SIR,—During the eleven years I have been a subscriber to
the Spectator, I always valued your journal for its unvarying fair-mindedness.
But now your persistent hostility against the Catholic schools, as evinced in editorial comment and footnotes to readers' letters, is altogether in a different category. Indeed, it raises the question whether you are not in danger of straying into that dangerous no-man's-land which lies between error of judgement and deliberate misrepresentation of facts. Catholic parents are not, as you imply, desirous of obtaining an advantage at the expense of other taxpayers. Their only demand is that they be free to choose whether they prefer Christian education for their children or the bigger and better lavatories which the Butler Act seeks to impose upon them.
Unless I am quite mistaken, it was yourself who some years ago expressed justified concern when an inquiry into the educational
standards of National Service recruits revealed that a vast number of them—who had presumably enjoyed the advantages of those non- denominational Scripture lessons which today you seem to consider adequate—were ignorant of what the chief Christian feasts, including Christmas and Easter, commemorate. Moreover, many of these State- educated boys did not know the Lord's Prayer, and some of them attributed the authorship of St. Mark's Gospel to Karl Marx. I, for one, cannot blame Catholic parents for insisting upon something different for their children, especially since, for them, Christian education embraces a far wider field than the reading of the Scriptures.
Now that I have found the Spectator to be so definitely biased on a subject about which I happen to know something, my confidence in your comments on subjects of which I know nothing is naturally so shaken that I must, with deep regret, ask you to instruct your manager to remove my name from your list of subscribers.—I am, Sir, yours truly,
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