Faith commission ‘excluded’ Catholics

Catholic education services claim that a high-powered commission that has criticised faith schools excluded them from their research.

They say the Commission on Religion and Belief in British Public Life (Corab), chaired by a former senior judge, Baroness (Elizabeth) Butler-Sloss (pictured right), failed to invite them to submit evidence for the report launched at Westminster on Monday.

The commission concluded that faith schools should admit fewer children and staff from their own religion. It stated that governments “should recognise the negative practical consequences of selection by religion in schools” including the segregation of children “by ethnicity and socioeconomic background”.

Corab also called for the legal requirement for schools to hold acts of collective worship to be scrapped.

The Catholic Education Service of England and Wales (CES) and the Scottish Catholic Education Service (SCES) say they were not approached by the commission and that the views of the Catholic community were “excluded”.

“The Butler-Sloss report shows a very limited knowledge of the current education sector. If the Catholic Church had been included in this report, perhaps some of the extreme recommend­ations in the document, especially in regard to education, might have been moderated,” said a CES spokesman.

Baroness Butler-Sloss interviewed the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Chief Rabbi as part of the commission’s research but not Cardinal Vincent Nichols.

A  spokesman for the commission claimed the cardinal declined an invitation to be interviewed. This was denied by Cardinal Nichols’ spokesman who said Corab was offered a meeting with the CES and a meeting with the cardinal at the draft conclusion stage of the report which was declined by the commission. As well as expressing unease about faith schools, Corab’s report, entitled “Living with Difference”, calls for a Magna Carta-style statement of values for public life, criticising the Government’s “fundamental British values” as inspired by the counter-terrorism strategy, leaving many Muslims feeling excluded.

It also recommends that Anglican bishops should make way for non-Christian faith representatives in the House of Lords; making the next coronation “pluralist” rather than purely a Church of England ceremony; allowing non-believers to deliver BBC Radio 4’s “Thought for the Day”; and featuring non-Christian religions in BBC1’s Songs of Praise. A spokesman for the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales said: “We ­welcome the report’s view that religion continues to play a ­significant role in this country. Seeing faith as a problem that needs to be contained and managed is a mistake, failing to acknowledge the central role of religion in the integral human development of each person and the contribution religions make to society as a whole, for example in education, health care and care of the vulnerable.”
A spokesman for Corab said the commission would like to have met with more Catholics “but it was not for want of trying”. He stressed separate approaches had been made to the bishops’ conference and to Cardinal Nichols.