PROPOSED SCRIPTURE LESSONS IX THE VICTORIAN STATE SCHOOLS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXIX, Issue 7, 14 February 1901, Page 19

PROPOSED SCRIPTURE LESSONS IX THE VICTORIAN STATE SCHOOLS.

+ INTERVIEW WITH TnE ARCHBISHOP OF MELBOURNE. (By telegraph, from our Christchurch correspondent.) The following report of an interview with his Grace the Archbishop of Melbourne appears in Christchurch Truth of Wednesday :—: — Some time ago a Royal Commission on religious instruction in the State schools was appointed in Victoria. This Commission, it appears, compiled a book consisting of passages of Scripture, supplied them with headings, and very brief explanatory notes, and submitted them as lessons for the various grades in the State schools. So much our cables informed us. They further stated that the whole proposal was objected to by Archbishop Carr and all his Suffraaran Bishops and the Roman Catholic clergy, but gave no further details or reasons for their attitude. It was to ohtiin these latter that a representative of Truth called at the Catholic presbytery and was courteously granted an interview by Archbishop Carr, who is now visiting Christchurch. The Commission in question, his Grace stated, was to consipt of the heads of all the different denominations, and itobject was to draw up a course of Scripture lessons, hymns, an a prayers, which rni^ht be read or sung in the State schools o Victoria daily. t ' The Roman Catholic Bishop** of Victoria were asked to join the Commission,' continued the Archbishop, ' but they refused to do so because they do not believe that it is possible to draw up any suitable scheme for combined religious instruction. Whatever could be proposed towardH that end would be acceptable to all only by eliminating what would be valuable in such course of instruction. If genuine religious instruction is aimed at it must be based on a doctrinal foundation and there in no doctrinal foundation held in common by the various religious denominations, aud therefore it is little better than a farce to speak of such a scheme as one supplying religious instructions for the children of the State schools. Some person had bluntly described such a scheme as " one that would only represent the residuum of all the heresies*," therefore even from a non-'Jatholic point of view such a course of instruction would be without any real value, but at the same time it could easily bo made offensive and dangerous by the teachers of the various denominations, who, if eager for the spread of the tenets of their own faith, would not fail to impress those tenets on the minds of the children, or who, if themselves unbelievers, could scarcely conceal from the children their own want of faith in the truth of Scriptural lessons given by them to the children, ' In Victoria it was proposed that the teachers should read the lessons and say the prayers and have the hymns sung by the children. Moreover, it was proposed to allow the teacher to deduce from the Scriptural lesson any moral preeppt which he thought it contained. The distinction between moral lessons and doctrinal lessons is often so fine that it would be impossible to keep the two separate. Yet here an opportunity would be afforded to an over zealons school teacher of impressing on the plastic minds of the children both the doctrinal and moral lessons which, in his judgment, were deducible from the sacred text. The Catholics had over and above the general objections a special dislike to the proposed scheme, because it was founded on v non-Catholic principle. It

was founded on the principle of private judgment in the interpretation of Scripture, whereas in the Catholic Church the interpretation of Scripture has to be derived not from private judgment but from the authority of the Church, that is practically from the lawful pastors of the children. Hence combined religious instruction in the State schools can never be acceptable to Catholics, for if such instruction deserves the name of being religious it would be opposed to the Catholic principle of authority, and if it is not really religious then, while practically useless in regard to the children, it wouH «Hll nffnrri the. teachers the opportunity, if they so desired, of insinuating by word or by action their own peculiar belief or their own wilt of belief in trip inspiration of the Scriptures. What was aimed at was ron-dogmatic religious instruction, but, as Cardinal Manning once expressed it. " Religious instruction without dogma is like a house without foundation or a triangle without a base, " and as the different denominations disagree in regard to dogmatic truth there can be no profitable or safe system of united religious instruction in the State schools. ' A further consideration in point may be added that those who recognise the principle that religious instruction may be given by the State thereby abdicate one of the primary duties attached to a church. If the right of the State to impart religious instruction of one particular kind be recognised at the present time there will be nothing to prevent the State undertaking to give religious instruction of quite a different kind in the future. 3?his is unfortunately what is occuring in more than one of the Continental countries of Europe at the present time.' Asked what became of the scheme in Victoria, Archbishop Carr said the Scripture lessons drawn up by the Royal Commission were submitted to Parliament with a view of authorising a referendum to be taken on the subject of introducing them into the Victorian State schools. The scheme was thrown out by the Upper House, and therefore no such referendum will be taken in Victoria, not for the present at all events. \