Bishop Tom Deenihan Bishop Tom Deenihan has called on fellow members of the hierarchy to prioritise the handing over of some Catholic schools to the State to defend the Catholic nature of remaining schools.
“I believe that the State needs, from both a practical and political viewpoint, movement from the Church in relation to divesting,” Dr Deenihan told The Irish Catholic education conference in Dublin.
However, he insisted that “the Church also needs reassurance from the State in relation to the remaining schools.
“If both departmental and Governmental legislation and policy were to continue at the current relentless rate, then our Catholic schools will be even less Catholic and would, in effect, cease to be Catholic,” he warned.
Calling for a joint approach between parishes and the Department of Education
to divesting some schools to provide for more pluralism, Dr Deenihan said that “the remaining [Catholic] schools must be allowed to give priority to those who wish for a Catholic education. The teachers therein must be respectful of the schools ethos and promote that ethos within the school.
Enrolment
“The remaining school’s ethos must be protected in terms of curriculum and the teaching of religious education and sacramental preparation. Such schools would, of course, have an open enrolment policy but, in the event of oversubscription and where a school of another patronage existed nearby, could give priority to those who wish to avail of the religious education that the school offers,” the Bishop of Meath said.
According to Dr Deenihan, “such a proposal is, I believe, the best chance there is for divesting and safeguarding the Catholic school. I see both topics as being intrinsically linked and you cannot really have one without the other.”
“There is merit,” he said, “in some form of concordat between Church and State in relation to what might go and what might remain…The polarisation and social media frenzy that I mentioned earlier make that intervention and compromise more difficult and may well make politicians nervous of being seen engage with what might be seen as a ‘deal’ with the Catholic Church”.