Three leading Catholic educationalists have attacked a Department of Education consultation process that invites parents to consider controversial recommendations aimed at making denominational schools more ‘inclusive’.  

The recommendations include making prayers more ‘inclusive’ and preventing the ethos of denominational schools from permeating the school day.

In their submission to the consultation, Mary Immaculate College lecturers Professor Eamon Conway (pictured), Dr Rik Van Nieuwenhove and Dr Eugene Duffy say recommendations would harm the “characteristic spirit” of denominational schools

Mary Immaculate College is a Catholic teacher training college in Limerick.

The three experts also say that the Department of Education’s leaflet to parents, based on the findings of the Forum on Patronage and Pluralism in Primary Schools conveys the impression to parents that “inclusion is the exception, rather than already the norm” in denominational schools.

Their submission says: “Yet there is no evidence presented, either here or in the Forum’s Report upon which the Leaflet is based, to support the view that there is a major problem here that needs fixing.

“Contrary to the impression conveyed by this consultation process, however, it is our experience that Catholic schools already play a pivotal role in regard to integration and inclusion, and this not only within the school but also in the local community.”

The submission also criticises the leaflet for reflecting the view contained in the Forum recommendations that pluralism must be “neutral”.  

The submission says: “Genuine inclusion and pluralism does not mean diluting difference in an effort to find a bland ‘lowest common denominator’. Rather, it means respectful engagement with and learning from others, and the mutual enrichment this brings, from the perspective of being steeped in one’s own tradition.  

The authors also criticise the recommendations of the Forum Report, which said Rule 68 for National Schools, which recognises religious instruction as a fundamental part of the school day and permits a religious spirit to “inform and vivify the whole work of the school,” should be abolished.  

It also proposed that religion should be taught as a discrete subject apart from the rest of the curriculum, that hymns and prayers in denominational schools should be inclusive of the religious beliefs of all children and that denominational schools would display the emblems of other religions and celebrate their feasts.  

The submission said: “The Irish State has the obligation to facilitate the provision of education of people with non-Christian worldviews.  

“However, it cannot reasonably expect Christian schools (Catholic and Church of Ireland) to diminish their own identity and renege on their mission to provide a formation in the Christian faith for the children in their care.  

“It would seem that what is being proposed is to require Catholic schools to fulfil the State’s duty of catering for children of non-Christian parents.  

“Bizarrely, Catholic schools are to be given the impossible task of supporting all faiths and none, regardless of the impact this will have on their own characteristic spirit.

“If these proposals are implemented, a legitimate concern to safeguard the rights of a minority will effectively vitiate the rights of the majority.”