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.