School patronage

lawred2

tretorn wrote: »

The religious schools are better than the community schools but if you want a non denominational education more than you want the best education for your child well thats a valid choice for you.

The vast majority of engineers are male, thats a fact. The vast majority of teachers and nurses are female, its up to everyone to make a career choice that will satisfy them. Women should not be coerced into making STEM choices for PC reasons or because the business sector has lots of vacncies that they cant fill.

If you want more women to take up STEM positions then make the job family friendly, offer extended maternity leave, career breaks, flexitime and part time working, this way women might seriously consider it.

Is that based on anything in particular?

MightyMunster

I'd say lab workers in pharma companies in Ireland are at least 70%female. My science degree class by 4th year was 90% female......very outdated nonsense in this thread

King Mob

tretorn wrote: »

The vast majority of engineers are male, thats a fact. The vast majority of teachers and nurses are female, its up to everyone to make a career choice that will satisfy them. Women should not be coerced into making STEM choices for PC reasons or because the business sector has lots of vacncies that they cant fill.

Yes, you've claimed that this fact is due to the idea "The female brain is completely different to the male".

Could you explain what you used to reach this conclusion.
Is it based on research of some kind?

Do you believe that, for example, sexist ideas about the abilities of women play no role in this?

recedite

King Mob wrote: »

Is it based on research of some kind?

I've done a lot of solid research on wimmin, and I can confirm.

Mark Hamill

smacl wrote: »

I don't agree. Labels, such as the term Catholic when used by someone to describe their nominal religious affiliation, are ambiguous insofar as they mean different things to different people. For example, if you take the line with someone that they're not a Catholic because they've voted to legalise abortion or same sex marriage, and in doing so taken a position contrary to Rome, you just fallen foul of the 'No true Scotsman' fallacy. While these labels can be a useful shorthand in some circumstances, they do not define us and nor should they. It is a mistake in my opinion to treat people as a homogeneous group based on such labels, just as it is a mistake to blame everyone who shares such a label with the actions of anyone who also carries that label. Again, just my opinion, but this is as true of religion as it is of race, gender or sexual orientation.

Is it a "No True Scotsman" to say that a carton labelled "milk" should contain some sort of milk, and if it contains something that isn't in any way milk then the label is wrong? Is there any other situation where we let people abuse labels like this? Imagine going shopping if food labels were allowed to be as ambiguous as we allow religious labels to be?
Religious labels are ambiguous, but that's not because they are supposed to be. It suits religions to have people mislabel themselves so they can claim to have more supporters than they actually do.

Mark Hamill

Mark Hamill wrote: »

Might this be because so many schools are segregated by religion (and therefore race)? Because I am white Irish and I am engaged to a Filipino and I weekly meet up with other Asians, Europeans of all types, Americans North and South, and any other ethnic group I've forgotten to play board games in Dublin city centre.


Firstly, all kids have poor English, it's why they have to do it in school.
Secondly, and again, do you not think these issues you have with foreigners might be aggravated by segregation? How will their English and customs improve if they don't get to integrate with our "better" English and customs?

Why do you think that I don't have a problem with their English and customs?

Any chance I could answers to these questions tretorn?

evolving_doors

tretorn wrote: »

The religious schools are better than the community schools but if you want a non denominational education more than you want the best education for your child well thats a valid choice for you.

The vast majority of engineers are male, thats a fact. The vast majority of teachers and nurses are female, its up to everyone to make a career choice that will satisfy them. Women should not be coerced into making STEM choices for PC reasons or because the business sector has lots of vacncies that they cant fill.

If you want more women to take up STEM positions then make the job family friendly, offer extended maternity leave, career breaks, flexitime and part time working, this way women might seriously consider it.

You gotta offer girls the engineering, physics, design, applied maths subjects first, no?
Or maybe they're not worth it cos they'll be having babies and stuff /s

Show me an all girls schools that offer engineering?

evolving_doors

Mark Hamill wrote: »

Any chance I could answers to these questions tretorn?

Don't bother, unless you ask him about the Muslims.

smacl

tretorn wrote: »

As I said male and female brains are very different, its two different species

tretorn wrote: »

I got a very good education provide by religious people

Right. I'm guessing this very good education didn't include biology.

smacl

Mark Hamill wrote: »

Is it a "No True Scotsman" to say that a carton labelled "milk" should contain some sort of milk, and if it contains something that isn't in any way milk then the label is wrong? Is there any other situation where we let people abuse labels like this? Imagine going shopping if food labels were allowed to be as ambiguous as we allow religious labels to be?
Religious labels are ambiguous, but that's not because they are supposed to be. It suits religions to have people mislabel themselves so they can claim to have more supporters than they actually do.

