Recent press reports say that Catholic Church and Church of Ireland officials have written to managements of primary schools to require baptismal certificates for all new entrants. The purpose is to maintain the ethos of Catholic and Protestant schools.

Since the presence of a minority of non-catholic children does not affect the religious instruction of catholics,the question is how could it affect the ethos? Are the churchmen implying that the minority presence somehow contaminates the moral outlook of catholic and protestant children?

Instead of retreating into a narrowly provincial,exclusionary version of their faith,in the multicultural society that Ireland is becoming the churchmen ought to show some Christian charity towards minority children by admitting them.

If the churches proceed with this segregation, it will lead to the creation or reinforcement of non-Christian minority ghettoes as minorities are forced to live in areas where they can access the relatively small number of Educate Together schools, or set up their own fee paying private schools,many of them in mosques.This ghetto tendency would delay the full integration of non-Christian immigrants into Irish society for generations.

Couldn't the government build enough schools for minorities? It is useless to hope that the government will build enough Educate Together schools to accomodate the needs of non-Christian immigrants in the foreseeable future,witness the poor conditions of many primary schools using prefabs.

As taxpayers,and under human rights entitlements,significant populations of non-Christian immigrants and non-Christian Irish are entitled to widespread access to educational services. One way to bring this about in the short run would be for the Department of Education to dictate admissions policies and non-Christian quotas for the primary schools.There is a compelling social interest for this and after all, he who pays the piper calls the tune.The quotas could be based on census bureau data and volumes of applications.

While imposing quotas may seem politically impossible,it may not be so in another decade.An article in the April 9 Sunday Independent "More people having brunch" quotes MRBI figures on the decline of religiosity: 1.Just half of Catholics go to Sunday mass v 90% in 1977 2. 82% said their children are free to make up their own mind on religion v 7% in 1977 3. Atheists are 12% of the population.

Finally,politicians should not be afraid to lecture the churches on the ethics and morality of a state-financed school system excluding a sizeable minority of children.After all,the churches are continually lecturing politicians on politics!

patslatt

What does a baptismal certificate actually change?

__________________
Using P.ie again on a trial basis...

To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
- Nerdishness abounds!

Seeing as how the taxpayer pays for the maintenance and building of most primary schools and for the payment of the salaries of the staff of these schools, the time has come for the ending of the system that allows for the local Catholic PP or COI minister to be appointed as school manager and for primary schools to become nondenominational with religious instruction being the sole responsibility of each religious denomination.

I haven't seen any of these press reports. Where was it reported?

As regards your point about politicians lecturing Church leaders, the separation of Church and State is a two-way street. The Church musn't impose its morality upon the State and vice versa.

It was in the Indo a couple weeks ago and Orla Barry did a show on it. People were phoning in telling her that they were having their children baptised just so they could get them into a local school.

I fully agree with the OP.

After we learn to integrate non-Catholic and non-COI children, we can start including minority ethnic/minority religion (or lack thereof) teachers into our schools!

Ridiculous that 98% of the schools wouldn't hire me because of my lack of religion, yet I have to pay full taxes for these schools to exist and run. Educate Together schools do not receive the same funding as these schools!

In any case, until the Church(es) relinquish their control over the DoE&S, this is a lost cause. Mary Hanafin and her ilk are only too happy to take a hands off approach and insiste time and time again that the schools are in full control of their own admissions policies and hiring. Isn't this a convenient way to keep the status quo (majority religions/culture ruling the roost) while still shoving the Intercultural Education priniciples down teachers' necks with the other hand!!

Very sad state of affairs.

How many times do we have to go over this? Well play it again, Sam.

The Department recently announced that it would begin establishing more state (i.e. non-denominational) schools; a decision which received the, er, Churches blessings.

And Educate Together schools do not receive less state funding than denominational schools- they just don't receive ecclesiastical funding. Surely you're not suggesting that is unfair.

__________________
We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the internet, we know this is not true.

As far as I am aware, a Catholic or Protestant school can only turn away a child on religious grounds if there is another school in the catchment area that can more appropriately admit the child. (i.e., a Catholic school can turn away a C.of.I. child if there is a C.of I. school in the catchment area, and vice versa).

However, if there a situation where there is no appropriate school convenient, say a Muslim family turned up at the door of a school in rural ireland, and the next nearest Muslim school was in Dublin, 150 km away, i think the Catholic school would (eventually) have to admit the Muslim child. (not sure of the exact mechanics of it though).

It has been an issue before, I know, with Jehovah's Witnesses children. I know of one incident in a certain area, where a Catholic school was basically FORCED to admit Jehovah's Witness children by the Dept. of Ed., but I am not sure how the situation worked out.

I don't think the schools are all that empowered in terms of refusing entry. Rather, their powers lie in exercising preference. If they have one place and two applicants, they may prefer one who is a member of their own religion. So, if a school has lots of empty places it can't really say no to anyone. But if a school has lots of applicants it can't say yes to everyone- so it prioritises.

And as we all know re-zoning and construction are finely tuned arts in Ireland, as opposed to planning which is something of a taboo. Hence lots of young children in areas with very few schools- am I right in recollecting that a school in Meath was running a dual junior infant programme, one class by day and one class by evening.

I don't think the churches are being scapegoated on this issue- despite the knocks since the mid-ninetees the collar must still demand more political respect than the stethoscope. But I don't imagine the politicians will mind if people turn against the churches for what is the fruit if their (the politicians') labour.

The problem is too few schools in fastly developing areas. Still though, we could take a page from the French presidential election and blame the European Central Bank. It's convoluted, but not entirely illogical. Now, that would be scapegoating.

__________________
We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the internet, we know this is not true.

So basically only Catholic schools in areas where there is a shortage of school places (in other words only a couple of dozen schools in the country, out of a couple of thousand primary schools) have this ability.

So in other words, you need not worry about the whole baptism certificate issue unless you live in Dublin 15, or a few towns in North County Dublin, Kildare, Wicklow and Meath?