TO THE EDITOR OF THE ' LYTTELTON TIMES.'

New Zealand Tablet, Volume I, Issue 49, 4 April 1874, Page 7

TO THE EDITOR OF THE ' LYTTELTON TIMES.'

Christchurch, 18th February, 1874. .. Sib, — The Committee who issued the circular, the Bubject of the censorious criticism which appeared in your issue of the 7th, and a reply to which was reproduced in the Canterbury 'Times' of the 14th instant, crave a small space in your next issue to enable them to set themselves right in the eyes, and to retain or regain the good will and esteem of their fellow-colonists, which they fear to lose as the effect of your disparaging and, they must be permitted to say, unfair remarks. With reference to the above articles and others which have from time to time appearei in the ' Times ' — one especially, in your issue of 21st January, the Committee wish to submit to the judgment of your readers tv,-o questions, — Ist. Whether in all the discussions which have been agitating men's minds in these Colenies, and indeed all over the world for many yean past, the real question which lies at the root of our differences on the subject of education, as far at least as the adherents of the Church are concerned, is not ignored and in deed misstated. It seems to the Committee that no one who pretends to any historical knowledge can deny that up to a certain period one and* but one ' Church ' was recognised by the ' State ' as a divine institution, whose province it was to educate the people. The question, then, upon which everything hinges when the Church is concerned at all seems to be, how came the State to change places with Jthe Church, and assume the functions of educator, wnioh it had theretofore

acknowledged the Church's right to exercise ? 2nd. Whether the [ seme writers have not persistently ignored and refused to consider the fact that the Catholic section of the advocates of religious, contradiatinguished from secular education, must from their point of view look on the State as usurping the province of the Church ; and not only so, but whether these writers do not for the most part suppress, or publish only to cavil at it, everything of importance that is advanced in the way of argument or fact by the writers on the side of the Church, in tupport of their contention on the subject ? The Committee would instance the two articles complained of, and an article which appeared in the London • Mail' of 24th December, as specially illustrating their meaning. By reproducing the circular, and suppressing the article in the Tablet introducing it to its readers, you have made it appear that " the organ of the Roman Catholics of this colony has incited them to engage," and 'hat they are engaged, in combinations likely to cause social disturbances and " obstruct a good work." It. would have been fairer, and wonld have given the Catholics more reason to believe you sincere in professing your readiness to open the columns of the * Times ' to the making known of their supposed grievances, had you published both or neither of the above papers Then as to your leader of the 21st January last. That article, the Committee cannot help sajing, appears to them, in respect to sophistical and paradoxical argument, misinterpretation and misrepresentation of the ends, aims, spirit, and policy of the Church, ignorance of the past history of the Church, viewed in its operations in the education and civilisation of mankind, which it betrays, and the coarseness of personal invective in which it indulges ; to vie with the worst of the polemical writings on education which disgrace Ihe Press of our CJ^ntryatthe present time. The Committee beg to point out that your strictures in this article are shown to be unwarranted, for you own that the speeches of Dr Vaughan "have escaped that full attention of the reporters which their relative importance demands." Consequently, not a word from them has been or could be quoted by yourself on the * Argus.' Again, your zeal in the cause has betrayed you into the humiliating predicament of one convicted by his own ■word of making an unfounded charge. For you quote in support of it the words of our lamented Prince Albert, defining the requisites to make education complete. One of these, you say, was the inculcation of " a knowledge of the moral laws which must be obeyed in order to secure our happiness." After getting in detail to the number of four more, the other essantial things, you proceed to say, " This is the aim aud object of that system which Dr Vaughan and others persistently denounce. If this be so, then either the Bystom which at the beginning of your aiticle you blame them for denouncing is not the secular system, which omits to inculcate a knowledge of one of the requisites to complete education, or you exculpate and virtually praise them for denouncing it — blowing hot and cold over your porridge. To return to theimmediate subject of the discussion — tbeCanterbury Educaton Ordinance of 1873. This propounds not the Bystem of secular c lucation, pure et simple, which you, following the Huxlcys, et id genus omne, so strenously advocate, but one which inculcates a knowledge of " the moral laws which," &c. — in other worJs, provision is made in section 62 for religious instruction by ministers of religion devoting a day in every week to the imparting of it through them ; and in soction 63 for instruction by the ordinary teachers in pacred and profanu history, in respect to the children of those parents who request and do not object to the imparting of instruction under those sections. The Legislature acknowledge the probable existence of conscientious objections to such instructions as they can impart, by leaving it optional with parents to require or reject them for their c'lildren. If you had read a few of the articles on education which have appeared in the Tablet, you would have understood hew impossible it is for Catholics to accept this instruction, without which it seems to bo admitted on fill hands education would be incomplete and valueless, at the hands of the St te, and why they must complain of any measure having the effect of forcing Ihem to accept it as a tyrannical interference with the most sacred rights of parents. If you will refer to the Tablm of the 17th January, you will find in it a letter dgned " Catholicus," exposing something of the methods which the teachers may be expected to follow in impirting " a knowledge of the moral laws," &c, according to tLeir individual and peculiar lights, views, aid persuasions. But what lii-toriul works will the Board of Education avail themselves of in disseminating this e-sentinl bi-anch of knowledge? Take English histoty. Collier's History of the ljiitieh Emuiie, Nelson's series, is believed to be t-till used in the Canterbury behoola, though it has been excluded as sectarian in character from the list of books used in the Government schools ia Otago. It will be difficult— nay, impossible — in Catholics to be satisfied that catechisms and manuals of sacred and profane history, ancient and modern, of equally unexceptionable character us regards sectaiian bias, and of cq i,il merit with those of Felury, L njard (as abridged by Burke) ami FivyJet, used in their schools, will be adopted as textbooks in iuiptirung this estential knowledge in the Government pehools, becau-u tlie Board who liuve the ordering of -uch matters will always be composed eulin.ly of those opposed to them in religion, aj Romau Catholics cannut have any hand iv administering a system which their religion and conscience condemn. The Government system is defended on the ground that it refrains from interfering with religion. But lv tv can sacred history exclude religion ? It must surely include the hiEtjry of Christianity, and embrace and treat of its object, is c.id, Us worship, institutions, tenets, precepts, rites, sacraments, sacn d ordinances, and, in short, the moral laws and the means provided by God by which mankind is enabled to obey them, and so insure ther own happiness. To impart a knowledge of these things, Catholics think (are they singular in tuinking ?) is the province of the Church. It that be true, then for the State to usurp that province, and to force any of its subjects to submit; to that usurpation and suffer detriment in their dearest interests by submitting to it, is to bring us back pro tanto io the Ccesarism, to d< 1 ver us from the intolerable, degrading, anJ demuializiug bondage of which Christ desceuded from Ueaven to c? ta' hs 1 ! a'" nc^'om on earth, to which temporal ml^rs, be they

