Reaping the Whirlwind

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXI, Issue 43, 22 October 1903, Page 1

Reaping the Whirlwind

It seems that there is some weeping and gnashing of teeth in Victoria over the decadence of good morals in that State. So much, at least, we gather from a cable message which appeared in the New Zealand secular papers a few days ago. It runs as follows :— ' The State Governor (Sir G. Clarke), speaking at the diocesan festival, declared that there was too much gambling and drinking in Victoria, and also other evils, which seemed to indicate that elementary perceptions of right and wrong had been lost.' 1 * Just so. Victoria sowed the wind in 1872. She is now reaping the whirlwind. She was the first of the Australasian colonies where effect was given to the fad of hard secularism which has seized the legislative mind under the Southern Cross and has not yet quite run its evil course. The secular —or, rather, Secularist and Godless system, took effect in Victona m 1872 Queensland and New Zealand followed in 1876, South Australia (with an inoperative saving clause) two years later, New South Wales in 1879, and Western Australia a few years ago. In practically every case the godless system was aimed chiefly at the Catholic Church. Its frames fancied they held in their hands a weapon that would turn the Church of Rome inside out. Mr. Stephens, the Victorian At/torney-General, was brutally frank in his utterances on the subject. The chief object of the secular system of public instruction was (he said) to ' purge the colony of clericalism ' and to lead the young generation by sure and gradual steps to ' worship, in common at the shrine of one neutral-tinted deity, | sanctioned by the State Department. 1 Sir Henry Parses was more dramatic and his cry a moro frankly no-Popery one. Holding aloft his draft Bill on Public Instruction at a public meeting, he declared . ' I hold in my hand what will be death to the calling of the priesthood of the Church of Rome.' The result of the passing of the Secular Instruction Bills was the closing of practically every Protestant primary gchool in Australasia. Since that time practically every Protestant child has been dragged up in schools from- which the Almighty was excluded as if He were an undesirable immigrant or the bubonic plague. This paganising of our schools has wrought red ruin to Protestantism throughout Australasia, and on every side we hear from pulpit, and from

platforms of assemblies, conferences, and synods, helpless and hopeless plaints of empty churches, growing materialism, increased juvenile crime, and a general state of lowered moral tone. But,thanks to the zeal and energy of our bishops and clergy and the enthusiasm of our laity, the number and efficiency of our Catholic schools have been steadily on the increase, and the great secularist weapon that was to have dealt a death-blow to the Church m these lands,has broken like a rotten stick in the hands of her enemies.