ABOUT SIGNING PETITIONS

New Zealand Tablet, 10 July 1913, Page 34

ABOUT SIGNING PETITIONS

The petition which is being organised by the Bible in State Schools League asking: Parliament to pass legislation enabling a referendum to be taken on the League’s proposals * s being freely and. rightly met by counterpetition. '/"As our readers know,' two petitions—carefully framed and properly , authorised—voicing the Catholic objection to the League’s scheme, are in circulation ;mnd, as we are informed,. non-Catholic petitions, also voicingthough on more- or less different grounds strong opposition to the League’s, proposals, are also in course of _ signature. It is in every way right and proper that all' sections of the. community who resent the unjust and tyrannical proposals of the League should give formal expression; to their .opposition by way of Parliamentary petition. But it is obviously desirable that, as the various petitions are based on the particular principles of those who frame them,, each such petition should' be kept distinct and separate; and the signatures' should in each . case be strictly confined to those who hold the principles embodied;rn the petition. For this reason ; it is absolutely essential that those who are in charge of the Catholic, petitions should on no account accept any other than Catholic signatures to the “petitions. To non-Catholics desiring to sign— and, to our knowledge, there have been hundreds who were eager to do so—the. answer must Joe given that it is a purely Catholic petition, based upon purely Catholic principles, and that their better course is to sign their own petition, based upon their own principles. So far as 1 we ' know not a single non-Catholic signature has been taken; but if by any/ chance any non-Catholics have signed the Catholic petitions'their names should be carefully struck out before the forms are sent to Wellington, or; if the forms -are"'' already sent, such names should be forwarded to the Federation Executive in order that they may be struck out.

For the same reason .it is absolutely imperative that Catholics should on no account sign any other petition on the Bible-in-schools question except the properly authorised Catholic petition. As Bishop Cleary puts it in the urgent circular printed on page .23 which we hereby draw our readers’ most earnest attention—by signing any other petitions Catholics would be unwittingly giving support to principles which they and all true and loyal Catholics repudiate. In this connection we repeat the injunction which has been already stressed by Bishop Cleary : If any Catholics have unwittingly signed any of, the .petitions referred .to, let them at once notify those concerned that their signatures were given under a misapprehension, and that these signatures are revoked. We have made our position as Catholics perfectly clear from first to last of this agitation ; and we are determined to do all that is humanly possible to prevent that position from being obscured or compromised.