Parents’ role in study of faith in the spotlight

Archbishop of Armagh Eamon Martin suggested this as a likely positive outcome of education policy changes that he raised concerns about, such as the preparation for sacraments being moved outside of class times at non-Catholic schools.

The primate of the Catholic Church in all of Ireland said that, by choosing to send their children to a Catholic school, parents exercise a human and constitutional right to have them educated in accordance with their religious beliefs. However, he said the Catholic school may also be relied on too much in recent years to be the ‘driver’ in the process, rather than links being built between families, schools, and local church communities. He said it is no surprise that Catholic parents, families, and parishes will defend the spirit of their school’s ethos “against those who lack an understanding of it, or would actively seek to undermine it”.

“There is a reasonable concern that much of current educational policy in Ireland would promote a generic model of primary education and dilute the right of parents to have access to a school which unashamedly and intentionally lives by a faith-based ethos,” he told an education conference in Dublin.

Education Minister Richard Bruton plans to amend equality law to further limit the circumstances in which the faith or lack of faith of a child’s family can be used to decide enrolment applications. Mr Bruton will also remind second-level multi-denominational schools of their obligation to make alternative arrangements for children whose parents do not want them to take part in religious education.

Proposals at primary level could give schools more freedom on time dedicated to faith-specific teaching, rather than the rigid two-and-a-half hours per week currently set aside for religious education.

Archbishop Martin said religion “is not an added extra to be fitted in during break time or twilight hours or during registration” in a Catholic school.

“One wonders how a State that appears to recognise the importance of [education about religion and beliefs] and ethics, at the same time appears to want to remove religious education from the core curriculum,” he said.

He also referred to plans for the new sector of multi-denominational community national schools run by education and training boards to end faith formation during the school day.

“The challenge remains for parishes and dioceses to support families whose children attend these, and other schools which are not Catholic schools,” he said. “Situations like this will perhaps be the catalysts to restore the core responsibility for evangelisation and catechesis in Ireland to parents and family, assisted appropriately by the living parish community.”

The archbishop said the “waves of secularisation which [have] swept across Ireland” have rocked three inter-dependent pillars of parish, home, and Catholic school, that were part of a 1979 strategy to sustain and consolidate practice of the faith.

He said it is not surprising many teachers are finding themselves “left quite literally in loco parentis as the first teachers of children in the ways of faith”.