HIGHLY SECTARIAN

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 183, 1 February 1912, Page 7

HIGHLY SECTARIAN

NATIONAL EDUCATION. STATE SYSTEM DENOUNCED.BY BISHOP CLEARY. Auckland, January 29. Some strong comments concerning the present relation of Roman Catholic schools to the public school system of the Dominion were made by Bishop Cleary in the course of an address at the opening of a new convent at Ellerslie yesterday afternoon. "We Catholics' did not withdraw our schools from the public school system of which they long formed a part," he said. "Our schools were driven out of that system on what was in effect a religious test—driven out because we believe in the inseparable union of religion with education—driven out because our consciences cannot accept the new sectarian dogmas that underlie our Education Act, namely, the dogmas that religion has no necessary or useful part in education, and the dogma that a political majority has the moral right to banish religion from the place which it has occupied from immemorial ages in the schools. (Applause.)

"It is the right and duty of parents to watch over and secure the education their children in what they conscientiously believe to be true religion. No political majority has the moral right to formulate a religion or to define a religious doctrine. These things belong to the spiritual domain—they are outside the proper functions of the civil power. Yet here, in this democratic land, we find politicians, mostly or altogether unskilled in the principles and methods of education, forcing French views of religion in education upon the schools, pressing them upon the consciences and purses of dissentients, and turning them in practical effect into an established and endowed State school crowd? (Applause.) "It so happens that this new State school view of religion quite suits the consciences of secularists, agnostics, and such, but is not the right to believe to be deemed as sacred in education as the right not to believe? Have not the consciences that reje«t' tlie State school dogmas mentioned before the same right to free instruction as the consciences that accept these- dogmas? Why in a democratic country make acquiescence in a particular view of religion the test for State aid in education? Why favor one view of religion at the expense of another religion? and why, since, 1877, penalise, our Catholic schools just because we Catholics refuse, as we have ever refused, to allow a political party to impose particular views or opinions regarding religion upon us, or to determine any one of om articles of faith?

"Our education law is a hardship to the conscientious objector. It represents a highly regrettable form of &ectional legislation, namely, legislation grounded upon what is in reality a high-ly-sectarian view of religion. It is the negation of one of the groundwork prin- 1 ciples of true democracy." jApplause.)