clause for pupils and teachers is ottered as an oifset to the proposed proiSstantising of the public schools, but a conscience clause which is seriously intended by its trainers as a protective measure for dissidents should on principle exclude all children from scriptural or other religious instruction except those whose parents positively signify a visit that they should attend; but (t) by what we understand to be the terms of the proposed or suggested conscience clause Catholic children in order to avoid prosolytisi.l would be compelled to go to school armed with written protests against religious instruction. (2) At least, one State of the Australian Ccminonuoullii, namely Victoria, furnishes (as the late Royal Commission's report abundantly shows) plentiful 'evidence of the flagrant manner in which the religious rights of minorities may be violated with impunity in public schools despite the provisions of Acts of Parliament and the pretended protection of this form of conscience clause. (3) Even a scrupulous observance of an ideal conscience clause by teachers would still leave Catholic children exposed to a serious measure of moral pressure or compulsion lo remain for Protestant religious instruction, namely, to the jeers and insults of their companions and to the other (onus of social mm l\nl,,m which children know so well ] n ,w lo inflict on those whom they deem foreign. lo their modes of thought and action. CaAholic pupils in Stale schools would in a word be [.laced between these two alternatives, proselvlisiu or peimlliis lo which no children should be exposed. (-1) Por teachers a conscience clause would in ninny cases inflict, a grave degree of compulsion upon conscience or feeling. It would, moreover, inevitably lead lo the general imposition of a religious test in the matter ol appointments to school.

\JI. J. I is proposed 1,1 submit tinsuggested liberations in ,„,.• Stale schools system to ii referendum „f the i'l«'l«i-3 of tin' colony. We, f„n •mil- part, !n>[,l |o th o sound ~ I'le el' statesmanship tliat no ip.esliini should It,' KiiliiniiiHl, to llu. ref< rcmlum ili.it siiTtfts tin. rights or .■nescience of minorities. These reinurn for c\..|- sucivd and inviolable, hut if this, question In. over submit,'led lo Hi., voice of Ihe doctors of New /.ISllilllll we Slldlllll look Willi conliilcncc lo till' result, feeling Wl |. t , l hat our fellow-colonials would approach it US till' people cf South Australia did in tubd, j„ -, K piril uf justice nml wilii a linn anil unalterable, ilelerniination to respect I lie rights of conscience which a minority, however small, can never wacrilicc. But the issue should he placed fairly nml honestly before the electors, ami the lirsL issue to be determined is whether our State school system of education is to he secular or not. Tin' form of ballot paper contained in last year's abortive Mill was suggested by'the trainers of the Bible in Schools project. It was vague and reticent to I lie last degree, iL) It gave no information whatever regarding- (lie nature ali'd source of the scriplural and oilier religious ii'.slruction proposed to be introduced, or (2) regarding the nature of the explanations thereof which it was intended to give. (M) AVorst of all tin; terms of reference were so wordcal as to suggiest that the new scheme would be .simply something added liy way of extension lo Ihe present system of State instruction and not, as it would really be, an alteration of the most radical kind in our Education Act. Jt is difficult to avoid the conviction that the ballot paper to which we allude was deliberately intended to confusf the elcetois of the colony and to snatch a victory rather liy a ins lie guerre than by a strnighl forward appeal to the country on aclear cut and dclinite issue.

Much as we deplore 111,' hard secularism of (he present Education Acl. we would rather sic il retained in its inlegrity uiilil modilicalions are fori licomiug which would confer a substnnlial henelil on the rising goii.'i-ulioii without endangering the I'aitli and exasperating Ihe feelings of a large class of children who freifuenl our public schools. Civen at Wellington urn the 20(h day of April, ]'.)(.> I. I'runcis Kedwood. S.M., Archbishop of Wellington : .John .Joseph Crimes, 5..M... ijbhon of Chrisfchurch ; Michael Vernon, lijih/.p of liunedin ; tb-o. 31. Leiiihan. Jhshni, ui \urkland.