Church control of schools should end

YOU report (November 4) how the European Court of Human Rights wants to ban crucifixes from school classrooms in Italy. Such a ban would be welcome but in the view of our group, Count Me Out, it would not go far enough.

In Ireland, 92% of primary schools are run under the patronage of the Catholic Church. This is an unsustainable position given the changing demographics of the country and the fact that more and more people are walking away from a church that has lost its moral authority. The spokesperson quoted in the report stated that the Catholic ethos of schools is “supported by Catholic parents”. This truism hides the fact that many parents of children enrolled in Catholic schools are not themselves practising Catholics.

Our group has received numerous queries and emails from parents who would wish to give their child a secular education, but have been forced to send them to the local Catholic school and, in some instances, forced to have them baptised in order to gain enrolment.