Courtney McGrailJohn Reid
In a blistering editorial comment this week, the Irish Independent criticised the Catholic Church (which has patronage over about 90% of primary schools in the Republic) for its response to the current Government’s draft programme on education about religious beliefs and ethics, even suggesting that a failure to dilute or scrap the ethos of Irish primary schools could sow the seeds of Islamist terrorism on the scale that we have seen in several countries in continental Europe.
The writer did concede that Ireland has largely avoided the problems of ghettoisation and radicalisation experienced by some other countries, despite having absorbed higher percentages of immigrants more quickly than many other European Union countries. It also correctly pointed out that children of immigrants “are made welcome in our mainly denominational primary schools and allowed, even encouraged, to practise their faith”.
However, despite this evidence to the contrary, the editorial maintained that unless Catholic primary schools change their time-tested and successful approach, which allows an underlying Catholic ethos to facilitate an inclusive, unifying and identifiably Irish approach to national school education, we would create “a sense of alienation and of not belonging to an increasingly diverse society”.
Catholic ethos
The fact is that Irish primary schools under the patronage of the Church possess an underlying Catholic ethos which has long been flexible enough to cater for immigrants of varying beliefs and cultures. They have arguably acted as a unifying force where the ‘new Irish’ can buy into the indigenous Irish culture and feel part of Ireland. This fact is crucial to bear in mind when considering that integration is far better than the failed approach of raw multiculturalism, such as that which has been practised in countries such as Britain and large parts of Scandinavia where interaction between peoples of different cultures can be minimal and is often discouraged by the disparate communities themselves. In such an environment, distrust builds up and with it resentment.
This is the fertile ground for extremism and violence.
Inclusive Irish primary schools, which are still underpinned by a generally Catholic outlook, offer a culturally unifying education which is also inseparable from our national identity as Irish people, because an education system which happens to be both Irish and underlying Catholic will, to some degree, quite naturally promote a sense of patriotism and national pride. This is hugely important in terms of making the children of immigrants, who have sought to make Ireland their home, feel pride in their new identity as Irish people; and, one would hope, to develop a great love for their country.
Ethnic Masses not so helpful?
The debate around school ethos brings to mind recent reflections in this newspaper where Prof. Patricia Casey raised questions about the appropriateness of different Catholic communities – particularly in Dublin – celebrating Sunday Mass along linguistic lines. She had in mind, for example, the case where Brazilian Catholics gather from all over Dublin to celebrate Mass together in Portuguese. The same is true of many other national communities in Dublin.
The prevalence of ethnic Masses was given by Prof. Casey as something which was not conducive to helping or encouraging new arrivals to integrate, but to instead take the lazy option of only looking inward to their own community enclaves, only marrying within their own ethnic group and only having friends and influences largely from within these groups.
Might it be an idea, in the interests of successful integration, that Masses in Ireland be celebrated in either English or Irish? Or, of course, the universal language Latin. Just a thought.
It’s reported by RTÉ that Taoiseach Enda Kenny planned to raise the issue of Irish priests who have been disciplined for teaching things contrary to Catholicism during his meeting with Pope Francis this week.
It would seem like quite an unwarranted intervention by a politician in an internal Church matter. We don’t know whether the Taoiseach did, in fact. If he did, though, I wonder whether the Pope would’ve raised the issue of Lucinda Creighton and the other Fine Gael members the Taoiseach effectively excommunicated for refusing to support abortion.