I would expect a carton of milk to contain some sort of milk. Full fat cow's milk by default but the label might well be qualified with terms such as skimmed, goat's, butter or even almond or soya. They're all arguably types of milk. Similarly, you could qualify the word Catholic with terms like strict, a la carte, bouncy castle or even Irish. Your assumption is that without qualifying the word, all Catholics are strict Catholics. I'd assume any Catholic that fills our an Irish census form is an Irish Catholic, who we know for a fact do not strictly adhere to the dictates and dogma of the Roman Catholic church and don't bother with mass that much any more. And yes, suggesting they are not really Catholic because they are not strict Catholics is a clear case of the 'No true Scotsman' fallacy.

Mark Hamill

smacl wrote: »

I would expect a carton of milk to contain some sort of milk. Full fat cow's milk by default but the label might well be qualified with terms such as skimmed, goat's, butter or even almond or soya. They're all arguably types of milk. Similarly, you could qualify the word Catholic with terms like strict, a la carte, bouncy castle or even Irish. Your assumption is that without qualifying the word, all Catholics are strict Catholics. I'd assume any Catholic that fills our an Irish census form is an Irish Catholic, who we know for a fact do not strictly adhere to the dictates and dogma of the Roman Catholic church and don't bother with mass that much any more. And yes, suggesting they are not really Catholic because they are not strict Catholics is a clear case of the 'No true Scotsman' fallacy.

I'm not suggesting they are strict Catholic, I'm suggesting they follow the RCC on their big ticket issues, to differentiate them from people who don't. Never mind the abortion and SSM referendums, or pre-marital sex or condom use or never going to mass, in a survey commission by Irish Bishops a few years ago of Irish Catholics, 1 in 10 said they don't even believe in god.
It is not a "No True Scotsman" to say they aren't Catholic if they don't have any of the beliefs that make Catholics different to other religious or non-religious. If your carton milk contains orange juice, then it should be labelled a carton of orange juice.

smacl

Mark Hamill wrote: »

I'm not suggesting they are strict Catholic, I'm suggesting they follow the RCC on their big ticket issues, to differentiate them from people who don't. Never mind the abortion and SSM referendums, or pre-marital sex or condom use or never going to mass, in a survey commission by Irish Bishops a few years ago of Irish Catholics, 1 in 10 said they don't even believe in god.

Thing is, neither you nor I are not the arbiters of this, the Catholic church and community is. If Joe Blogs becomes a Catholic and does something that royally pisses off the Catholic church, it is for the Catholic church to tell Joe he is no longer a Catholic. Similarly, and more commonly perhaps, if the Catholic church does something to piss off Joe, he might state that he is no longer a Catholic. As atheists with a secular agenda, it might suit our arguments that Catholics who don't behave in accordance with the fundamental teachings of their church cease calling themselves Catholics, but that is a matter for them and their church. The problem isn't that the people call themselves Catholics, nor how they act, it is that as a society we fail to distinguish between religious affiliation and secular preference on the national census. From a secular perspective we shouldn't let a person's religion influence the running of the state, so it shouldn't matter what that religion is.

You would also appear to by trying to teach a pig to sing here.

Mark Hamill

smacl wrote: »

Thing is, neither you nor I are not the arbiters of this, the Catholic church and community is. If Joe Blogs becomes a Catholic and does something that royally pisses off the Catholic church, it is for the Catholic church to tell Joe he is no longer a Catholic. Similarly, and more commonly perhaps, if the Catholic church does something to piss off Joe, he might state that he is no longer a Catholic. As atheists with a secular agenda, it might suit our arguments that Catholics who don't behave in accordance with the fundamental teachings of their church cease calling themselves Catholics, but that is a matter for them and their church. The problem isn't that the people call themselves Catholics, nor how they act, it is that as a society we fail to distinguish between religious affiliation and secular preference on the national census. From a secular perspective we shouldn't let a person's religion influence the running of the state, so it shouldn't matter what that religion is.

You would also appear to by trying to teach a pig to sing here.

I already explained why the RCC doesn't push back on people mislabelling as Catholic, because they like pretending they have more followers than they actually do. And people continue to mislabel because of school-age indoctrination. But none of that means they are right to do so.

