A Good, Decent And Well Rounded Human Being

Fr Michael Drumm, Irelands executive chairman of the Catholic Schools Partnership, which oversees the education sector on behalf of the Irish bishops, said that new legislation, aimed at combating ongoing historical  discrimination by the Catholic church against teachers and children alike, calls it unconstitutional without once calling their traditional policies as anything but constitutional. The road is long in this flawed argument but is nearing its end. Drumm then quite blatantly uses previous brainwashed alumni to support his fixed and bayoneted point of view. Their argument is so morally wrong that it begs the question does this Irish Catholic version of Catholicism relate to a modern Ireland today aghast at the killing and murdering of babies of yesterday, and the grisly gulags of imprisoned children that numbered in the tens of thousands. I do digress.

Drumm and his alumni want some of these old crimes/sins to stand today such as being opposed to a provision in the new bill that would only ‘limit’ their ability to guarantee places to children of past pupils on the sole basic that they are a private school and therefore discrimination within it is a private matter.

They also want to keep it legal for them to turn a student away who wants to enroll at their college on grounds of race, religion and disability ; they also want to keep it legal to not have to hire but be able to fire teachers that they deem to be homosexual, unmarried mothers, or do not believe in the Catholic version of a universal God, which by small or large would go against the ethos of their traditions of bigotry.

Drumm, supposedly speaking on behalf of the cowed managers of their schools, said in his mitigating argument that it was inappropriate for the Government to legislate for a problem which affected just a small number of schools, namely those which had waiting lists. The reality is that the Catholic Church in Ireland runs and owns over 90% of all schools, and all privately run with taxpayers money whether that taxpayer likes it or not, in some form, and that fact is frightening. The small number Drumm is preaching about is what is left.

Drumm added “there is no doubt but faith-based schools – be they Catholic or Protestant – have a constitutional right to use faith-based conditions if they wish” in their entrance policies. If he stands by that view, he might like to wield the pen in his own fieldom, but when the Muslims take over, he will surely die by it at wrong end of a sword.

Today’s reality should take into context the historical weight of religion, any religion. Beyond a fair constitution, the Irish Government and any other one, should be only concerned with the equal rights of the individual, for religion is a personal point of view. At its best it should remain that way. If a parent, coming from their own traditional upbringing, continues to teach by what they think they know against what the child could learn beyond that local knowledge, for all the idealism that is meant it is not ideal for a child, be it Muslim or Catholic. The quest is to make that child into a good, decent, and well-rounded human being. The rest then, if it still exists, will take care of itself.

Barry Clifford