Bible-in-Schools

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIII, Issue 41, 12 October 1905, Page 1

Bible-in-Schools

The Catholic Hierarchy of New Zealand have reason to be gratified with the deep and widespread impression that was created by their two pronouncements on. the scheme for converting our State schools into comveniticles for the pro^p(a;gatnd,a of a spineless Unitariaaiism. One current evidence of the weight of logical metal put by their Lordships into those two convancing documents is furnished by the number of candidates for Parliamentary honors all oiver the country that have declared themselves hostile to the sectarian scheme evolved by the Bi'ble-in-spbools party. One or two of those who are now wooing the coy electors seem to think that • the Lord's Prayer and the Ten Commandments ' would be a sufficient ' pinch ' of spiritual salt to give a proper religious flavor to our preterit Secularist system of public instruction. The good men mean, presumably, the usual Protestant dnision of the Ten Commandments, and the incorrect versian of the Lord's Prayer that has become bone ot the bone and flesh of the flesh of Protestant public and private devotion.

Some theorists across the Pacific have tested this idea and found, to their astonishment, that it gets the settlement of the education difficulty 'no forrader ' Four years ago flin 1001) the Cleveland (Ohio) School Board kickod the law as'de and tinctured the endowed Secularism of their system with the daily recitation of the Lord's Prayer and the. Ten Commandments. They were as confident as are some of our wellmeaning candidates that this irreducible minimum of religion wot Id settle the difficulty once and for ever. But their hopes were suddenly blighted as by the withering wind that once on a t^me came up from the sea, chilling amd killing the beautiful Annabel Lee. ' Ctat-holics,' said the ' Pilot ' at the time, 'will not laigree to the Protestant addition to the Lord's Prayer nor the Protestant division of the Ten Commanldments 1 , and the Jews 'have held a meeting to protest against the whole affair.' It is just' as well that candidates should once for all understand that Catholics will e\er protest against the introduction of any Protestant version of the Bible, or any lesson book or reMjgaaus exercises drawn 'therefrom, into the working hemrs of our ptiblic schools. Ami in a most especiiajl way wWL C&t'bJaHcs oppose the iivtrokhnctncin of so erroneous a version as the Bible of King James, which is packed with false translations, a great

many of which (discarded in the Revised Version) were inserted in order to justify sundry Protestant teaoimgs and to oppose the tenets of the Ancient Faitk. Long ago the Prowstant theologian Werenfels wrote Ms famous distich :— ' Hie liber est in quoiquaerit sua dogmata njuisqup ; Invenit et pariter dogmata quisque su-a.' Which has been well translated as follows:— ' Within one Book each seeks to read The tenets of his private creed. And, strange k> tell, each reads so well, The selfsame words all doctrines spell.' The Bible is the Book in which every sect ' seeks to read the tenets of its private creed.' No explanation of its contents— even as literature*— is possible wit/haut entering upon the domain of religion. Nor can it 'bo ' taught ' to chßdren by any instructor, however well-meaning, without the conscious or unconscious bias.