Papal nuncio says Catholic ethos must be nurtured in schools

Catholics need to protect the religious ethos of their schools or risk it disappearing, the papal nuncio to Ireland Archbishop Charles Brown has said.

He was speaking at a national conference on Catholic education at Cistercian College in Roscrea, Co Tipperary, which explored the future of religious tuition.

The papal nuncio said: “Schools have to be concerned about their Catholic character, and recognise that without a conscious effort to maintain their distinctly Catholic ethos, that ethos can dissolve to non-descript and vague spiritualism – or even disappear entirely.”

The church’s patronage of 90 per cent of all primary schools in Ireland has sparked controversy in recent years in light of the refusal of school places to non-Catholics in some over-subscribed schools.

Equal access

Some campaigners for equal access to education have called for the State to take control of all schools or to change the law to prevent schools from giving preferential treatment to students on the basis of religion.

Archbishop Brown said parents should have legitimate choices when it came to choosing a school and Catholics should have nothing to fear from a growth in alternatives.

“We should avoid a situation where students are unable to go to schools they want to go to, or are forced to go to schools they don’t want to. We need to provide – as much as we possibly can – a legitimate choice,” he said.

It was often the case that – faced with alternatives – the attractiveness of a distinct Catholic ethos became most evident.

Prof Eamon Conway of Mary Immaculate College in Limerick, insisted that divestment of schools should primarily be a matter for the State.

“However, it’s also in the interest of the church to vindicate the rights of parents in regard to how they educate their children, and that includes non-believing children,” he said.

“Divestment could be in the interest of the church if it allows schools, which remain within the church, to fully realise their ethos and identity.”

Prof Daire Keogh, president of St Patrick’s College in Drumcondra, said Catholic schools faced a major “image problem” and were seen as frustrating the choices of non-Catholics.

“How often in the media are Catholic schools caricatured as restrictive, limited, backward-looking? How have we let this happen to something as positive and valuable as Catholic education?”

‘Secret sauce’

Prof Keogh

said the ethos of schools was the “secret sauce” that made so many Catholic schools attractive in the first place, yet it had become neglected in recent times.

“We need to work at ethos, we can’t just take it for granted. We need to invest in nurturing it”

He said Catholics could learn from the Educate Together patron body which had a very clear idea of what it stood for.

“They can articulate [their ethos . . . you have to admire them and we should take their zeal as an example. We should more clearly define our values and the character of our schools.”