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Notes

State • !>ivrnity ' Degrees

An uninterested House is being bored just now vuth Sir Maurice O'Rorl-.e's fatuous Bill to enable the Senate of (tfhe State University of New Zealand ' to confer, on examination, the degrees of Doctor and Bachelor of Divinity, and the same ad eundem degrees also.' Section 4of the Bill is a gem of purest ray serene Here it is :—

'It shall be the duty of the Senate as soon as "possible to fra-mc the curriculum for divinity degrees, such currioulum to >Ue so framed as not. to fa\or any particular denomination, but to suit all religious denominations ; provided that, in prescribing the subjects of examination and t<he course of study, no special favor s-hjall be shown to any religious denomination, and tio reMpious test shall be imposed on professor, lecturer, or student.'

We have already stated our objections to Sir Maurice's preposterous scheme. It will be appropriate to repeat the substance of them now.

(1) On what principle of statecraft has the Civil Government; which controls the New Zealand University, the moral right to drag theology within its domain ? And— being a secular institution for seculait purposes only— how and when did it acquire competency to draw up and regulate, whether by itself or by the University Senate— 'any curriculum of religious teaching, or to reward proficiency therein by official distinctions '( And if it possesses this right for our highest Stat« school, why not for the middle and primary schools as well ? Moreover, if it has the right of indirect religious tcachintg (namely, by setting ujp or adapting standards of theology, testing candidates therein, and awarding State distinctions for proficiency), on what grounds is it to be denied the right to put on the white ' choker,' turn parson, and impart direct religious! teaching ? (2) But let us suppose, just for argument's sa l c, that such right and competency exist (and they emphatically do not) in the Government. How is it to exercise them, even through a University Senate, in the circumstances of this country ? Sir Maurice and the Senate may square the circle ; they may trisect a right angle ; they may discover perpetual motion ; they may even find the mummy of the cow that jumped over the moon. But it is not in the power of human wit oir wisdom to discover or evolve a curriculum of theology that shall be ' so iraaned as not to favor any particular denomination, but to suit all religious denominations.' Not to mention Jews and others who, as citizens, have equal rights. with Sir Maurice and bjis'friends in this matter, the ' curriculum of divinity ' which would ' suit all religious denominations ' of Christians alone, might be easily engraved on the ram of a ■threepenny piece. Apd that wouild "not be ' divinity ' ; for divinity is a science, not a mere ha7y proposition or two. It is' the science of divine things — the queen anil mistress of the sciences. The conferring of sham degrees for Sir Maurice's sham ' divinity ' would turn graduation into a faice worthy of Barataria. And— not to mention ' ali religious denominations '—any and every attempt to stew down even the Christian creeds of New Zealand into a jellified residuum could, at the very best, only result in a few vague and lifeless philosophical propositions, and in the loss of real and intelligent faith.

But there are othnr aspects to Sir Maurice O'R ( »rke\s prpposteious pioposal. (3)Any and every scheme (if Stale diwmty degrees would inevitably lead to contention and stnfe And (1) It would compel const. unMous objectors to pay their share of the cost of those Ajhril-day degrees. The injustice of such a principle in New Zealand is not affected by the amount of the enforced levy. Whether it is a penny or a pound, it is a wrong to compel objectors to contribute for 'the teaching of the theology of faiths in which they do not belie\e. Sir Maurice O'Rorke's Bill seems to have been dictated by memories of the State Church and the State Protestant Inhersity u\ which he was brought up in the (Jrecii Isle long ago. We want no Established Church in New Zealand. And his Bill is the thin end of Ihe wedge of Establishment.. It is the upstairs variant of the Bible-in-schools scheme

Ulster

A New Zealand religious contemporary publishes— no doubt in perfect good faith— certain interesting bits of misinformation for the edification of its readers. The ' authority ' for some of these is none other than the oft-exposed No-Popery zealot, Michael McCarthy, Esquire The object is to p,oint the moral and aldorn tl'e tale of the general clruckleheadedness and perversity of ' Papists ' ; and the story runneth in general substance thus : (1) That Ulster is the wealthiest part of Ireland ; (2) that its industrial success is due to ' the Irish Scots, or the Scots Irish ' ; and (3) that it sets an example of virtue and ' the active practice of pure Christianity ' to the parts of Ireland that are infested

by ' Papists.' There is nothing the matter with these statements except this trifling circumstance— they are one and all untrue. (1) The figment of Ulster's superior wealth is a fa\orite theme on Orange platforms. It was rudely shattered by the Parliamentary returns of 1882 and the following years. Most of these will be found in the ' Financial Reform Almanac ' and the ' Constitutional Year Book ' for 1885. They are carefully analysed in the ' Contemporary Review ' for June, 189 d, and in the able series of articles written at a later date by a Scottish writer on finance, Mr. Galloway Rigg. (2) Tne second contention is summarily disposed of by Mr. Laboiuchere in a recent issue of London ' Truth ' as ' a fallacy which has succeeded in working itself,' by constant repetition on Orange platforms, ' into the position of an accepted fact. In this regard,' he adds, ' a few undeniable facts relating to the strenuous and 'successful business men of Belfast are interesting. In the groat firms of Harland and Wolff, tihe former was English, the latter is a German. Sir Otto JafTe, the present Lord Mayor, is also a German, and Mr. Pirrie a Scotchman ' (Thesm, we may add on our own account', are the men who were chcifly instrumental in raising Belfast to its present position in the world of commerce). ' Dublin, and not the Northern capatal, has produced the richest and most successful business' man in Ireland, and of Irish "birth, Lord Iveagh. The Orangemen of the North are unquestionably strenuous in shouting and beating the drum ; otherwise, however, it would not seem that they ha\e shown a sapeiior capacity for business.'

