What was ít the bishops were saying in their pastoral?

Great bit of PR. John Walsh was positively slavering in the indo. As far as I can see the bishops said three things in their pastoral letter:

1.) Some schools will be going from direct management by dioceses and religious orders to a trustee arrangement. This is not new. The CBS have had such an arrangement in place for over a year. The trusteeship arrangement neither necessarily empowers parents (the trustees are appointed by the Christian Brothers) nor increases the chances that a school become multi or non-denominational (the CBS trust charter explicitly mentions that schools under the trust's wing should be catholic and denominational).

2.) Children of all religions and none will be welcome in Catholic school. This is not new either. Everyone knows that non-catholic children are accepted into catholic schools when catholic children have been dealt with. And the dublin archdiocese went further last autumn when they said the wouldn't prefer catholic children over non-catholics. The pastoral doesn't even extend the Dublin decision to the rest of the country.

3.) The bishops admitted that there are more catholic school places than are needed to deal with demand. This isn't new either. It could even be argued that this is the reason that non-catholic children are welcomed into catholic schools. Three recently published surveys (including one from the IONA Institute) confirm that about half of Irish parents do not want denominational education for their children while well over 92% of school places are catholic.