The new
Catholic Schools Partnership (CSP) has just issued a very good and timely position
paper called ‘Catholic schools in the Republic of Ireland’. It is timely
because of the forum on school patronage established by Ruairi Quinn.

Minister
Quinn caused quite a stir last month when he said he would like to see around
half of Catholic primary schools given to other patron bodies.

Fr Michael
Drumm, head of the CSP, said at the launch of the paper that he thinks a figure
of 10 percent is more realistic than the 50 percent figure. Maybe he is going
low-ball and the Minister high-ball and the final figure will be half-way in
between.

But as Fr
Drumm points out, and as the paper points out, the figure can’t be dictated
from the top, either by the Catholic bishops or by the Government. Instead
local communities need to make clear what they want for their schools and a few
pilot schemes to begin with are probably the best way to find out how local
communities can best make their feelings known, again as the paper suggests.

The paper
also tackles some of the secular mythology that has built up around
denominational education in general. One is that giving public funds to
denominational schools somehow violates Church/State separation.

But as the
paper states: “Throughout the world democratic societies provide funding and
legal protection for a plurality of schools.”

It reminds
people that the principle of parental choice is “recognised in most democracies”
and enshrined both in the Irish Constitution and international law.

It
challenges the notion that religious education is inherently a form of
indoctrination and offers a useful definition of indoctrination as “a
deliberate harming of students by undermining their ability to reason”. (Does
teaching them about Jesus Christ undermine their ability to reason?)

Although it
doesn’t quite use this language, it also points out that religion is not only force
with the potential to divide and that social class is a much stronger dividing
factor in Irish life.

It says
that there is no such thing as a value-neutral education and that all schools
offer a certain vision of the human person. And of course, every vision of the
human person will be controversial to some people so why single out the religious
vision of the human person?

Importantly,
the CSP invites anyone interested to respond to the paper and gives a deadline
of May 16 to do so.