Emer O'Kelly: Catholic Church Remains Biggest Child in Playground

Sunday Independent
April 15, 2012

http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/emer-okelly-catholic-church-remains-biggest-child-in-playground-3081136.html

What is meant by a Catholic education? It should mean an education that passes on official Church teaching without dilution, and trains children to accept it. It's why so many non-Catholics do not want their children to attend Catholic schools.

Because Catholic teaching is not in line with modern-day thinking and lifestyles. The Catholic Church in Ireland has long since ceased to spell out Catholic teaching in schools, perhaps because it fears that parents will walk away. Children attending are not taught Church teaching on homosexuality for instance: that it is a misfortune to be born homosexual, but gravely sinful to indulge your freakish nature. Homosexual practice condemns the sinner to hell.

Fornication and adultery are both grave sins, and those who die without having abandoned their sinful way and sought forgiveness will also merit eternal hellfire. Fornication is sexual congress outside sacramental marriage. Adultery is sexual congress by a married person with a partner other than their wife/husband. No second relationships are permitted. Marriage is for life.And those openly living in sin are supposed to be refused the sacraments.

Do Catholic schools teach those tenets to children whose parents are in "second relationships"? Or indeed to children who may be the product of such a "second relationship"? Of course they don't. And Catholic parents don't want them to, as evidenced by the results last week of a survey for the Association of Catholic Priests, which showed that the majority of Catholics quite simply do not accept Church teaching on sexuality, or indeed on various other matters. And that is obviously the fault of the religious who have taken charge of faith formation over the past 40 years, something pointed out on last Thursday's Drivetime by Father Vincent Twomey, Emeritus Professor of Moral Theology at Maynooth. He believes the Church has to find a way of communicating Church teaching to the faithful. But I suspect the only reason so many self-styled Catholics adhere even nominally to the Church is because it no longer demands acceptance of inconvenient lifestyle moralities.

So where does that leave the argument that the vast majority of parents want a Catholic education for their children? This is what is being claimed by the Church authorities in their response to the final report of the Forum on Patronage and Pluralism set up by the Minister for Education to enquire into the logistics of stripping some of our primary schools of Catholic patronage. Ruairi Quinn wants 1,500 of the 3,000 primary schools taken out of Catholic hands. His forum has come up with a far more cautious approach, recommending "scrutiny" of 250 schools, of which about 50 may be divested of Church authority.

And there are 1,700 primary schools in rural areas which are described as "stand alone": they are in Catholic hands because the vast majority of the local population are Catholic, but parents with other belief systems are not numerous enough to have their beliefs considered. The Forum suggests these schools must be "as inclusive as possible and accommodate pupils of various belief systems". It took John Murray, a lecturer in moral theology at the Mater Dei Institute to point out how ludicrously impossible this is in practice for a school claiming to offer a Catholic education. He was debating the report with Paul Rowe, the CEO of the Educate Together multi-denominational primary stream on Pat Kenny's Today show on Tuesday morning. Seventeen hundred Catholic schools would have to dilute their ethos under the Forum recommendations, and this would be an infringement of the preferences and legal rights of Catholic parents.

What he said was undeniable. On the other hand, Paul

Rowe, whose organisation has successfully been educating children of many faiths together for the past 34 years without, it seems, diluting the religious/ethical beliefs handed on to them by their parents, was of the opinion that education is not about indoctrination, and because 98 per cent of all primary schools in the country are denominational, 93 per cent of them Roman Catholic, non-denominational and non-religious parents are being forced to have their children educated against their consciences and against their lawful preference. He cited the Portobello area of south Dublin, where there are 400 children whose parents are seeking a non-denominational education for them with only 60 places available.

Non-denominational schools, Mr Rowe said, celebrated all the children's faiths. John Murray's point was that we must not show through the education system that all faith systems are equally valid. The discussion showed the two points of view could never be accommodated together.

Father Michael Drumm of the Catholic Schools Partnership was interviewed on the News at One. He welcomed the Forum report. To the non-Catholic ear it didn't sound like it. Divesting Catholic schools of their denominational status must be done on a "secure and voluntary basis", he said, and "we mustn't get the backs up" of the many people committed to Catholic education. It would be infringing parental rights. And even in the tiny minority of schools to be divested of Catholic management, as recommended by the Forum, "the rights of Catholics in the divested schools must be respected".

He hadn't a word to say about the rights of parents who weren't Catholic and are being denied educational choice for their children.

The Forum report must have seriously dismayed Mr Quinn with its mealy-mouthed approach. But already the Catholic commentators are erecting almost insuperable barriers against having its recommendations implemented. The word "but" must already have been used a million times by spokesmen. It is perfectly clear that the Church will go down fighting against this attempt to dilute its stranglehold on education.

There is a simple solution: it was mentioned in another context a few weeks ago by a group of Muslim parents in north Co Dublin. Dismayed by what they saw as the indoctrination of their children in Catholicism in a National School for people from diverse backgrounds, the parents withdrew their children. Further, they asked why religious teaching could not be replaced by ethics: home, they said, was the place for religious tenets to be handed on.

I doubt Educate Together are holding their collective breaths. And I'm damn certain Ruairi Quinn isn't holding his. But I suspect the Catholic Church authorities are still breathing easily.