If you take the view that the Catholic Church clings to its involvement in education in order to control the hearts and minds of the population, maybe you should think again. According to the Rev Michael Drumm, director of the Mater Dei Institute of Education, Dublin, the role the Church has traditionally played in our education system came about as an Irish solution to an Irish problem.

"The Church's involvement in education will always be perceived as controversial," he says, "but to understand it, it's vital to have a historical view of Catholic control of education. Before the Famine, the Catholic Church in Ireland always suffered paranoia about Protestant education." Fearing that they would lose their flock, the Catholic Church leadership strove to maintain a definite level of control over education. At the heart of this control, however, was the fact that the Irish were an impoverished people.

"You could argue that the Church simply wanted to control people, but conversely you could also argue that for the religious orders, education was the only way an impoverished people could make headway, so they put huge resources into education." As a result, Drumm says, the Church and the education system here have been entwined in a way that has not happened elsewhere.

Change, though, is taking place. The role of the religious at second level has diminished enormously. "A lot of second-level schools are showing great creativity in investing trusteeship outside the religious orders and are looking at appointing lay people. At primary level," he says, "a significant number of priests would prefer not to have to chair boards of management. They have other pastoral priorities." Divesting yourself of power, however, is not as easy as people think, he says: it can be difficult to recruit parents for boards of management, since the responsibilities can be onerous.

At parish level, the Church makes considerable financial contributions to local primary schools. "The one organisation which has no interest in becoming the direct controller of first and second-level schools is the Department of Education and Science. They know that if they were to run everything the costs would be horrendous," Drumm says.

Mater Dei's new director grew up in Sligo, where his parents ran an egg business. A pupil of Summerhill College in Sligo, he knew at an early age that he wanted to be a priest. After UCC, where he studied history and philosophy, he spent a spiritual year with the Kilteagan Fathers in Co Wicklow. "People enter seminaries for one particular set of reasons, he says, but stay for others. What's important is why they stay. During your training, among the biggest issues you confront are leaving or staying. You have to decide what you want to do with your life - if you stay, you're making an act of faith, like marriage."

The main change in the priesthood that Drumm has seen over the last 15 years is the growing appreciation of the critical importance of mature relationships and friendships.

For Michael Drumm, going to the Irish College in Rome and studying theology at the Gregorian University during the 1980s was a seminal experience. The art, the history, the melange of different nationalities apart, Drumm's view of the Church changed. "I began to realise how complex an organisation the Catholic Church is. I realised that there are a number of very different churches and that your experience of being a Catholic depends on where you come from." Discovering that the Church had learned to adapt to so many different cultures and experiences was a revelation. "This could," he says, "be instructive for us in Ireland."

After 10 years as a theology lecturer in Mater Dei, last year, Drumm was made its director. The institute he took over was set up in 1966 by the diocese of Dublin, to provide religious education for people aiming to teach religion in second level. In the early days, most of the students were from religious orders. That soon changed as increasingly large numbers of lay people opted for training.

In 1999, Mater Dei became a college of DCU. Today, Mater Dei offers a range of courses, including an undergraduate degree in religious education, master's programmes in religion and education and religion and culture, and a number of chaplaincy courses. Of the 330 students enroled at the college, 250 are full-time.

Demand for religious educators is high at the moment because of the decline in the number of religious involved in education and the onset of State exams in religion. The Leaving Cert programme in religious education (RE) is currently being prepared, and the Junior Cert is set to start next year, with exams in 2003. "Traditionally, a lot of schools have had people teaching religion who had no qualifications in religious education. Now the pressure for qualified people is much greater. One of our main aims is to increase the status of religious education as a subject. We argue that religion has played such a major role in Irish life that any rounded education must include some sense of the Christian tradition."

Drumm takes a positive view of the new religious education programmes. "They can be taught in schools of any tradition or none - Christian, Jewish, Moslem or multi- or non-denominational. A lot of thought has gone into their development," he says.

Nonetheless, engaging the minds of young people in religion is becoming more difficult, Drumm concedes. However, "properly approached it can be hugely interesting, since it raises fundamental questions about the human person. It should be no more difficult to engage students with religion than it is to interest them in poetry."

If theology is taught creatively and imaginatively, Drumm argues, people find it liberating. "They begin to get a grasp of how religious belief has evolved and changed through the ages. It enables people to identify the seeds of future change and realise that things don't have to be static. If you only know recent history you will be a slave to that. A deeper knowledge enables you to see that things can be different to the way that they are now."

FACTFILE

Education:

1973-78, Summerhill College, Sligo. 1978-9, Kilteagan Fathers, Co Wicklow (spiritual year). 1979-82, UCC (BA in history and philosophy). 1982-7, Irish College, Rome.

Favourite pursuits:

reading (especially poetry) and travel

Favourite poets:

Yeates, Heaney, Desmond Egan.

Favourite countries:

Italy and Greece.