THURSDAY, OCTOBER 12, 1905. SOME BIBLE-IN-SCHOOLS' 'FACTS'

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIII, Issue 41, 12 October 1905, Page 17

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 12, 1905. SOME BIBLE-IN-SCHOOLS' ' FACTS'

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UK p.ofc-sioual a.hoculcs of the Hible-in-schnols scheme seem, like Maedonagh's Cork cabman, to ha\e ' a gical dale- more regard foi the truth than to he draggiu' her out on c\eiy palthry occasion.' In straining to make a case, some of them scicncly (though, we hope, not always wilih full deliberation) throw plain and softer fact where Shakespeare threw ,h%sic-ln the <lofts Last Avcck for instance, one «f the lights of ihe orgainisation declared at a, pu'hhc meeting in Canterbury that the use of he Protestant Bible in the public schools of the United St. a tes nas caused 'no difficulty or trouble whatever ! Wo ba\e seldom, even m a tolcraiily wide experience of

the shiaJditeffi side of "non-Catholic controversy, come across a stateiment that has more completely out jpff diplomatic relations with sacred truth. One does mat look ta the walls of Versailles for storied paintings 1 of French defeats. Neither does one usually seek adverse criticisms of a system from the reports of officials whoso diutyl it is to administer that system. And yet from thiat very source — unexpected as it may be— have come some of the most vigorously worded condemnations of the very scheme which our sectariamising party* are spraining every nerve to force upon the public schools of New Zealand.

We need 1 not here repeat any 'detail of the complete awd TiiDajnsweraible exposure of the American Myth that quite recently appeared in our editorial columns. With some knowledge of the matter gained on the spot witvhin the past three years, and of the literature of the subject, we ha.ye only to refer those imaginative partisans and their paid political agent to the public and notorious facts of American educational life. Here are, summarily stated, a few -of the brood lines along which they might secure a knowledge of the main facts of the case, and, like Captain Cuttle, ' when found make a note of ' : (1) The history of the introduction of tihe Protestant Bible into the public schools of the Uni'tad States; (2) the '■difficulties' ctad ' troubles ' that arose, especially in those ' old Eastern States ' (that are proposed as examples for our imitation), from the conscientious objections of ' Romanists,' Jews, lajn'cX 'lajrge bodies of Protestants, culminating in the sonsjati'onal scourging of the Catholic boy "Wlhall and the exjpulsion of him and some four hundred of his little co-reliiglLonists .from the public schools of Boston 1 ; (3) the abandonment of Bible-reading in "the little red sch'ool'houses ' by a large numiber of the States owing precisely to the ' difficulties ' and ' troubles ' that had arisen out of the practice ; (4) 'the grave scanldals created in the Bible-in-schools States by the rampant sectarianism of their education system's — even the ' commencement exercises ' being frequently held as Protestant services in the churches of the locally ascendant Protestant sect , (5) the legal prohibition long in force in sundry States, and till quite recently in New Hampshire, against the employment of Catholic teachers or assistants ; and (0) the wholesale, searching, and savage boycott agiajnsl Catholic teachers that exists in full and/ malevolent \sgor to this hour m Massachusetts and others of those model ' old Eastern States.' All these pointy 'ha.\o been dealt with from time to time, and many of them quite recently, in our column's. They arc among the most notorious facts that come first to the knowledge of any person who has taken the trouible to acquire even a moderate acquaintance with the literature of the subject, cr to investigate, >on the spot, the results of the attempt to capture the public schools of the Urn tod States for sectarian purposes.