The leader of the Catholic Church in Ireland has raised concerns over state promotion of a “generic model of primary education” that dilutes parents’ right to a school that has an intentionally faith-based ethos.
In his keynote address to an education conference organised by the Irish Catholic newspaper in Dublin, Archbishop Eamon Martin said it was no surprise that Catholic parents and parishes defended the importance of a Catholic school ethos against those who actively sought to undermine it.
He pointed out that religion in a Catholic school is not an added extra to be fitted in during break time or twilight hours or during registration; rather, everything that happens in the school community is rooted in the Gospel values of respect for life, love, solidarity, truth and justice.
He emphasised that just as there are “intentional” Catholic families, there are “intentional” Catholic schools which celebrate their distinctiveness. And he warned that Catholic schools cannot “stand back and allow faith and religion to be sidelined or privatised out of the realm of schools and education”.
Referring to the role of the home, school and parish in handing on the faith, he suggested that these three pillars had not been fully alert to the secularising shift in the religious landscape in Ireland.
Census figures for 2016 show one in 10 people self-identifying as having no religion, while the percentage of Catholics in the population declined from 84 per cent in 2011 to 78 per cent. The Church remains the main patron of Irish primary education due to the historic role of religious orders in establishing schools.
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