CATHOLIC parents are obliged by canon law that church law to send schools their children to Catholic where these exist in the neighbourhood and are good schools.

When Catholics bring a child for baptism they are asked by the priest. "You have asked to have your child baptised. In doing so, you are accepting the responsibility of training him/ her in the practice of the Faith." Baptism is given on the condition of the parents practising the Catholic religion and sending the child to a Catholic school if possible.

Catholics cannot make individual only decisions based on a liberal secular approach to life and family. Catholics are part of the Eucharistic community. This link is renewed every Sunday at Mass. They must make decisions about their children as members of the Catholic community.

In such a community, rich and poor must stand together and help each other. The richer members of the Catholic community, must give their talents, time, influence and money to support the education of the poor and their development.

It would be undesirable in Northern Ireland, where Catholics have had to struggle for their schools for generations and had to spend over £300 million pounds in real terms on building schools, if the richer people abandoned the Catholic schools to patronise the Protestant or state schools.

Integrated schools were started by the British and given favoured legislative status as a "dirty political trick" to undermine Catholic schools providing a specific religious ethos and moral training in family life as well as a distinctive Irish culture.

One must recognise that many dedicated persons with high ideals have joined in running and teaching in integrated schools, but these schools do not have the Catholic ethos which is essential to prepare Catholics for their mission in the world.

WHAT is the Catholic ethos? It is the presentation of a third level of devotion and dedication to Jesus through Mary on top of the training in intellectual research and culture. Without this engagement of the heart and passions of man in love of God and his neighbour, persons will crumble before the arguments and presentation of secular liberal humanism.

Knowledge is not enough, other wise all our university professors would be lined up for beatification. Children must be trained in virtue that is good habits of the will, not of the intellect. This is done by prayer, penance and the love of God.

The Catholic ethos means that the school reflects the faith of the family, the mini church, and of the whole church as exemplified in loyalty to the teachings of the Pope and the magisterium. The will is trained by devotional practices. Prayers are said before class the dead are prayed for masses are celebrated regularly special devotions to Our Lady are held. Pictures and statues of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Mary Mother of God, the saints and the Pope are displayed.

This devotion is backed up by the teaching of the Creed and the moral teachings of the church, especially in regard to justice, the sacredness of human life and morality in marriage and the family. All of this is essential and irreplaceable in combating the rampant scientific paganism of the Western multi media liberal and secular world.

A distinguished journalist once asked me: "Surely you don't say that there are Catholic physics and Catholic chemistry?" I said. "Yes, there are. In the science laboratories of a Catholic school, there is always, a crucifix reminding the students there are limits to the uses of science, that it cannot be used to exterminate mankind by atomic warfare, by poison gas, by abortion and genetic engineering."

The duties of loving and sacrificial service of all mankind represented by the Cross inspire the young scientists towards the feeding of the hungry, the care of the sick and the protection of human rights."

Our Catholic young people are not saints, but they are given the means to conquer the passions by a greater passion of love of God and their fellow men to add to the good example of the love of their parents. We admit that we do wrong, God forgive us, but one can claim that we do not think wrong. We know what sin is we do not call it virtue as the liberal agenda does. We prepare for First Communion, for Confirmation, for adulthood with a sense of mission.

We can point to hospitals, orphanages, missionary institutes, leper hospitals, schools and universities created by Catholic missions throughout the world. Where are these similar buildings and institutions of the liberal agenda and the multi media millionaires?

CATHOLIC schools teach generosity by the Cross and the Eucharist. We break our bread to share it with the world of the victims of modern living and modern science, of greed and passion. We believe in the power of prayer, especially the Mass, to turn back the powers of evil threatening the world, the passion and the pride of man.

For this task, the united effort of all baptised members of the Catholic Church is required. Loyalty to the work of the church in service of Catholic education is required.

Note how many political and media interests are concerned with the destruction of the church's influence in education. They resent the way Catholic schools train the will to oppose what they have to offer, namely, the luxury of the world. We believe that Catholic schools help ecumenism and true pluralism by presenting a positive and clear educational tradition with a message of love of all men, especially the poor.

In Northern Ireland, in all Ireland, there is a battle for control of the minds of the young. The successes of the liberal agenda, especially since the British Abortion Bill of 1967 and the attempts to introduce contraception into the Republic since 1969, have been damaging. The population has gone down the individual can choose sex, drink, drugs and violence as he pleases the sense of community welfare is gone.

Our Catholic schools stand directly in the path of the monster, who recoils at the sight of loving communities directed to the love of God and their fellow men and women by prayer and penance. The schools will save, Ireland.

Our Catholic parents are tax payers. It is unjust to penalise Catholic schools by paying them less than state schools and putting them last in the queue for improvements in either Northern or southern Ireland.