(3) The ' odorous comparison ' based by our contemporary on the supposed superlative \irtue of the 'Scotch Protestant settlement ' of Ulster piovokes a reply which might easily be made more deadly and decisive. In a recent issue we explained that there are in reality two Llstors. There is the Ulster which is predominatingly Catholic, ami which, we think, is comparatively free from pra\ er crime, and esoceially from offences against morality. And there is the Ulster of the Yellow Agony— the north-cistern portion of the province— which lias won an eul notoriety for its low religious tone, its laLhd fanaticism, its 'annual specimens of ci\ ll war ' (as ( hief Secretary Fortcscuc termed it), and its cvtraoidinary relatnc pi e\ alone c r,f immorality Dr. Lellmgwell's work on ' Illegitimacy,' anJ the RegistrarGeneral's annual uturns furnish information that should gise paire to those who fling the ' yellow ' ieg ions of Ulster at the Pope's head In our last issue we pointed out the imwillinn; testimony recently dragged from the pro-Orange Chief Secretary Long in the Hoi.se of Commons as to the high prevalence of specific foims of gra^e crime in the northern pro\ mcc To the figures then published by us we may add the following • Sixteen out of Ireland's seventeen cases of uttering base com were located in Belfast ; -11 out of the grand total of 81 cases of robibriy and assaults with intent to rob, were in Ulster— M of them in Re! fast ,17 out of a total of 11 cases of concealment of birth were in Ulster, including Belfast , out of 1G cases of indecent assault, eight were reported from Ulster ; there wcie 175 cases' of burglary and housebiea'oing m IrelanKl-the extraordinary proportion of 188 of these took place in Ulster of which 127 were in Belfast; (he out <f Ireland's six cases of bigamy were in I lster , and no less than 35 per cent of all tl.c offences against property in Ireland were perpetrated m Ulster, while Belfast showed the phenomenal rate of 21 per cent.

These arc the figures of the strongly Orange partisan, Chief Secrctaiy Long, as we find them in the Irish and Scottish pa,peis Most of flhem are for 1001 ; a few of later date They were dragged out of Jtfr Long by a series of sharp queries which exposed some of the methods resorted to by him to justify a regime of Coercion in the SoutJh and West and spare his bosom friends of the Ulster lodges— Cork, for instance, being included

and Belfast excluded, in the returns of provincial ' crime.' We may add, on our own account, that ' ciime ' in, say Munster, and ' crime ' in Ulster ar« two very different things. In Munster, Leinster, and Connaught, for instance (as the results of actual prosecutions, some of them reported in our columns, show) it is a ' crime ' to say ' boo ' to a policeman, to whistie ' Harvey Duff,' to ' smile in a threatening manner ' at a policeman, to ' blow one's nose towards a policeman ' who is on the other side of a street (as recently at Malahide). And almost every week it is made a •' crime ' for a Member of Parliament and his constituents to assemble in a legal and peaceable manner, a.t a, public meeting. Moreo\er (we quote from official, returns of ' crime ' before us) it is— still in the South awl West only, of course— one ' crime ' for Pat. Byrne to smite Denis O'Leary on the nose ; it is a second antf separate ' crime ' for the said Denis O'Leary to ' la»d ' the beforemeaticmed Pat. Byrne a return blow on tte chin. And it is, furthermore, a ' crime ' (always, of course, in the West and South) if ' a of coal-tar' is found spillod, or ' a small wooden gate ' is damaged, •or a pane of gla^s broken in a house. And we have before us a case in which one single occurrence was manufactured, for Coercion purposes, into no fewer than fi\c separate 'crimes' ! Those who are interested in the value of returns of Irish ' cr,ime ' given for Coercion purposes will find both instruction and am-usement in the historic debate in the House of Commons on January 27, 1881, when Mr. Labouehere's exposure of ' Buckshot ' Forster's cooked statistics of Irish, ' crime ' made Members of all political colors break into grand guffaws >of forty-rod laughter. * (hief Secretary Long's tricks^me Coercion figures are now going through a somewhat similar experience. By the time they are sifted and subjected to the keen, eye of independent criticism, they will probably dwindle as did those of Mr. Forster in 1881. And it will probably be found that the Catholic portions of Ulster will be found as comparatively free from other kinds ©i set ions crime as they are from offences against good morals. As a fimal word, we may add that the 'yellow* regions of I lstcr— ibelo\ed of the anti-Catholic lapsed Catholic Michael McCarthy— are the only parts of the Green ]i k- where sectanan strife *s a permanent feature of social and pul he life ; where wild and sanguinary outbreaks of revolutionary fanaticism periodically take llace , where the Extcutue has not dared to reduce the I olice force , ajid where minorities tha.t profess the Christ, an name are to this hour treated as if religious liberty and ojiial religious rights were high treason, and as if the Emancipation Act had never received the rj}al signature.

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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZT19050727.2.42

Bibliographic details
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New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIII, Issue 30, 27 July 1905, Page 18

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1,998

Notes New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIII, Issue 30, 27 July 1905, Page 18

Notes New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIII, Issue 30, 27 July 1905, Page 18

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