Fr Niall Coll during his speech at the conference.
Renewing Catholic education was at the heart of a national conference held at Cistercian College, Roscrea on Friday. Some 200 delegates from all over the country – North and South – came together to share their hopes for a re-visioning of the heart of Catholic education.
The conference – marking the 50th anniversary of the Vatican II document on Christian education Gravissimum Educationis – was held against the backdrop of a number of challenges and attacks on Catholic schools and faith formation in both jurisdictions on the island.
There was clear energy in the room and a determination to articulate the values that infuse Catholic education in a more coherent fashion.
The Pope’s representative in Ireland, Archbishop Charles Brown paid tribute to all those who are defending the rights of parents to choose a Catholic education for their children, often in a hostile media environment.
He pointed out that Catholic schools in Ireland are acknowledged as amongst the best in the world and underlined the fact that many non-Catholic parents choose a Catholic school both for the high academic quality and the values that inspire the school community.
However, Archbishop Brown also warned that without a conscious effort to defend the ethos, a Catholic school runs the risk of descending in to “vague spiritualism”.
He paid tribute to Mary Immaculate College Professor of Theology Dr Eamonn Conway for his “spirited and convincing advocacy for Catholic education”.
Fr Aelred Magee, a monk of Mount St Joseph Abbey in Roscrea, gave an overview of Vatican II’s teaching on education in general, and Christian education in particular.
He said that while perennial truths do not change, the challenge for Catholic schools in the 21st Century is how these truths are applied today.
He said that schools cannot shrink from their responsibility for faith formation, pointing out that Vatican II taught that all Catholics are evangelisers by virtue of their baptism.
Relationship
In his remarks, Prof. Eamonn Conway reflected on Pope Francis’s relationship with young people. He expressed the view that the modern papacy had developed a special relationship with younger people and wondered aloud whether this was because the world needed a father figure and had identified one in the person of the Pontiff. He said that Pope Francis wants the world to discuss the “joy and importance of fatherhood” while not ignoring the fact that motherhood is often also in crisis in the modern world.
He said more consideration had to be given to the fact that 84% of primary school teachers are female and, therefore, it is rare for boys to meet male teachers.
Prof. Daire Keogh, President of St Patrick’s College in Drumcondra told the conference that Catholic schools had nothing to fear from diversity. In fact, he insisted that Church teaching backs the rights of all parents to choose an education for their children consistent with their values.
He called on the Church in Ireland to ensure that the process of divestment – whereby some local Catholic schools are made available to a non-religious patron body – be intensified and schools identified to provide for genuine choice. However, he also warned that there is too often a “simplistic narrative” around divestment.
Choice in education, he said, would facilitate the emergence of a healthy education system which would facilitate parental choice and the development of authentic Catholic schools.
He said that for such schools to be authentic, Catholics had to grow in their confidence in articulating the Faith and the values of Catholic education. While acknowledging that the Catholic sector is under considerable threat, he pointed out how this has historically always been the case.
Prof. Keogh warned that there is an onus on Boards of Management of Catholic schools to constantly ask themselves “what should our Catholic schools look like?”
He criticised an impoverished vision that saw religious imagery such as crucifixes as mere artefacts in a school rather than core elements of the faith of believers.
Prof. Keogh said the most successful schools are where the vision is clearly articulated. He cautioned the Church against wanting to hold on to schools for the sake of it, pointing out that the Church’s vision of education is never to be property managers, but guarantors of a vision.
Consultation
David Quinn of The Iona Institute challenged what he described as many of the myths around faith-based education.
He described the current consultation being carried out by the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment on the future of education about religion as a “farce”. Mr Quinn pointed out that the Education about Religions and Beliefs (ERB) and Ethics programme essentially takes an agnostic approach to religion, which, he said, was incompatible with a Catholic school.
In his presentation to the conference, Mr Quinn outlined some of the common criticisms of faith-based schools and rejected allegations that they were not inclusive.
He said it suited the Government to have the current debate about school enrolment policies concentrate exclusively on religious grounds as this deflected from the fact that the State has failed to provide enough places at primary schools for children.
He insisted that where schools were over-subscribed – about 20% of schools – admissions policies had to be put in place. Mr Quinn also pointed out that where there is a first-come, first-served approach to enrolment this often discriminates against children from the Travelling Community and from immigrant backgrounds.
The conference was organised by Fr Aelred Magee and the deputy president of Cistercian College Niall McVeigh.
Catholic schools ‘need to find their voice’
Catholic schools in the Republic have a lot to learn from their counterparts in the North a leading educationalist has insisted.
Fr Niall Coll, a lecturer at St Mary’s University College in Belfast told the National Conference on Catholic Education that schools in the North are “more experienced in and comfortable talking about the distinctive character of faith-based education”.
He said that Catholic schools north of the border are “well-versed in the need to demonstrate that Catholic education can have no truck with sectarianism, that it offers a vison of education open to all who can value and appreciate its characteristic ethos”.
He also said that as the Republic moves towards a more pluralist model of education, it is important to realise that Catholic schools in the North “more than happily co-exist alongside state controlled, integrated and other types of schooling”.
He reiterated the point of many speakers that more thought needs to be given to ethos. “Many of us involved in Catholic education struggle to articulate what precisely constitutes the Catholic ethos in education, since ethos is, traditionally, more assumed and taken for granted than defined in Irish schools”.
Reflecting on the upcoming anniversary of the 1916 Easter Rising, Fr Coll pointed out that “we live in an Ireland which no longer needs Catholicism to underpin its sense of itself… In this new context Catholic schools often find themselves in the line of fire from the media, politicians and the academy.
“How, it is often asked, can there be a place for publically funded denominational schools in an ever more secularised, pluralist, secular, multi-religious republic?”
He warned that “faith communities can no longer take their schools for granted, but must try to put language on what precisely constitutes the distinctive ethos that they so value and wish to see continue, and also demonstrate to wider public opinion the added-value their schools bring to wider society.
“Catholic education needs to find its voice in the public square,” he said.