It’s time to give faith teaching back to families and the Church

GETTING the boot into the Catholic Church is always a good start for any Labour minister. Complaining that the Catholic hierarchy had not provided him with examples of how inclusiveness can work in Catholic schools two years after he had asked them to worked well for Ruairi Quinn before the teachers’ conferences got down to what mattered: restoring pay rates.

The subtext, that the Catholic hierarchy hasn’t provided examples because none exist, is there for those who wish to read it. The media love it because their perspective on religion in schools in Ireland is mostly that of a rebellious child who is told to do something he does not want to do.

Maybe that’s because the people working in the media in Ireland people got their religion in school. Clearly, there are some children whose parents have no choice of primary school other than a Catholic one, who don’t want their kids to be prepared for sacraments in class and are offered no alternative or feel excluded by taking it. Clearly that is a serious issue particularly, as Minister Quinn mentioned in his speech to the INTO conference, those of no religion are the “religious” group in the country.

But my argument against faith-formation in schools is one which is never made: it has to stop because it means the large number of children who want Catholic sacraments are not properly prepared. Preparation for Catholic sacraments should happen outside the class-room and be conducted by clergy and lay volunteers exactly as happens with the “Do This in Memory” and “You Shall be My Witnesses” programme right now.

If you go to a Catholic school these programmes are presented as an “add-on” to your class-room preparation. If you go to a school which isn’t Catholic, they’re the only way to go. Which presents the irony that the only kids who are sure of good preparation for Catholic sacraments are those going to Protestant and non-denominational schools.

Kids at Catholic schools are prepared in noisy classrooms by teachers who may or may not have any sincere understanding of what they are doing. Why would they have? How many people do you know who have really thought about what religion means? Very few, I’d say. You can hardly expect the second and sixth class teachers in your local primary school to automatically be among them.

It is sheer lunacy to ask the teacher who is qualified to teach your kid English and Irish and maths to be automatically qualified to prepare children for the sacraments of First Communion and Confirmation. Of course you will get some teachers with a vocation for it. But most will grind the kids through the book, which the kids will treat with the same kind of derision as their times tables. They do it because they have to and because they have their eye of the prize of the big day.

The Catholic Church keeps its numbers up. It gets the kids when they’re too young to say, “I won’t” and sometimes gets them even when their parents say, “You won’t.” I know all about Communion-envy, as the only little girl on the road with no white dress because my parents said we were something called “Protestant”.

But what do kids really learn in school about the sacraments? That it’s something you do because your teacher says so. Which means you first steps as an adult are likely to be steps away from the church.

A lot of parents are barely involved in their children’s sacraments. That suits most parents very well. It may be one of the reasons that denominational education has been found by the Commission on Patronage to be so popular. Parents can sit on the fence about Catholicism while their kids are put over the jumps by their teachers.

When a friend of mine volunteered to lead the eight-month “Do This in Memory” preparation course for First Communion at her local parish because she wanted the sacrament to have real meaning for her child, the mothers at the school-gate laughed at her for being a Holy Johanna. But they were all there on Communion Day with their skirts up their bottoms and their six-inch heels.

“The height of your heels shows the depth of your religious conviction,” another parent explained to me as we watched the centre aisle turn into a catwalk at the First Communion of one of my children.

Catholic Communions and Confirmations are great days out and great celebrations of children in their communities. As a member of the Church of Ireland married to a Catholic, I have thoroughly enjoyed going through Catholic rituals with my children.

But for the most part they have not moved them on in a religious or moral sense, partly because the children are too young and partly because they were prepared, albeit with a lot of care, with 29 peers in a noisy classroom.

The comparison with Church of Ireland Confirmation at my local church last month was stark. The young people in second year at secondary school went to night classes with the rector and her assistant for several months. From behind the coffee urn one morning, I heard the rector discussing one child’s preparation with her mother. It was clear that a serious encounter was going on for this young person on the cusp of adulthood, that the big moral issues she would face in life were being discussed.

THE classes didn’t end after Confirmation, they continued. And then, one Sunday, the altar was cleared for the young people themselves to run the service. These shy 14-year-olds, the girls shivering in skimpy skirts and the boys with guitars, found the courage to stand on that altar and speak what was important to them. Strains of rap song Macklemore’s Same Love about coming out as a gay person wafted from the altar: “If you preach hate at the service those words aren’t anointed/That holy water that you soak in has been poisoned/When everyone else is more comfortable remaining voiceless/Rather than fighting for humans that have had their rights stolen/I might not be the same, but that’s not important/

No freedom ‘til we’re equal, damn right I support it..”

I was sitting beside an ancient lady in a big felt hat and I thought I saw steam coming out of her ears. But she turned to me with her face glowing and said: “Wasn’t that wonderful?”

And it was. It was about handing over responsibility to the young people. It was their Confirmation, not ours. That is what Confirmation is meant to be about: admission to the community of the Church for yourself, according to your conscience. That is why the Catholic Church should be fighting to take faith formation out of schools and back to themselves.

By continuing faith-formation in schools, we take Christianity away from families and communities and away, ultimately, from children themselves. We make it something they have to get down them rather than something for which they take responsibility.

And we do this so that parents can get away with taking none.