A Breeze in Palmerston North

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXI, Issue 26, 25 June 1903, Page 2

A Breeze in Palmerston North

A certain Presbyterian clergyman has been ' tearing around considerable ' up Palmerston North way. This latest ' ruction ' is all about the new Bible-in-schools scheme, and in the columns of the local daily he has lit out ' against opponents, all and sundry, in a way that is vastly more suggestive of muscular energy than of brain-metal. When resident in Dunedin, this clergyman's not infrequent controversies in the lojal papers were by no means characteristic of the amenities of the 'Polite Letter Writer.' Neither are his contributions to our Palmerston contemporary examples of sweetness and light. He made a rough and wholly unprovoked attack, of the mu,d-volcano kind, on Catholics— flinging at them throughout the offensive theological slang-word ' Romanists,' a term that well-bred people nowadays agree to lea\e to Orange lodges and farthing-candle controversialists. The attempt to riner the demon of sectarian passion into the Bible-in-schools contioversy signally failed Such failures go to make up the happiness of life Several non-Catholic correspondents — including a Protestant clergyman who is president of the local Bible-in-schools associat'on, of which this Scottish clenc is secietary— wrote strong and manly protests against ' his uncalled-for and unfair attack on Roman Catholics ' Father Tymons also administered to him a dignified and goo.d-tempeied lebuke The air ofi Palmerston Noith is clearly choke-damp for religious strife. And Palmciston North is to be congratulated on the fact

Catholics are painfully familiar with these gratuitous, Dervish- ni.sh ' attacks Pr Starbuck, a distinguished American Protestant writer and divme, says of them that they ' easily take the place of knowledge, of culti\ation, of good manners, ot deliberation in statement, of justice, of charity, and of all other requirements usually supposed to beseem a minister of the Gospel.' The staple of the Palmerston attack consists of alleged

• iact ' and ' argument ' The ' argument ' is chiefly fallacy. The ' fact ' is for the most part evolved out of the inner consciousness of the writer, llcie, for instance is a mild sample ' argument ' — it is in its way a gem of purest iay serene: 'The Bible has been read for •nany a year in the public .schools of Germany, Holland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Scotland, the Board schools of England, Canada, and nearly all the United States of America . . It is in the few countries where the Bible is excluded from the schools that there is unrest and agitation, as in Victoria and New Zealand.' The sweeping statement in the first sentence just quoted requires sei ions qualification But, for the moment, let that pass. The inference is that ' (unrest and agitation ' would cease m New Zealand, and the peace of Nirvana settle down upon the land, if the Government would only put on a white 'choker,' relieve Protestant clergymen of the duty ot impaiting religious instruction to the young, turn into the established religion of the count ry a new (Unitarian) sect hatched out by six other sects, and compel the whole people to pay for the teaching ot us tenets in our public schools. The six denominations— or, rather, parts of six denominations— that fatheied this pi oposed State icligion are by no means unanimous on the subject. When they have

proved by the test of their purses— as Catholics have proved— the reality of their ' conscientious objections ' to the present secular State system of instruction, they will be entitled to be heard with respect. But the establishment and endowment of a State creed, on Protestant or any other lines, in New Zealand, will lead not to peace, but to more strenuous ' unrest and agitation ' than over. Catholics, Jews, and a large body of Protestants would (to use the words of an American humorist) be ' weak in the kneo^ unsound in the heart, milk-white in the liver, and soft in the head ' if they would tamely submit to such un open and scandalous violation of the Constitution.

