The distinctive identity of Catholic schools must be allowed to thrive, or they will lose the ability to maintain their identity, Dr Diarmuid Martin, the Archbishop of Dublin (pictured), has said.

Dr Martin noted that the Catholic schools system “was one that was marked in its overall openness to children of different cultural and religious backgrounds”

But he added: “There are limits to its ability to integrate and still maintain its Catholic identity. 

“If the Catholic identity of the school is not allowed to flourish, the Catholic school will slowly lose the ability to maintain its identity.”

Speaking to the annual conference of the Catholic Primary Schools Management Association, he said that “Catholic schools are not schools with a Catholic veneer; they are inserted within the task of passing on what the teaching of Jesus Christ signifies and entails”.

His words come as the Government considers proposals which threaten the ethos of denominational schools. Preliminary recommendations made by the Advisory Group of the Government’s Forum on Patronage and Pluralism suggested, among other things, that denominational schools should be required to make the display of religious symbols “inclusive of all belief systems in the school”.

Dr Martin warned that that the longer the Catholic school system retained “an almost monopoly situation” in the provision of primary education, “the stronger the pressures will be to advance the State school part of the balance, and to downplay not just the Catholic identity of our school, but even the possibility of maintaining truly Catholic schools”. 

“A system of plurality of patronage must leave space for truly Catholic schools,” Dr Martin said.

He said: “If we believe in the value of Catholic schools then we have to stand up for the raison d’etre of Catholic schools. We have to make explicit our conviction that even in a more secularised and pluralist society religion plays an important role in educational policy. 

Last year, the Advisory Group also proposed the abolition of Rule 68 of the Rules for National Schools which says that ”a religious ethos should inform and vivify the whole work of the school”

It also recommended that denominational schools should ensure that communal prayers and hymns are “respectful of the beliefs and culture of all children in the school”. 

Dr Martin also defended the State funding of school chaplains, in the context of suggestions in the media that the €9 million spent annually on chaplains would be better spent on career guidance counsellors.

He said that he was “constantly being told by Principals of the great contribution that school Chaplains play in changing the overall atmosphere and therefore the educational effectiveness of a school”.

Dr Martin said: “There is an argument to show that their contribution to schools is certainly not marginal. One can then reasonably ask if attempts to downplay the role of school chaplains really springs from a failure to recognise the role of religion in education.”