THE ARCHBISHOP of Dublin, Most Rev Diarmuid Martin, has criticised Catholic parents who "send their children to schools precisely because there is less diversity in them". Patsy McGarry, Religious Affairs Correspondent, reports.
He said he "would be unhappy if Catholic secondary schools were to become mainly elitist".
"I hear of parents - even those who might fit into the social categorisation of 'good Catholic parents' - making decisions with their feet or with their four-wheel-drives to opt out of diversity in schools," he said.
Archbishop Martin was speaking in Maynooth last night where he delivered the NUI convocation centenary annual public lecture on the role of education in the new Ireland.
He said he recently established special enrolment measures in an area of the Dublin Archdiocese to help ensure that schools there, while maintaining their Catholic ethos, would establish a realistic mix of religious and ethnic make-up more or less in line with the overall mix of the area. "My hope is that this will help avoid some of the problems which had emerged last year," he said.
But, he continued, "there are limits to what social engineering can attain and it can rebound in unexpected ways. The volume of the racist or quasi-racist mail that I received following that modest decision of mine did not encourage me."
Integration required "a positive decision by a community", he said.
"I have anecdotal evidence that this is not always happening," he said, adding that "mobility is a characteristic of our times . . . But part of that mobility has been the result of parents opting out of diversity of an ethnic kind, or of diversity due to a high incidence of children with special educational needs." While recognising "that parents have the right to choose the school they consider best, the exercise of rights must also incorporate concern for the common good".
He "would be very unhappy to find that Catholic schools were being deliberately less open to diversity than others, and where necessary, I am prepared to take steps to redress such situations".
He would be unhappy if Catholic secondary schools were to become mainly elitist, he said. The abolition of university fees meant more people could send their children to fee-paying schools at second level, which helped secure access to university.
He was happy "to see the emergence of a new model of patronage linked with the VEC in North Dublin" but "puzzled as to why the system is being rolled out with such caution".
"The lack of a real pluralism in patronage models is putting unfair pressure on Catholic schools," he added.
Archbishop's full address is available at: http://www.ireland.com/focus/2008/convocation/nui_convocation.pdf