It doesn't matter if you are coming at this from a religious, atheist or secularist POV, this is simply a labelling error. Is there any other labelling scenario where this level of ambiguity, that labelling as "X" only tells you that that "X" is the label, would be acceptable or even just plain functional? Your argument turns religious labels into redundant, meaningless terms.

smacl

Mark Hamill wrote: »

I already explained why the RCC doesn't push back on people mislabelling as Catholic, because they like pretending they have more followers than they actually do. And people continue to mislabel because of school-age indoctrination. But none of that means they are right to do so.

It doesn't matter if you are coming at this from a religious, atheist or secularist POV, this is simply a labelling error. Is there any other labelling scenario where this level of ambiguity, that labelling as "X" only tells you that that "X" is the label, would be acceptable or even just plain functional? Your argument turns religious labels into redundant, meaningless terms.

So you have this club called the RCC with lots of members. Many of the local members flout the rules of the club much to the annoyance of the owners, but the owners of the club don't chuck them out because volume of members is far more important them than the behaviour of those members. Your assertion seems to be that the members that openly flout the rules aren't members the club any more, but that's clearly bogus as it is not your club. Right or wrong doesn't come into it as it a matter for the Catholics and their church hierarchy. What is wrong, and anti-secular, is the state taking any heed of all this in the first place. If we, as a country, wish to know whether we want the Catholic church involved in the running of our schools, we need to ask this precise question, as it is not a reasonable inference from nominal religious affiliation information in the census.

As for the unambiguous meaning of the label, if you look up the definition of 'Roman Catholic' in any dictionary it will say 'Member of the Roman Catholic Church'. No more, no less. A bad Catholic is still a Catholic until they or their church decide otherwise.

Hotblack Desiato

Should an institution that presided over child abuse control most schools?

The story of how the Church’s social and political power has all but disintegrated is now well told. Today we tell ourselves we live in a secular society where we are no longer take direction from Rome.

Yet despite two decades of horrific revelations of systematic cover-up of sexual abuse by members of the Catholic clergy, the Catholic Church remains a central part of Irish life.

The controversy over the divesting of Catholic governance in primary schools in north Dublin reveals how hard fought this battle for hearts and minds still is.

Once again, the State – which in the past sent children into Catholic institutions where they were emotionally, sexually and physically abused – abandons its responsibility by sitting on the sidelines waiting for this one to play out.

But perhaps it’s time to face the hard facts and answer some difficult questions. If we truly want to live in a Republic, should a system paid for by all the taxpayers of Ireland provide religious instruction and Communion classes within the school day?

If we want to live in a real Republic, is it right that an institution that presided over the abuse of children should maintain control over most of our schools?


Niamh Sammon is the director of the documentary ‘Rome v Republic’, which will be broadcast this Thursday on RTE One at 10.15pm

smacl

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

Should an institution that presided over child abuse control most schools?

Given the number of referendums we've had of late, in my opinion this is something that certainly deserves to be put to the people. Difficult to know how to word it, but we clearly need to better understand the preferences of the people in order to inform decision making in education at a national level.

One eyed Jack

Mark Hamill wrote: »

I already explained why the RCC doesn't push back on people mislabelling as Catholic, because they like pretending they have more followers than they actually do. And people continue to mislabel because of school-age indoctrination. But none of that means they are right to do so.

It doesn't matter if you are coming at this from a religious, atheist or secularist POV, this is simply a labelling error. Is there any other labelling scenario where this level of ambiguity, that labelling as "X" only tells you that that "X" is the label, would be acceptable or even just plain functional? Your argument turns religious labels into redundant, meaningless terms.

Yes, there is, and you’re already familiar with it too - men, and women. Both those labels come with loaded assumptions about a person in much the same way as labels like Catholic or atheist come with loaded assumptions one can make about a person on the basis of how they identify themselves. One can make reasonable assumptions about what those labels indicate to them about a person, but one should never be so closed-minded as to assume that because they believe something, it means the same thing to everyone else.

Essentially in practice what that means is that people can identify themselves as Catholic if they wish, and there’s really not a damn thing anyone else can do but say they aren’t. It doesn’t change the fact that they say they are, and not just the Church, but the State recognises this fact. They may not ‘pass’ as Catholic in the same way that a woman may not ‘pass’ as a man, but they are entitled to fill out the census as they wish, and it would be the job of the State to prove that they have put down false information on their census forms.

