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Roman Catholic school is admitted to aid. Art. 2, "That Roman Catholic schools receiving aid from the Parliamentary grant be open to inspection, but that the inspectors report respecting the secular instruction only." And this is acted on without difficulty or complaint, and a late Roman Catholic inspector, T. A. Marshall, Esq., describes the working of it in a Report to the Committee of Council (Vol. II., 1848-9-50, p. 520) in terms which not only recognise to the full the main principle of the Conscience Clause (viz., parental responsibility and authority), but indicate a practice which goes far beyond it, and, in fact, corresponds in principle with the American system, which relegates all religious instruction to the Church and the Sunday-school:—
"The universal rule is (for I have not met with a single exception), that in no case do they receive religious instruction without the express sanction or request of their parents, and that either they are at liberty to absent themselves from the school altogether, when it is communicated, or else the Catholic *children are withdrawn to some convenient place—commonly to the church or chapel—in order to be instructed apart." And the same gentleman, in his evidence before the Education Commission,[1] asserts that discretionary exemption of some children from religious instruction is the rule—a rule which is equally obnoxious to Archdeacon Denison's condemnation with the Conscience Clause itself. For he repudiates, and in his own practice refuses to exercise, not only the form and manner of the concession embodied in the clause, but the thing itself, no matter in what shape.
Question No. 1353, by Rev. W. C. Lake.—"Does the Roman Catholic Church by its authorities lay down any stringent rule that it is necessary for children receiving the secular education at a Roman Catholic school to receive the religious education also?"
- ↑ Report of Royal Commissioners on Education. Vol. VI., p. 176.
