Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin. Picture: Niall Carson/PA
Dr Martin told a gathering that he had an issue with parents who baptised their children in order to gain entry to a Catholic school. There have been numerous reports in recent years of parents who are not practicing Catholics doing just that.
“Baptising children simply to be able to attend a specific school is an abuse of baptism,” he told a schools’ mass at St Mary’s Pro Cathedral in Dublin.
He has a point. Baptism is a sacrament of the Church. Engaging in it with a hidden agenda is certainly an abuse. Yet the archbishop might well have asked another question of those who would act in such a matter. Who could blame them?
It’s not a matter of abusing the sacrament to get into a specific school, but of doing so in some cases to get into any school at all. The Catholic Church enjoys patronage of more than 90% of primary schools in a State where practice of the religion is down around 30%.
Take an example of a large town or city suburb that has, say five local schools, four of which are under the patronage of the church. The non-Catholic parent is faced with the scenario of confining their chances to getting a place in the fifth school. Everybody wants to send their children to the “best” school available and if that happens to be one of the Catholic schools in the above scenario, our non-Catholic parent is guaranteed to see their child miss out.
In rural areas, the absence of a baptismal cert puts the child at the bottom of a waiting list. That’s how things go in a patronage system that is 30 to 50 years out of date.
I have respect for those who practice their religion, and particular respect for Diarmuid Martin, a lonely progressive voice in the Church. Yet I would advise any parent to have their child baptised in the interests of education. This may well be an abuse, but what do you expect in a system whereby a Catholic education is the default setting of the primary school system.
That’s just one of a number of crazy outcomes that exist in a patronage system that is dysfunctional. Dr Martin touched on another in that particular talk — the matter of teaching religion.
“Teachers who do not believe should not feel compelled to teach religious education or faith formation,” he said.
“Those who do not believe — who may very well be men and women of great personal integrity and goodness — are in any case not the ones who can transmit what faith means.” Again, he is spot on. But put yourself in the shoes of a young teacher applying for a job. You appear before an interview panel, which may or may not include the priest who is a member of the board of management. Are you prepared to teach religion and faith formation, which are basic tenets of our ethos?
Of course you are because if you say you’re not you can be damn sure the next applicant will nod vigorously at the question, ensuring that he or she has a better chance of landing the job. The reality is that any teacher who really wants the job will swear blind that they’d be only too happy to teach religion.
In a survey by the INTO two years ago, teachers were asked whether they “willingly taught religion”. Only 49.17% responded in the affirmative.
So at least half of the teachers in Catholic schools don’t even believe what they are imparting. Diarmuid Martin is of the opinion that they should not feel compelled to teach religion, but in the real world no teacher is going to stand on such a matter of principle unless he or she is entirely secure in their employment, and have no ambitions for career advancement.
These are features of the dysfunctional patronage system. The Church controls the schools, but at what cost to the tenets of the religion, and does anybody in the hierarchy, apart from Dr Martin, care about these things? Or is the imperative to retain as much societal power as possible through the status quo.
In 2011, then Education minister Rúairí Quinn set up the Forum for Patronage and Pluralism to provide a roadmap for, among other things, how the Church should divest itself from some of the schools. Despite the best efforts of those involved, little has changed. Two schools have been handed over by the church, out of around 2,900.
The stock defence from the hierarchy is that it can only act with the consent of parents; and parents want to stick with having their children educated under a Catholic ethos.
But what is that ethos? Certainly, some parents, most likely a minority, have strong views on having their children raised in the faith. There are also those cultural Catholics who want to see their offspring go through the sacraments, as they themselves did.
One attraction of the Catholic school for some of that cohort is that they can subcontract out the religion business to the school. They don’t have to involve themselves with that stuff. It gets taken care of in school, just like maths and PE.
For these people, a change of school might force them to involve themselves in preparing for the sacraments, or, God forbid, organising it outside of school hours, as is done under patronages such as Educate Together. Some would consider having to involved themselves in the inculcation of religions as an imposition.
Apart from any of that, one might well ask what exactly consists of a Catholic ethos in education these days.
In a recent contribution on Today FM’s The Last Word, the theologian Vincent Twomey pointed to a culture of “inclusion” as evidenced by how immigrants have been integrated into Catholic schools in this country.
Another “expert” in this area, Dr Niall Coll, touched on a similar theme in The Irish Times recently. He concluded that the ethos was “a vision of education as essentially a humanising endeavour characterised by love, home and social justice, forming young people who will serve the world with their gifts.”
Both these gents may well be learned men but they appear to be making the basic mistake of confusing religion with morality. Their respective characterisations of a Catholic ethos could easily be applied to the ethos of any educator anywhere in this country and beyond. In fact, the inference that the virtues mentioned apply to a Catholic ethos only is downright insulting to all other educators.
That’s the problem when a system is dysfunctional. The air tends to thicken with accusations of abuse and the dispensing of casual insults.
But enough of all that at this time of joy and goodwill. Happy Christmas and keep an eye out for those who are lonely at this time of year.
Michael Clifford
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