Cardinal defends right of church to have role in State schools

IT IS “blatantly unjust” and “a complete red herring” to say that the Catholic Church has no right to be involved in schools that receive State funding, Cardinal Seán Brady said yesterday, in a strong defence of the role of the church in education.

The Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland said parents had a right to have their children educated in accordance with their philosophical and religious convictions and the State had a duty to support this with public funds.

“Those parents who choose and value the Catholic education provided for their children are taxpayers in exactly the same way as parents who send their children to other types of schools.

“To disadvantage any group of parents because of their faith is completely contrary to the principle of equality and pluralism,” he said

The presumption the Catholic Church wanted to control as many schools as it could, irrespective of parental demands, was increasingly seen to be unfounded, he added.

“Equally, the idea that the only way to accommodate religious and cultural diversity in society is to remove the church completely from State-funded schools is increasingly seen as unjust, unhelpful and contrary to the principle of pluralism.”

Cardinal Brady said a new maturity had entered the debate about education and the church, and this had cleared the way “for what could be the most creative and constructive dialogue about the future of education in this country since partition”.

The church was willing to be an enthusiastic and constructive partner if the debate was based on mutual respect and genuine concern for the rights of parents and children.

“If, on the other hand, the dialogue is simply a Trojan horse for removing faith from schools – whether Catholic, Protestant, Jewish or Muslim – then we are destined to remain locked in unnecessary tensions about the future of education, to the detriment of children and society.”

Cardinal Brady said the suggestion schools were unable to be overtly Catholic and accommodate a degree of religious, cultural or ethnic diversity was “unfair and not borne out by experience”. Nor should the church create an impression that no room existed for sharing with other religious and secular approaches, he added.

“We should not apologise for who we are. In an increasingly diverse culture the future lies in ensuring that our schools become more authentically Catholic, both in terms of the authentic Catholic doctrine they teach and the Christian environment which they create.”

Setting out possible guiding principles for agreement on the future of schooling, the cardinal suggested that the Catholic Church should not create the impression that no room existed for mutual collaboration with other religious and secular approaches; that parents had the right to have their children educated in accordance with their convictions; and that the Catholic Church was open to diversity of provision, but Catholic parents had to be treated on the same basis as others.

Cardinal Brady was speaking at the launch of the Catholic Schools Partnership in Dublin yesterday.

He said he was “surprised and saddened” at the results of the Irish Times Ipsos/MRBI poll, which found that 61 per cent of people believed the church should give up control of the school system. “But opinion polls change and it’s the task of people who believe in Catholic schools to proclaim their worth,” he said.

He also called for stronger systems of inspection and accountability by the State in applying best practice in safeguarding children at school.

Separately, head of Amnesty International Ireland Colm O’Gorman said yesterday the quality of a child’s education in Ireland was still directly related to the ability of their parents to provide financial support to the school system. He was addressing the annual conference of the Irish Primary Principals’ Network.