Dad’s World with Jonathan deBurca Butler

RELIGION is causing a bit of a rift at at chez deBurca Butler these days. Not too much, no schisms to report of just yet but let’s just say that our belief systems are being put under a bit of pressure.

Neither myself nor Ciara go to Mass, we are not religious. Neither Fionn (three) or Luke (one) are baptised and, if I have my way, it will stay that way.

Ciara wants them to be baptised but not because she is religious. She just wants to make sure they get into a good school.

There has been a lot of talk about the problems surrounding entry requirements for schools in recent weeks. Both Educate Together and the Humanist Society of Ireland have been quite vocal in their calls for changes to the system.

I have tried to avoid it to be honest, mainly because if ever I decide that either of my children should be baptised that I’m not labelled a hypocrite.

This shows a lack of courage on my part and if the movement to get religion out of schools is to get anywhere, it needs as many people as possible to expose the embarrassingly stupid status quo that exists.

So here it goes.

Over 90% of primary schools in Ireland are faith-based. Almost all of them are funded, to a lesser or greater degree, by the state yet they are allowed to discriminate against children based on a faith or non-faith.

To get around this, people are forced to baptise their children to make sure they get the education they both need and deserve. I have many friends who have done this.

It is a crazy and a most unrepublican system but tellingly it is a system that tells us much about ourselves; a microcosm of how Ireland actually works.

A country where ‘playing the game’ and/or ‘just getting on with it’ are part of the social fabric.

For some people this indoctrinated hypocrisy is simply unacceptable and that, I have to say, includes myself. In effect, the system is telling you to put some water on your child’s head and you’ll be fine; you’ll get them the education they need and deserve.

But if a parent does not believe in the sacrament of baptism, the water put on the child’s head is as relevant as the bath water used to clean him every day — it means nothing.

This detail is important because by getting people to do what they don’t believe in, it fundamentally undermines parental authority — for want of a better word — over children.

Imagine the scenario:

“Am I baptised Daddy?”

“Yes, you are son.”

“Are we going to mass today so?”

“No we are not son.”

“Why not Daddy?”

“Because I don’t believe that you are old enough to get your little head around what religion is all about.”

“So why am I baptised?”

“Because we had to do it.”

“But why did you do it if you don’t believe in it?”

“Because that’s how it works.”

Far fetched as the above scenario may or may not be, the point remains the same, by playing the game you are turning yourself into a hypocrite simply because the system is forcing you to do so.

Your beliefs, or lack thereof in this case, may well be respected at dinner parties or down at the pub but when it comes to the state and how it works you are better off dispensing with them.

What chance do young children have if the only people they believe in — their parents — are not in a position to live as they believe?

It might be worth turning the scenario on its head — no pun intended.

Imagine the system were the other way around. That is, in order to get into a school you couldn’t baptise your child.

Would Christian parents be willing not to baptise their children in order to get them into a school? Somehow I doubt it.