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	Church Must Exit from the Schoolroom Sunday Independent December 13, 2009 http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/church-must-exit-from-the-schoolroom-1973087.html We can help protect children from clerical sex abuse by removing Church influence from primary schools, says Emer O'Kelly SO the Hierarchy is "deeply shocked by the scale and depravity of abuse" as described in the Murphy report, and "humbly" asks forgiveness. And the Auxiliary Bishop of Dublin, a man called Eamonn Walsh, condemned by Judge Yvonne Murphy for his "inappropriate" handling of a complaint of sexual abuse, says "If I'd done any wrong, I'd be gone." The Bishop of Galway, a man called Martin Drennan, tells us that Judge Murphy's report "says nothing negative about me". Well now, isn't that just dandy? But the "Church has learned its lesson", according to the empty mouthings of its bosses. Like hell it has. It is biding its time, weathering the storm, doing nothing that will tie it to loosening its control, acknowledging fault in empty words, but avoiding active reparation. And then it will continue on its merry way, as it has always done: in charge, wielding its malign influence in education and health while pretending it bows its head to the superior power of the sovereign State. And as for Giuseppe Leanza, the Vatican's ambassador here, and to whom all other ambassadors in Ireland are expected to defer, His Excellency says that communications between the Vatican and the Irish Government will be "improved" to avoid "misunderstandings". And of course the Vatican is "ashamed" -- and, as for himself, "I express my shock and dismay." Another jim-dandy statement: misunderstanding my foot. The damning documentary proof of what was going on has been lodged in the Vatican files for years. Presumably, indeed, that's why some of these pathetically dishonest men have been trying to block access to the files by Yvonne Murphy and every other properly constituted Irish State authority for decades. We have had legal proof of it since Desmond Connell as Archbishop of Dublin went to court to try to bend the State to his will in refusing to release the files. At least things have improved to the degree that our Minister for Foreign Affairs summoned Giuseppe Leanza to attend at the Department of Foreign Affairs for a metaphorical head-kicking during the week, concerning the Nunciature's refusal to co-operate with Judge Murphy's enquiries. In times past, Micheal Martin's pre- decessors would have humbly requested an audience with Leanza and asked for his blessing, followed by an apology for daring to discommode him. The difficulty is that "ordinary" people, too, are expressing shock and dismay about the findings in the Murphy report. What planet have they been living on? We've had the Ryan report, we've had other reports, we've had the evidence of our own eyes and ears from abuse victims about what they suffered at the hands of the Church while the State deferred to the might of Rome. We knew what was going to be in the Murphy report; at least, those of us capable of compassion knew what its contents would be. We've wept in shame and rage as we've watched the victims' tears and agony, and we've determined to show solidarity with their anguish. For years past we are supposed to have realised that they were telling the truth about their sufferings and the devious cover-up that ignored those sufferings while it protected the abusers and the awesome power and wealth of the Church -- to the exclusion of justice, mercy, and decency. And in 25 years we'll be expressing shock and horror again as we see Leanza's successor standing smugly on the steps of Iveagh House, proclaiming the Church's humility and deep distress at what its ministers have inflicted on the innocent. Unless, that is, we take radical action. And that radical action can happen in the education system. We haven't the stomach for the French system, where Catholics (and other religionists, although Muslims are starting to try to bully the State there into giving them preferential treatment) are secure enough in their faith not to need it endorsed in the schools at any level, and education is entirely secular. Yet France always has been, and is, a Catholic country. But we have a fairly effective "third way" already tried and found successful in this country: and that is the Educate Together model. If the State moves to remove primary education from religious patronage, we can at least ensure that any attempts at child molestation will instantly come to the attention of the State authorities rather than being protected by an authority where connivance with it is endemic. If parents refuse -- from bigotry, xenophobia, or other forms of ignorance -- to allow their children to be educated with those of other faiths, then they themselves can set up and fund individual faith-based schools. Good luck to them, but not with taxpayers' money. But to achieve this, the best education must be found in the multi-denominational State primary schools. And if all State funding is directed towards these schools -- rather than funding Church-controlled schools, thus allowing the State to wash its hands of responsibility and power over the education and future of young children -- this will be the case. At present, people try to get their children into denominational schools for a number of reasons. They perceive them as the only institutions in which their children will receive proper ethical formation. Well, that's been dealt a mortal blow by the moral bankruptcy of Catholic power in this country. Or they perceive them as offering an advantage in feeding into the more prestigious, academically or socially, secondary schools. A multi-denominational, multi-ethnic primary education system dedicated only to academic progress for the children and a moral ethos of inter-denominational equality and respect would not only ensure genuine equality of opportunity, it would send a signal to the Roman Catholic Church that it can never again hope fully to control Irish society. If it wishes to offer exclusively Catholic primary education subject to the will of individual patrons, then let it dig into its own deep coffers. But let the State provide and defend openness and excellence in the primary sector. I have a funny feeling it would be on to a winner, even among morally brain-dead Catholics who say it's time to move on and forget about child abuse.
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