You can come up with all sorts of explanations as to why they still do it which would make sense to you, but that isn’t going to have any bearing on why they actually still won’t identify themselves as you would wish, when they are filling out the census forms for themselves.

As for the school patronage issue, that’s entirely the fault of the State, and it is the State is responsible for coming up with a solution to the issue, it’s not the responsibility of the Church to provide education to parents who don’t want their education, it’s entirely the responsibility of the State to provide parents with the type of education they want for their children. Government could do that if they actually wanted, and it wouldn’t require any referendums or even any changes in legislation, but they don’t do it, and they are under no real pressure to do it. Why? Because the demand simply isn’t there. There are far more pressing issues on Government than spending money on education, and given the current Governments obsession with being seen to be popular, I don’t expect education reform is actually all that high on their agenda. It hasn’t been in my lifetime anyway, and that’s been the case for successive Ministers for Education, including the current one who is fumbling from one stakeholder to the next making promises he knows he will never have to deliver on.

evolving_doors

One eyed Jack wrote: »

Yes, there is, and you’re already familiar with it too - men, and women. Both those labels come with loaded assumptions about a person in much the same way as labels like Catholic or atheist come with loaded assumptions one can make about a person on the basis of how they identify themselves. One can make reasonable assumptions about what those labels indicate to them about a person, but one should never be so closed-minded as to assume that because they believe something, it means the same thing to everyone else.

Essentially in practice what that means is that people can identify themselves as Catholic if they wish, and there’s really not a damn thing anyone else can do but say they aren’t. It doesn’t change the fact that they say they are, and not just the Church, but the State recognises this fact. They may not ‘pass’ as Catholic in the same way that a woman may not ‘pass’ as a man, but they are entitled to fill out the census as they wish, and it would be the job of the State to prove that they have put down false information on their census forms.

You can come up with all sorts of explanations as to why they still do it which would make sense to you, but that isn’t going to have any bearing on why they actually still won’t identify themselves as you would wish, when they are filling out the census forms for themselves.

As for the school patronage issue, that’s entirely the fault of the State, and it is the State is responsible for coming up with a solution to the issue, it’s not the responsibility of the Church to provide education to parents who don’t want their education, it’s entirely the responsibility of the State to provide parents with the type of education they want for their children. Government could do that if they actually wanted, and it wouldn’t require any referendums or even any changes in legislation, but they don’t do it, and they are under no real pressure to do it. Why? Because the demand simply isn’t there. There are far more pressing issues on Government than spending money on education, and given the current Governments obsession with being seen to be popular, I don’t expect education reform is actually all that high on their agenda. It hasn’t been in my lifetime anyway, and that’s been the case for successive Ministers for Education, including the current one who is fumbling from one stakeholder to the next making promises he knows he will never have to deliver on.

I get the impression that the position of minister for education isn't really an end in itself, they're all just passing through.

Mark Hamill

smacl wrote: »

So you have this club called the RCC with lots of members. Many of the local members flout the rules of the club much to the annoyance of the owners, but the owners of the club don't chuck them out because volume of members is far more important them than the behaviour of those members. Your assertion seems to be that the members that openly flout the rules aren't members the club any more, but that's clearly bogus as it is not your club. Right or wrong doesn't come into it as it a matter for the Catholics and their church hierarchy. What is wrong, and anti-secular, is the state taking any heed of all this in the first place. If we, as a country, wish to know whether we want the Catholic church involved in the running of our schools, we need to ask this precise question, as it is not a reasonable inference from nominal religious affiliation information in the census.

As for the unambiguous meaning of the label, if you look up the definition of 'Roman Catholic' in any dictionary it will say 'Member of the Roman Catholic Church'. No more, no less. A bad Catholic is still a Catholic until they or their church decide otherwise.

All of this brings us back to main problem, at the end of my last post:
Is there any other labelling scenario where this level of ambiguity, that labelling as "X" only tells you that that "X" is the label, would be acceptable or even just plain functional? Your argument turns religious labels into redundant, meaningless terms.

The church accepts the mislabelling, and will never remove it in any situation, because of a meaning they attach to it (that Roman Catholics follow their teachings), a meaning which by your argument they can't apply to it.

None of this works in any situation, be it religious, political or in normal human communication.

Mark Hamill

One eyed Jack wrote: »

Yes, there is, and you’re already familiar with it too - men, and women. Both those labels come with loaded assumptions about a person ...

But this is about labelling definitions, not assumptions. "Men" and "women" have definitions that exist above any assumptions. If "Catholic" has no non-redundant definition, then it is meaningless.