Wo need not quarrel with the statement that there is freedom from educational ' unrest and agitation ' in Germany, Holland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Scotland, England, and Canada. But the statement that this happy state of things is duo to the reading of tho Bible in the public schools is the merest clap-trap. It amounts to a complete misrepresentation of the conditions that exist in all or most of the countries named, and lures the incautious reader to inferences that are wholly unwarranted by farts. For instance : (1) in not one of the countries just mentioned is there such a scheme of Scripturc-instmietion in operation in the public schools as that which is advocated by our Bible-m-schools associations. (2) In the ' Yolks ' and ' Heal ' (public) schools of Germany, and in the schools of some of the other countries named above, the Protestant pastor, the Catholic priest, and the Jewish rabbi must personally impait the religious instruction there given to the members of their respective faiths. This, however, is an arrangement which our Bible-in-school.s enthusiasts in New Zealand visit with an anathema maranatha : they want their new-laid religion crammed into young New Zealand as a State creed, by State officials, at the State's expense. (3) Here is another matter which the Palmerston clergyman did not deem it wise to 'tell In Gath.' In every one of tho counti ies mentioned above (Canada included, except as to its western part), the religious rights of minorities are duly protected and substantial subsidies are given to denominational schools. Whatever freedom fiom ' unrest and agitation ' exists in those countries is due to this arrang<v ment. But it is vitriol to the people who would introduce Bible-reading, and, with it, a new element of sin to and discord, into the p schools of our Colony, that are frequented by children of every creed. And hence there is no mention— not a breath or hint— of all this in the communications addressed by the re\erend secretary of the local Bible-in-schools association to our Palmerston contemporary. America is one of the sommul countries that are set up by him as models for New Zealand. Incidentally we may remark that it is not quite true that the Bible is read in the public schools in ' nearly all the United States of Ameiica ' Let that, however, pass But this great country which is placed before us as a noble example of the results of Biblereading in the public schools loads the world in its devotion to the Almighty Dollar, in the corruption of its public life, in the scandals of its divorce-mills and its callous destruction of family tics, in its evil habit of illegal and barbarous executions under Lynclvlaw ; its officers and soldiers (according to General Miles 's official report) have rivalled in the Philippines the atrocities of tho Bashi-Bazouks in Bulgaria ; and over 40,000,000 (or nearly two-thirds) of its population never set foot' inside a place of worship. Heaven preserve New Zealand from ever falling to the level of this ' model ' of the ' benefits ' of Bible-reading in public schools of mixed religion !

It ill becomes well-fed and comfortable non-Catholic clerics to rail at our Catholic schools and their work. These thoughtless and inconsistent critics talk shocked platitudes about the rank secularism of our public schools, and in the next breath they clamor to shuffle off from themselves, and on to civil servants, one of the most important duties of the Christian ministry — that of instructing youth unto justice. They serenely accept contributions from us Catholics for the education of thenchildren in these same godless schools, and then heap abuse and misrepresentation upon us because we give them an example of earnestness and self-sacrifice by bringing up our little ones, at our own expense, in the love and fear of God. To put it mildly, this is an un-

manly form of attack. ' The Romanists of Ne-w Zealand/ says our Palmerston North enthusiast, ' have a far larger percentage of criminals than the Protestants, who give their children the Bible.' It would seem as if the good man cannot make a correct statement, even by mistake. His inference that there is no Scripture instruction in our schools is simply opposed to fact. Bible history, etc., is a part of their curriculum, and the Catholic faith, which is instilled into the minds of our children is the living and magnificent embodiment of the whole Word of God. The assertion that Catholics are the most criminal portion of the population was merely lugged into the controversy. It had nothing to do with the issues under discussion, and was a mere exhibition of flagrant and uncalled-for insult It is moreover, a mere inference, and an inference which could never be made by a man who has a practical acquaintance with the elements of logic. Official statistics do not make the statement. It may be that Catholics-or persons describing themselves as Catholics-bulk more proportionately, in the prison returns than the aAherents of other creeds, although a sensible allowance must be made to cover the notorious habit that many misdemeanants and criminals have of giving themselves Irish aliases and falsely designating themselves Catholics. But to argue from the prison returns that Catholics are, therefore, more criminal than Protestants is a non-sequitur ' of the most ilagrant kind

Our prison inmates are recruited, in New Zealand as elsewhere, mainly from the poorer or poorest class of the population. Your merchant or nabob fuddles himself with fire-water and makes his home a hell but he does both in such a way that the police cannot interfere. The poor man drinks and brawls in the public eye. He also occasionally pilfers. Ho frequently goes to prison for lack of ability to pay a fine. And 'imprisonment is merely an episode in hISh 1S career. But the great bulk of these people are by no means ' criminals ' in the technical sense. Owing to their long history of persecution, repression, and systematic impoverishment by the opeiation of the Irish penal code and the land laws New Zealand Catholics flurmsh more than their proporl tion of the poorest of our population. They may also supply a corresponding percentage of misdemeanants to o-ur prison cells. But Catholics do not figure to the proportionate extent that the membera of other denomination, do in the records of ' crime ' properly so-called-in murders, suicides, rapes indecent assaults, burglary, wholesale swindling, infanticide, pre-natal murder, the grosser forms of' juvenile depravity, the flagrant conjugal infidelity that comes out in our divorce-mills, and the scores of other grievous lorms of moral obliquity. These, and not petty misdemeanors, are the tiue tests of comparative morality And for our part, if the alternative were forced upon us wo should infinitely prefer to appear before the just •Judge of the living and the dead with the record of some poor New Zealand Catholic street brawler than to bo weighted down with the gilded infamies of any one oi tho well-dressed slayers of the unborn innocent who hiuo not conic under the tongue-lash of the ungentle assailant of our faith in Palmerston North. We have so far exceeded the limits of our space that further consideration of his attack must be ' hung up ' till next week.