BISHOP MORAN ON EDUCATION.

Inangahua Times, Volume IX, Issue 1362, 15 February 1884, Page 2

BISHOP MORAN ON EDUCATION.

« In his Lenten pastoral for 1884,. Bishop Moran writes as follows to hist flock :— On many previous occasions we called, your attention to the all : important question of education, and urged on you thenecessity of providing Catholic schools,.fpr Catholic children. It is consolingand encouraging to be able to bear -witness to the docility and zeal with which you have responded to this calL Although comparatively few and poor, you have established many excellent schools for both sexes at your own sole expense. But though much has been done very much still remains to be done. Renewed exertions,.' therefore,, will be demanded of all ; and the faithful of this diocese must continue to make great sacrifices in order to hand down to their children the faith once delivered to the Saints, ■'and without whioh it is impossible to please God." (Hebrewsxi, v. 10.) You must trust in God and your own exertions alone. The law of thi* country taxes us for education, and excludes us from the public Bchoolrooms and all participation in public education, except on the condition of apostacy from our principles. This isefficacious exclusion for all sincere Catholics, and imposes on them the iniquitous burden of double taxation. But what makes this burden particularly hard to bear is the consideration that it is a professedly Christian people which, abandoning Christian principles deliberately sanctious and enforces a system of education which ignores; Christ, the Christian Church, the Christian family, and Christian society. We, Christians and Catholics, cannot aocept for our children an unchristian and consequently an anti-Christian system of education. To do so would be to deny the divinity of Christ and proclaim Him an impostor ; to prove ourselve » not the pastors and parents of children, but their most cruel enemies ; and to proclaim ourselves, before Heaven the degenerate and apostate sons of faith Iful self-sacrificing fathers. No, my dearly beloved brchern, suffer anything, however painful, rather than incur the disgrace and awful responsibility of such unchristian conduct.. Fathers, mothers, and guardians, ofi children, your most important obligation is to bring up your childrenin " the discipline and fear ofthe Lord," and your neglecting to do so, by failing to discbarge your personal obligations: towards them, of instruction, correction, and example, or by exposing them I to the loss of faith aud morality in godless schools, amounts to; all thecriminality resulting from' a loss or faith. "He," says the Apostle, "who neglects his own, particiflarly those of his own household, has lost the faith „ and has become worse than an infidel."