monarchies, oligarchies, or democracies, should be for ever subject. The Committee beg to refer you on this subject to a paper entitled, Cajsarism and Utramontanism, by the illustrious Archbishop of Westminster, published in the London ' Mail ' of the 24th December, already cited. You will not fuil to observe the weak fallacy by which the editor in a leading article, in the peculiar style to which the readers of the ' Times ' are pretty well accustomed, endeavors to destroy the force of the argument as " a sophism." All that this cynical or oracular commentator can say is that under the British Constitution the sovereign is placed under check and control by his ministerial advisers being made responsible to the people. The people, who are human beings, compose a quasi-tribunal of appeal in the last resort from the self-will of other human beings. The argument of the Archbishop is that the ultimate nppeal in the Divine system of the Redeemer is to the Almighty Ruler in the Universe. This far-seeing, enlightened leader of public opinion says nothing of the ultimate appeal which is to ensure man from the oppression of his fellow-man in States where the British Constitution is not the form of Government. In short, he treats the subject from an insular, not a Catholic point of view. The Committee have now put you in a position to understand the broad principle which obliges Catholics to reject any State system of education. They would further beg to point out to the non-Catholio advocates of the purely secular system of education, that sucli of them as have any definite clearly marked belief ought to be opposed to the scheme of the ordinance if they do not wi*h to see their children indoctrinated with Erastianism, Lutheranism, Calvinism, Romanism, Deism, Atheism, Antinomianism, or anyone of the multitudinous isms which are the opposite of their own crce \. For themselves, the Committee hope to be borne with, if they state an additional consideration which renders them repugnant to the system, and a very weighty and grave oue it is, The idea of sending their children to large schools where young people of every different shade of belief are congregated, who are not brought under the moral restraints of the disciplinary system of the Catholic Church mu«t be abhorrent to any Catholic parent, from the dread of the effect of tin ir association on the minds and morals of the young in after life. So it seems to them almost a truism to say that any individual mind and moral being is the offspring as well of early training as of impressions received in childhood, not only from parents and teachers, but from other associates — whither schoolmates or others. To sum up this matter : Can it be just to make the Catholic population pay for that by which they cannot benefit, and deprive them of the state aid which the Ordinance declares to be the right of each child iv the Province to enable it to bo properly educated? The State can have no right to levy taxes without giving back to the people something as an equivalent. The equivalent they profess to give is education, which the State cannot give. It is not in their line or province. Let those who are content to receive State education as an equivalent, receive it ; but they are bound to enable those who cannot to procure what Ihey can consider a real equivalent, namely, schools of their own — Your obedient servants, Thb Education Bate Committee.