Document Information

Date: 1867-02-22
By: True Witness
Citation: “No title”, True Witness (22 February, 1867)
Other formats: TBA

Accorging to the Minerve (Ministerial) His Grace the Archbishop of Halifax has obtained from the British Government, after a fortnight’s constant labor, this privilege for the Prelates of the Catholic Church in the British Provinces:— That they shall be at liberty to appoint to, or dismiss from the schools of their religion, such teachers as they please, and to determine as to what books shall be used therein. The Bill for the Union of the Provinces will, so says our informant, probably contain a clause to this effect, but of course Catholic schools alone will be [affected?] thereby.

As to the much talked of arrangement for securing the minorities of Upper and Lower Canada, respectively, against tyrannical legislation on school matters by a majority of a different religion, we say nothing at present: because, in the first place it is by no means certain that any such arrangement has been officially agreed to: and because, in the second place it involves a question in which the heads of the Church are chiefly interested as guardians of the faith and morals of the laity. If these, that is to say the rulers of the Church, should be contented, it would be preposterous for mere laymen to find fault with the arrangement: whatever satisfies them should satisfy us. Of course, no opinion of any kind has as yet been expressed on the subject by the Bishops, and no one has therefore any right to attribute any opinions to them.