One eyed Jack wrote: »

Essentially in practice what that means is that people can identify themselves as Catholic if they wish, and there’s really not a damn thing anyone else can do but say they aren’t.

Which doesn't make it accurate and doesn't mean they shouldn't be corrected and which, again, leaves us the situation where the label of "catholic" is just non-functional.

One eyed Jack wrote: »

they are entitled to fill out the census as they wish, and it would be the job of the State to prove that they have put down false information on their census forms.

This makes no sense, you are not entitled to do something until the State proves that doing it broke the law. You are not entitled to drive on the wrong side of the road up until you are convicted in court of dangerous driving. Legally, you must not put false information on your census.

Peregrinus

The label "Catholic" is clearly not "non-functional". We use the word frequently, and we do so because we find it to be meaningful and useful.

What bothers people is that (a) it's not univalent - it can mean more than one thing; (b) it doesn't mean what they want it to mean - you can't say that purely because someone votes to legislate for abortion, say, he's not a Catholic; and/or (c) it has gradations of meaning.

But, hey, this is true of many, and perhaps most, of the words in the English language. Welcome to messy reality, guys. If you find that the language we use to talk about religious identification can't be reduced to simple binaries, "the language is wrong" is very much not the conclusion you should be drawing.

Hotblack Desiato

As I see it, the only meaning which we can place on ticking the catholic box on the census is that the box-ticker (or perhaps their parent!) was probably baptised in a catholic church.

The question is completely useless for any policy purpose in what is supposed to be a secular state.

If we want to know what parents of current and future schoolchildren want our education system to look like, we need a robust process for asking them.

Peregrinus

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

As I see it, the only meaning which we can place on ticking the catholic box on the census is that the box-ticker (or perhaps their parent!) was probably baptised in a catholic church.

The question is completely useless for any policy purpose in what is supposed to be a secular state.

If we want to know what parents of current and future schoolchildren want our education system to look like, we need a robust process for asking them.

I'd agree completely with the last point.

On the first point, no. If somebody ticks the Catholic box we know at least two things; that they were very probably baptised in a Catholic church, and that they now wish to identify as Catholic. The latter is not trivial.

As for your middle point, I await evidence. A similar question is asked on the census of lots of countries, and for those who are interested it is not difficult to find out why they ask it and what they find the answer useful for.

Mark Hamill

Peregrinus wrote: »

The label "Catholic" is clearly not "non-functional". We use the word frequently, and we do so because we find it to be meaningful and useful.

What bothers people is that (a) it's not univalent - it can mean more than one thing; (b) it doesn't mean what they want it to mean - you can't say that purely because someone votes to legislate for abortion, say, he's not a Catholic; and/or (c) it has gradations of meaning.

But the label can only be meaningful and useful if it actually means something. If taking the label only means that the label has been taken, then it is not useful or meaningful.

I can accept that there are gradations of meaning and that catholics don't have to believe in every RCC proclamation and rule to be accurately labelled a catholic. But they do need to believe in the ones that differentiate catholics from other christians, other religious groups, or (in the case of the ~10% who don't even believe in god) atheists. Otherwise the label "catholic" is non-functional and useless.

Peregrinus

Mark Hamill wrote: »

But the label can only be meaningful and useful if it actually means something. If taking the label only means that the label has been taken, then it is not useful or meaningful.

Yes, but I doubt that taking the label means just that the label has been taken.

Mark Hamill wrote: »

I can accept that there are gradations of meaning and that catholics don't have to believe in every RCC proclamation and rule to be accurately labelled a catholic. But they do need to believe in the ones that differentiate catholics from other christians, other religious groups, or (in the case of the ~10% who don't even believe in god) atheists. Otherwise the label "catholic" is non-functional and useless.

Only if the only function or use you can imagine is to identify differences of belief. Catholics, Anglicans, Presybterians, etc have a huge body of belief in common and, while there are beliefs that differ between the three traditions, the truth is that the diversities of belief within those groups are probably as great or greater than the diversities of belief between them. What mostly divides them is not different beliefs but different practices, different associations, different traditions. More to the point, perhaps, it's not really the points of doctrinal difference that interest the census-takers.

One eyed Jack

Mark Hamill wrote: »

But this is about labelling definitions, not assumptions. "Men" and "women" have definitions that exist above any assumptions. If "Catholic" has no non-redundant definition, then it is meaningless.

