BIBLE IN SCHOOLS AND TEACHERS

New Zealand Tablet, 3 April 1913, Page 35

BIBLE IN SCHOOLS AND TEACHERS

The following letter by his Lordship Bishop Cleary appeared in the New Zealand Herald. Under No. 4 paragraph his Lordship replies to the query: * Why do Catholic teachers join the service, knowing what they have to do in the matter of “ religious instruction ” V : —- Sir, —No official of the Bible-in-Schools League has attempted to justify, on grounds of moral right, the League’s seven controverted proposals. Let us take one clear-cut issue. 1. So far as may be gathered from their organised and official pronouncements, the State teachers of New Zealand object by six to one to the League’s proposals. 2. The League affirms the moral right of the Government (as in parts of Australia) to compel these conscientiously objecting teachers, ‘ irrespective of creed,’ to impart, as ■ State agents, what is legally designated ‘ religious instruction ’ and ‘ general religious teaching.’ This ‘religious teaching’ is placed on ‘ exactly the same footing ’ as geography and grammar, and, therefore, under ‘ exactly the same ’ penalty (dismissal) for refusal. This alleged moral right is denied by the universal voice of Christian teaching and by all that is upright in paganism. This denial holds good until the League denominations prove, as a League, what, as denominations, they deny. 3. If the Government has the moral right to coerce teachers’ consciences, has it not equally the moral right to coerce the consciences of other Government officials, and of non-officials ? If the Government has the Godgiven right to deprive the teachers of salary and pension for refusal to conform, has it not equally the moral right to deprive the voter of his vote, the worker of his cottage, the grocer of his stock, and the settler of Lis farm, for the high crime of non-conformity to the proposed Established and Endowed State Church ? The League’s anti-Christian doctrine is, in principle, a justification of every form of tyranny and oppression to which conscientious objectors have been subjected by Governments down the course of ages. The League would deprive a vast body of New Zealand teachers of rights of conscience which are enjoyed even by those unspeakable criminals who were lately sentenced to lash and prison at criminal sessions in this Dominion, What moral right has any League or any Government thus to discriminate against a law-abiding and honorable section of the community? The League dares not say. 4. Part of the League’s scheme is a huge system of State bribery of objecting teachers’ consciences by the lure of pay and pension. ■ Many naturally objecting teachers would refuse the bribe, like the one who testified in your issue of March 18. Others of them would enter the profession as some people enter Matrimony and some frogs enter wells-without considering the risks. Some would take the soldier’s battle-chance, hoping they might be of the number of those who (as in large schools) escape this ‘ duty ’ of religious teaching.’ Some Catholics would compound with conscience by making the ‘ religious teaching ’ as perfunctory, or as Catholic, or as little anti-Catholic as they dare. Or (as happened, and was intended to happen, even in Ireland), other objectors would sell their consciences in the State conscience

market for a wage. Internal conformity of natural objectors would be, so far, proselytism by Act of Parliament, or (in dictionary phrase) ‘ conversion ’ to the Bible-in-schools ‘doctrine’ or ‘system, sect, or party External conformity would be, so far, external prqselyr. tism, and hypocrisy m the service of the Lord But even if 10,000 teachers thus sold their souls, it would not give the Government the moral right to bribe or force conscience. What moral right has any Goverur ment to force 40 denominations to pay for the State oppression of consciences, for the exclusive benefit ,of part of three or four denominations? It is like seething a kid in its mother’s milk. How will League officials again evade these ‘knotty points’? i * Henry W. Cleary, D.D. .' .-a Bishop of Auckland; ' ••• March 18.