Michael Clifford: For the love of God, can't the Church stay away from sex? 

In a grown-up society, every parent would have a choice as to whether or not their children be introduced to relationship and sexuality education by a collection of bishops. That they don't is a shocking indictment in a liberal democracy

This week a new relationship and sexuality education programme for Catholic primary schools, developed by the Irish Bishops Conference, was published. The programme, entitled Flourish, is discriminatory and in conflict with the Irish Constitution.

A few years back, I asked my son what he knew about the Apostles. We were sitting on the upper deck of a bus. He looked out the window, had a think, and said, “Was there a thing about a brunch?” A what? He shrugged. 

It took me a while to cop his thought process. He knew there was something about a meal and that it wasn’t one of the three square a day. His generation are more likely to encounter a brunch than a supper. 

When I was his age, the Last Supper was seared in my brain. When I was his age, a brunch sounded like a class of a low-grade weapon.

Some time earlier, his brother was riffing about religion to me and asked, “who was that guy again who went into the desert?” I wanted to tell him that there were no guys in history prior to Christopher Columbus landing in America, and that no guys arrived in Ireland before circa 1995. Instead, I just said, “Jesus Christ was the man’s name.” 

Their ignorance of the detail of Christ’s life is attributable to their education in a multi-denominational school. They are not taught religion. There is no one true church. They are told there are lots of religions, in which people believe in different concepts, pay homage to different individuals, all designed to make the world a better place.

Those kids are growing up in a post-Catholic Ireland. I grew up in a different country. I can still remember the first time I saw a Protestant. 

He was pointed out to me by a classmate. The lad was handy at football, but what did that matter? He was doomed. While I’d be lying up in the Hereafter, he’d be wandering aimlessly out there in the ether somewhere, beyond the walls of the Kingdom of God. Nuts.

Much has changed but much remains the same. Despite transformed demographics, attitudes and thinking about education, the Catholic Church has retained patronage of more than 90% of primary schools in the State. This does not reflect the religious make-up of the population.

Instead, it’s a model of education introduced in the post-Famine years which has never been reformed to reflect society at any given time. 

Despite transformed demographics, attitudes and thinking about education, the Catholic Church has retained patronage of more than 90% of primary schools in the State. File picture

When the new, allegedly pluralist, State was formed in 1922, the Church was left at it. As the Catholic Church was dragged into disrepute in recent decades, and numbers practising plummeted, the grip on education was maintained. 

Most people, particularly outside the cities, have little choice but to send their children to a Catholic-run school.

Some say this is no big deal in the grander scheme of things and to a certain extent I agree. The child-centred approach to education advocated by groups like Educate Together was ahead of its time compared to the religious-run schools. But there has been a lot of catching-up done in that respect in the last couple of decades. There is, for the greater part, consensus in how best to educate children today.

In one crucial respect, however, the church’s outsized role in education is little short of ludicrous. As when the institution dominated society as a whole, it remains, in its current bailiwick of influence, obsessed with sex. 

This week a new relationship and sexuality education programme for Catholic primary schools, developed by the Irish Bishops Conference, was published.

The programme, entitled Flourish, is discriminatory and in conflict with the Irish Constitution. An introduction says when discussing LGBT matters, the “church’s teaching in relation to marriage between a man and a woman cannot be omitted”. 

So the education of the vast majority of children in the State manages to slip in something that is contrary to the Irish Constitution. Is there anywhere else that the church feels its mores supersede the law?

Just as I was conditioned to believe that Protestants were children of a lesser God, are today’s kids to understand that gay people are somehow not worthy of the same liberties afforded to heterosexuals?

Sex and puberty are, according to the document, “a gift from God.” I thought they were staging posts in the biological process. Does this infer that erectile dysfunction is also a gift from God, or does He only hand out the good stuff? We won’t even mention the menopause.

Then we come to some really dodgy manoeuvring. “Sexual love belongs within a committed relationship.” 

Hold your horses, there. When I was a lad there was no faffing around. Sex went with marriage. Anything outside of that and you were playing with fire. Now we’re told there has been a little unofficial revision some 2,000 years after the Bible first hit the bookshops. Now you just have to be “committed” to a relationship.

Commitment is a very subjective concept. Some people feel, after a feed of pints, committed to a relationship that might be only hours old. Have the bishops gone for the a la carte option here because they’ve given up the ghost on trying to control the biological impulses of the human condition?

The biggest problem with all this muck is that it is being foisted on a captive audience. In a grown-up society, every parent would have a choice as to whether or not their children be introduced to relationship and sexuality education by a collection of bishops. 

That most parents have to put up with it by default is a shocking indictment in a liberal democracy.

There are certainly ways the bishops could expend energy in the education system without being in conflict with science or the law. This was apparent during the week when the Archbishop of Dublin Dermot Farrell spoke about the “commodification” of the third-level sector.

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He told an ecumenical service for academics in Trinity College that universities sometimes “lose sight of what led to their foundation and of what their authentic mission consists”.

“Marketable skills are essential but universities also have to provide enduring values,” he said. “Information, knowledge, even wisdom need to find a right relationship to the earth and all its inhabitants.” 

Amen to that. While the demise of the stranglehold enjoyed by organised religion is largely positive, it has been replaced to a large extent by a consumerist society. There is a growing suspicion that third-level education is increasingly designed to suit the jobs market at the expense of education about life and the world around us.

If the church is looking to promote the more enlightening tenets of its philosophy in respect of education, it would do well to concentrate on tackling that drift.

For the love of God though, stay away from the sex. You’d have to wonder what the guy who went into the desert would make of it all.