You asked is there any other labelling scenario, where this level of ambiguity, that labelling as “X” only tells you that “X” is the label. And I gave you the example of gender, and the label appears to be perfectly functional, and recognised in law by the Gender Recognition Act of 2015.

There is often uncertainty and ambiguity there, but it’s still perfectly functional - employers are under no obligation in a personal capacity to recognise someone as their preferred self-identified gender, but in an employer/employee capacity, employers have a legal obligation to respect their employees self-identified gender identity.

Which doesn't make it accurate and doesn't mean they shouldn't be corrected and which, again, leaves us the situation where the label of "catholic" is just non-functional.

It’s entirely accurate as far as they’re concerned, and that’s why as much as I’m sure you’re a decent human being and your intentions to correct me on what you observe are my many, many failures to adhere to the tenets and doctrines of my religion are coming from a good place, we’re not likely to remain friends.

Now that’s not to say you don’t have a point, you do, and there are many people who have pointed out that both my behaviour and my attitude and my beliefs are not stereotypical of their perception of Catholicism. What they have never done though is try and insist that I’m not Catholic, or I render the term meaningless or any of the rest of it. I’m ok with the fact that you’re not ok with the fact that I’m Catholic. It creates ambiguity for you, but it’s perfectly functional for me.

This makes no sense, you are not entitled to do something until the State proves that doing it broke the law. You are not entitled to drive on the wrong side of the road up until you are convicted in court of dangerous driving. Legally, you must not put false information on your census.

The reason it might make no sense is because you’re taking what we were talking about and applying it in a completely different context. People are perfectly entitled to put down what they want on the Census form. I’m not the person questioning any individuals claims, you are, and so it is up to you (or rather the State), to present evidence that people are mis-identifying their religious affiliation on the Census. You don’t have any evidence, all you have is the belief that they are, because the results don’t make any sense when held up against your assumptions about other people.

smacl

Peregrinus wrote: »

The label "Catholic" is clearly not "non-functional".

Ok, I'll bite. If the label Catholic has a function, beyond simply letting us know that a person considers themselves to be a Catholic (i.e. nominal as opposed to functional), what is that function?

Interesting result googling the word label

label
/ˈleɪb(ə)l/
noun
1. a small piece of paper, fabric, plastic, or similar material attached to an object and giving information about it.
"the alcohol content is clearly stated on the label"
synonyms: tag, ticket, tab, sticker, marker, docket, chit, chitty, flag, stamp; document, documentation
"the price is clearly stated on the label"
2. a classifying phrase or name applied to a person or thing, especially one that is inaccurate or restrictive.
"the label ‘salsa’ seems especially meaningless when applied to musicians like Tito Puente"
synonyms: designation, denomination, description, characterization, identification, tag; name, epithet, nickname, title, sobriquet, pet name, byname; formalappellation, cognomen
"I always resented the label of ‘shock jock’ that the media came up with for me"

Labels are regularly used in a derogatory fashion, even where the label isn't derogatory in and of itself, and should be treated with suspicion. While it might be convenient to treat people on how we label them rather than how they act, this is both incorrect and unreasonable. e.g. the non-sequitur we see regularly in this forum of blaming all Muslims for ISIS terrorism.

lawred2

Peregrinus wrote: »

I'd agree completely with the last point.

On the first point, no. If somebody ticks the Catholic box we know at least two things; that they were very probably baptised in a Catholic church, and that they now wish to identify as Catholic. The latter is not trivial.

As for your middle point, I await evidence. A similar question is asked on the census of lots of countries, and for those who are interested it is not difficult to find out why they ask it and what they find the answer useful for.

I wouldn't see that as a given at all...

Hotblack Desiato

Peregrinus wrote: »

On the first point, no. If somebody ticks the Catholic box we know at least two things; that they were very probably baptised in a Catholic church, and that they now wish to identify as Catholic.

Some people are under the impression that once baptised into a religion, they must tick that box. A CSO representative gave that impression in an interview the census before last, and there was complaint here about it at the time.

As for your middle point, I await evidence.

Delivering public services in a religiously segregated way or in a way which promotes one religion above another is not secularism.

smacl

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

Delivering public services in a religiously segregated way or in a way which promotes one religion above another is not secularism.

Absolutely. If you consider secularism as "freedom of religion and freedom from religion", we do not enjoy these freedoms in this country when it comes to education. There is also no reason to suppose that because someone considers themselves Catholic they are not a secularist.