Dr John Murray
Who is the primary educator of children, their parents or the State? Is it wrong for the Catholic Church to have any control or input in schools that are publicly funded? Should Ireland’s schools, including Catholic schools, teach that all religions and belief systems are the same?
Such questions are important at any time, but even more so now when Catholic schooling in Ireland is under severe attack. True answers are found in the faith of the Church, sound philosophy and honest common sense.
The State is not the primary educator: parents are. Parents have a responsibility arising naturally from their relationship to their children.
Parents have a right not to be prevented raising their children well; they also have a right to be given reasonable public help in educating their children, with integrity, in accordance with what they consider to be true beliefs and sound values and norms. Therefore, the Church’s involvement in education is not a matter of a ‘foreign power’ or an ‘oppressive hierarchy’ unjustly interfering in a secular Republic’s state education system, as an influential few in Ireland seem to think (although matters are not always so bluntly and honestly expressed).
Pluralist system
It is not wrong for the Church to play its part in running publicly funded Catholic schools, as these schools are legitimately part of a pluralist system of schools that serve the needs and rights and responsibilities of parents and pupils in Ireland, the majority of whom are Catholic.
This includes welcoming non-Catholic pupils into the school whilst at the same time giving priority to Catholics in the relatively rare event of the school being oversubscribed.
The needs of non-Catholic pupils in Catholic schools should not be neglected; they should never be forced to participate in religion classes, practices or events.
But if all publicly-funded schools were to be turned into actual (or de facto) multi-denominational or non-denominational schools, this would be pitting the Irish state against the rights and responsibilities of a huge number of Irish parents who are Catholic (and against the Irish Constitution – article 42).
Education is one of the areas where parents, and their local community which is often the Church community, and the state (acting on behalf of society) work together in partnership. It could not be ‘inclusive’ to effectively ban Catholicism from all publicly funded schools, and thereby force Catholics to pay for their own private schools (as well as pay their taxes to support what would in reality be an atheistic or agnostic public school system).
Catholic schools are a legitimate part of the Irish education system, alongside other types of schools, and deserve public funding and support. And they deserve to be allowed to be Catholic. Their distinctiveness and difference should be respected and celebrated.
They teach about other faiths and belief systems, and respect for freedom of conscience and religion. But they do not do this in a way that teaches that the Catholic faith and moral teachings are not merely guesswork or opinions or wishful thinking or private preferences.
Religious Education in Catholic schools can be Catholic faith based and also pedagogically sound and respectful of others and the common good. It’s not fair to dismiss it as ‘indoctrination’.
Legitimacy
How many Catholic election candidates (who make up the majority of candidates in the coming election, one must presume) understand and accept the legitimacy of denominational education? How many will defend Catholic schools publicly and politically? Who will stand up for parental rights and religious freedom? Catholic voters should support only candidates who are wholeheartedly committed to vindicating our right to have denominational publicly funded schools.
Dr John Murray lectures in moral theology at the Mater Dei institute and is chairman of the Iona Institute.