A NEW PROGRAMME

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXI, Issue 18, 30 April 1903, Page 17

A NEW PROGRAMME

» - ISCONTENT in the body politic serves the same purpose as pain in the human frame. It is a symptom of disorder ; it is nature's finger pointing to the seat of an actually existent evil. Year in, year oat, onr Protestant fellow-colo-nists meet and deplore ' the serious defect in our educational system arising from the exclusion of all moral and religious instruction in the public schools within school hours.' Their manifestoes indicate a deep and widespread objection to a system which is regarded as a fetich by secular politicians, who look upon a word uttered against it as a sort of Macedonian atrocity. It is' plain that onr godless school system has failed to satisfy the demands of any religious denomination. In problems such as those which it presents, one naturally seeks to emphasise points of agreement, ' without at the same time losing sight of the practical difficulties that lie beside or beneath them. And, thus far, the Protestant Churches of the Colony are in substantial agreement with us that (1) the bald secularism of our system of public instruction is injurious to the best interests of the country ; (2) that effective religious training cannot be imparted to youth in weekly doses, like Mrs. Squeebs' possets of brimstone and treacle ; (8) that the clergy are quite insufficient to conduct adequate instruction in divine things in all the State schools ; and (4 ) that it cannot be successully given after school hours, when the children's minds are fagged, nor before school hours, since it would be regarded with aversion by the rising generation as an unwelcome intrusion upon their morning's play.

We are, therefore, in substantial agreement as to the evils of a system of public instruction which, in bringing up the great mass of the childhood of our country, ignores the very existence of a Deity, and, consequently, of moral obligation towards Him, towards themselves, or towards their fellow-men. But we differ greatly as the remedy. While others have been indulging, year after year for two decades, in an intolerable deal of empty talk, Catholics have been at work applying a practical cure for the evil : they have put their hands deep into their pockets and provided school accommodation and teachers and a sound religious, as well as secular, education for some 12,000 of their children in the Colony. Meantime, the leaders of the various Protestant Churches have been wasting the precious years devising, revising, and recasting schemes, the substance of which is, to abdicate their duty of imparting religious instruction and hand it over to the State. But if the State has the right to teach religion, it must either decide for itself what form of religion it is to teach, or appeal for a decision to some authority outside itself. (There is, of course, no such thing as ' unsectarian ' religious teaching.) If it assumes the right to decide for itself, no individual or religious denomination has any right as against it, and the road to religious persecution is thrown wide open. If it appeals to an authority outside itself— to, say, the Presbyterian, Anglican, or any other Church — it thereby creates a State creed. And this it could not do without a violation of, or a radical change in, our Constitution.

Many years ago (so the story runneth) an impatient Dublin patient lay twisting, turning, writhing, and groaning under the stress of a somewhat acute pain. The noted physician, Sir Dominic Corrigan, was watching by the sick man's bedside. *Oh I ' wailed the sufferer, 'is there any position that will give me relief ? ' 'If there is,' said Sir Dominic, ' you are Very likely to find it.' The leaders and guides of our noß>Catholic fejlow-colonists have sought relief in an analogous way from the nagging evils of our present system of godkss instruction. For years past they have been constantly shifting their position. They have abandoned the Bible itself as a text-book. They have even turned their backs upon the discredited Irish National Scripture Lesson Book, to which, a few years ago, they seemed riveted as with bolts of steel. And still they find no rest. The present year of grace has seen them take up another attitude. Representatives of the Anglican, Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist, Primitive Methodist, and Church of Christ denominations have this week met in VN ellingto n

to discuss the ever-present difficulty; They are (1) to frame a new Scripture text-book for intended use in the schools ; (2) they want (according to an apparently authoritative statement in the columns of our . local morning contemporary) only « Bible-reading ' in the schools, without ♦religions teaching * (!) ; and (3) they are in favor of submitting the whole question of text-book and Bible-reading to a referendum of the electors of the Colony. Our Protestant friends are gradually swinging round the circle of possible positions on the education question. They will come at last, we trust, to find that the only real relief is to be found in the natural and practical corollary to the Catholic view. And the Catholic view is this : that parents and the Christian Church can never abdicate, in favor of the State, their solemn duty of imparting religions instruction to the young. The New Zealand Government would do well to leave to more foolish lands such thorny and contentious things as the creation (in effect) of a bureau of religious teaching, and stick to the things of which it has both knowledge and experience : to the grading of butter and fowls ;to the exclusion of the codlin moth, the phylloxera insect, and other undesirable immigrant*, and to the rest of the charming variety of motherly and grandmotherly functions which it has so long exercised.

