David Quinn
It’s hard for the schools to teach the Faith if all the parents want is ‘Catholic-lite’, writes David Quinn
Your average Catholic school today is not, in fact, very Catholic at all. That statement needs a bit of unpacking. A Catholic school is, of course, officially Catholic in that it comes under the patronage of a local bishop or Catholic religious or educational body. Prayers will be said in the school. Catholic religious symbols can be seen. A priest will visit the school from time to time and children will be prepared for the sacraments. Religion class will be based on Catholic teaching.
But in practice how strong is the Catholic ethos of the average Catholic school when most parents don’t practice the Faith, when the children are rarely taken to Mass, and when many teachers don’t practice the Faith either, including maybe the principal?
In practice, a Catholic school will likely only be as Catholic as the local community, and the teachers, want. In a given school the teachers and the principal might be more or less committed to a strong, Catholic ethos, and in other schools, less so.
But even with the best will in the world, it is hard for a school to be strongly Catholic when the parents want ‘Catholic-lite’ at best. Religion classes usually reflect this, and so do Relationships and Sexuality Education (RSE) classes.
Critics of Catholic schools imagine that the full, unadulterated, ‘hard-core’ version of Catholicism is being taught to children. Nothing could be further from the truth. For the most part, what is taught is very soft and tends to avoid controversy.
The same goes in RSE. Catholic teaching with regard to cohabitation, sex outside marriage, divorce, homosexuality, contraception, abortion etc., are now very much out of step with modern societies. Many teachers will profoundly disagree with the Church on all these points, except maybe abortion, and have no intention of passing on these teachings to pupils whether in primary or secondary schools.
Morality
Critics of Catholic schools seem to believe otherwise. They seem to think that Catholic pupils are being taught the full, unexpurgated version of Catholic sexual morality. But not even when I was in school (I left in 1981) was this the case. Most controversial issues were simply avoided.
An outline of a new RSE course for Catholic primary schools called Flourish has just been published by the bishops. It can be found on the website of the Catholic Primary Schools Managers Association.
In its introduction, called ‘Vision for Catholic RSE in Primary Schools’, it says Flourish aims to “provide a framework based on the teachings of Jesus Christ and reflecting the dignity of each person created in the image and likeness of God”.
Correctly, it says there is “no such thing as an ‘ethos-free’ approach to RSE since it must be rooted in a particular value-system”.
Even if you take the most liberal possible view, namely that anything which takes place between sexually consenting adults is morally licit, that is still a moral view. Consent makes it moral. Aside from that, there need be no relationship, never mind marriage, and this view doesn’t care if one or both of those involved in a sexual act is being unfaithful on a partner. If it did, then it would value fidelity, and that would definitely be a value judgement.
The introduction to Flourish quotes Pope Francis to the effect that “there is no stereotype of the ideal family”. This recognises that many schoolchildren will be from lone-parent families, divorced families, or will have parents who are cohabiting.
In some Catholic schools, only a minority of children might have parents who are actually married. It is no good a Catholic school alienating all these children and their families.
The challenge is to present Catholic teaching in a way that is non-judgemental, but at the same time does not simply relativise that same teaching and is true to the Catholic vision of sex and relationships.
The introduction to Flourish acknowledges that primary schools will have LGBTI children and says the RSE programme “must not promote shame, but seek to reaffirm that every human being is made in the image and likeness of God and is loved by God as they are”.
It adds: “However, the Church’s teaching in relation to marriage between a man and a woman cannot be omitted”.
In lesson three for fifth class pupils, the issue is addressed again and acknowledges romantic feelings between people of the same-sex as well as people of the opposite-sex.
In lesson three for sixth class pupils, it tells teachers to keep in mind that children may bring up the fact that babies can come into the world via adoption, surrogacy, fostering and to same-sex couples.
It tells them to “emphasise that children are a gift from God in all circumstances”.
But this avoids all discussion of whether all means of having children are equally ethical. For example, is paying a woman to have a baby for you (even if your egg is used) ethically the same as having the child yourself? Surrogacy and assisted human reproduction generally are full of ethical pitfalls.
Fairness
In fairness, in the same lesson, sixth class pupils are to be told that in order to bring a child into the world, the “couple need to be committed to staying together and doing the very best for their child”. It doesn’t quite recommend marriage, but does say, “A married couple, as part of their wedding vows, promise to welcome children into the world”.
To my mind, what the Flourish RSE programme does is implicitly confirm the extreme difficulty Catholic schools now face in imparting a genuinely, fully Catholic vision of sex and relationships to pupils.
It reinforces the fact that there are more Catholic schools in the country than there is realistic demand for, and this undermines the ability of those schools to have a proper Catholic ethos in multiple ways, including the teaching of RE and RSE.
We need to have fewer Catholic schools so that the remaining ones can teach the Catholic Faith more fully and more explicitly to their pupils, and in accord with the wishes of their Catholic parents.