CATHOLICS AND SECULAR EDUCATION

New Zealand Tablet, 4 May 1911, Page 801

CATHOLICS AND SECULAR EDUCATION

The following letter appeared in a recent issue of the Thames Star : '• ; Sir,—Your correspondent accuses me of falsifying a quotation from his 1 letter by having inserted '(of criminals) in the body of it. The addition is justified on two considerations. (1) The additional words interpret the correct meaning of the passage, and they were inserted for the readers convenience; (2) When the passage is read in conjunction with the context there is no other logical deduction possible. Your correspondent does not contend in his first letter that 'all sorts fasten on to the Church of England when filling in th« census paper, which happens only once m five years and merely swells the aggregate without doing any moral hurt but he is complaining of the custom of many criminals who register themselves as Anglicans in the courts of law, thereby detracting from the spiritual results of that denomination. To speak of the Anglican Church as the National Church here is a wide stretch of imagination. But the statement is only one of the many concoctions of a fertile mind. Your correspondent denies that the denominational returns of crime given m his letter were taken from the Year Book for 1900. I assert with positive assurance that the returns were taken, directly or indirectly, from that official source, these returns were compiled by Government officers and published in the Year Book, and no other authority has ever undertaken the work. Mere quibbling with words is poor, unsustaining 'argument.' The assumption that Komanist intrigue (that blessed designation which hallmarks the bigot) was responsible for the omission of these returns from the latest Year Book is contrary to fact. The editor of the Year Book (Mr. W. M. Wright), on being seen with reference to the omission, said that 'it was purely voluntary m the interest of accuracy. There was absolutely no influence of any kind brought to bear upon the matter. It was done in order to avoid anything leading to a controversy that could not be supported by facts, etc. The statement of the editor is more reliable than groundless assumption, and your correspondent is neither logical nor fair-minded. His references to Cardinal Moran are exceedingly offensive. He leaps into the mire of abuse and indulges in the pastime of mud-slinging I would remind him that in this instance the mud-slinger has missed his object and soiled his own hands. Your sceptical correspondent doubts whether many Protestant criminals put themselves down as Catholics on the register and asks for proof. lam neither a clergyman nor an officer of the law, but I can produce evidence in support of my statements. Father Coffey, replying to a leading article -in the Otago Daily Times (1/7/09), asked the editor to put a reporter at his disposal, and with the permission of the Dunedin gaoler he would give proof to the editor of the number of criminals who were then there who had no right to the title of Catholic which they had assumed when put behind the prison bars. The offer was not accepted. The editor of the N.Z. Tablet is in possession of the names of many non-Catholic criminals who have registered themselves as Catholics prior to their commitment to the Wellington prison. The following ?onm Ct i fr V? }he , New Zealand Times (dated January 27? 1909) should clinch the matter :—' Archibald John McNeill ahas Lambie , alias Palmer, alias Long, alias McNamara etc., _is a native of Scotland. It all depends upon the religion of the arresting detective whether he is " Presbyterian" or " Church of England" as to sect.' Yes, ■ Archie is not the only one who can change his religion where there is the faintest shadow of a, prospect of any advantage. (Dr. Cleary's Secular v. Religious Education). therefore, before you can argue from prison statistics, you will have to prove first, that every prisoner who is enumerated as a Catholic is a genuine Catholic; and, second, that he has been educated in a Catholic school. If both propositions are not proven, it is manifestly unfair to saddle the Catholic school with his delinquencies. Let the school in which he got his education bear the burden 1 am, etc., .A CATHOLIC.