Nobody can doubt the earnestness and single-mindedness of the grave assembly of Protestant delegates that have gathered at Wellington to find a remedy for the tangled woes of an education system such as that which has so greatly contributed to make the United States to all intents and purposes a non-Christian land — with some 50,000,000 of its population attending no form of religious service. Bub the delegates have set themselves a heavy task — ' and labor dire it is and heavy woe.' (1) The experience of Victoria goes to show that the mere framing of a text-book to suit Jews and Gentiles is surrounded by a thick zareba of thorny, perhaps insuperable, difficulties. (2) As to ' Bible-reading ' from the text-book ' without religious instruction,' it is one of the things that" no fella can understand.' Is the young idea, for instance, to be informed that the Bible is God's WofcD, a revelation of His holy Will ? If it is, then it gets ' religious instruction ' in three several dogmas of the Christian faith. Again : the lessons in the proposed textbook will either contain matters pertaining to dogma and morals, or they will not. If they will, the contention that there is no religious instruction falls through. If not, what, in the name of reason, is the use of the Bible text book as a means of strengthening the moral back-bone of the rising generation ? Or is there a hidden magic in, say, the story of Doeg or of Sisara that will produce moral fibre ? Or are our youth to be brought up in the idea that the Bible is a mere bib of old-time literature — a rather dull ' Robinson Crusoe ' — and that Christianity is not an inspired revelation to man — not something which penetrates the joints and marrow of ,our life — but an empty speculative code of ethics like those of pagan Greece and Rome ? Mr. Labouchere is opposed to religious teaching in public schools. Yet, in a recent issue of ' Truth,' he puts the following ' posers ' to those ' pastors of flocks ' who would emasculate the truths of_jChnstianity in the manner referred to above : ' Would they be satisfied with such teaching in their chapels and in their Sunday-schools ? They send out missionaries to convert heathen in foreign parts. Would they assent to these missionaries limiting their efforts to such teaching ? Would they dream of teaching it to their own children ? It seems to me that if they would have Christianity deprived of all its essentials and become a mere form, they would advocate such teaching.' As to the ' conscience clause,' of which so much is made by the Wellington assembly : the Archbishop of Melbourne has from time to time shown, by reference to a large class of incidents, that it is a delusion and a snare.

(3) As to the Referendum, it might be a valuable resort, both for Government and for the people, in matters of which the average elector is a sufficient judge. Bub we have long since expressed the conviction that no matters should be submitted to it that affect the religious or political rights of minorities, or that have aroused, or are likely to arouse, strong party or sectarian feeling. The proposed solution of the educational difficulty involves, moreover, the acceptance, by the State, of the Protestant and sectarian principle of Bible-reading without note or comment and of the private

interpretation of the teachings of the Sacred "Volume. It is palpably a question of the noa-rabinittable kind. It is no trifling problem, and requires for its settlement cool heads, a thorough knowledge of all the conflicting interests involved, a spirit of mutual good-will, and a determination to respect rights of conscience at all hazards. We Catholics feel deeply and sacrifice much on this question, simply because we realise better than others the great possibilities 1 and the fearsome risks of the young lives entrusted to our care. Dr. Bbvan, the Melbourne Congregationalist leader, said some time ago that * the strength of the Catholic Church was secured by the training its children received.' 4 If you want,* he added, • to win the world for Chbist and keep it for Him, your work is among the children. The training of the children will solve the great prpblems of the future. And so say we.