Madam, - Your Editorial, "Faith in our schools" (March 31st) poses a serious and fair question when it asks why new schools being created to offer parental choice should be multi-denominational rather than non-denominational.
Fr Séamus Murphy (April 2nd) says "There is such a thing as 'soft totalitarianism', and the attack on family and religion from various quarters feeds it".
Where exactly is the "attack" on family and religion here? Is it proposed parents can't indoctrinate their own children? Or bring them to church?
No, that's not what's being suggested; just that children should be taught to think (how totalitarian is it to teach children to think?!), to be educated together, not segregated according to their parents' faiths.
It is the non-religious whose rights under the Constitution are being attacked by having no choice about schools; their children having to be surrounded by religious symbolism, and removed or made different in indoctrination classes.
I find Séamus Murphy's reaction to a "Westminster MP who recently stated that he had no objection to religious education in schools, provided no religion was taught as 'true' ", and then citing Brave New World as if the MP had said something bizarre, rather surprising; religious teachings are only "true" to believers; to others, whether non-religious or believers of different faiths, they are beliefs, not truth, and should be taught as such (also sparing the integrity of non-religious teachers).
The choice of schools for those wishing for non-doctrinaire schooling is severely limited and a national disgrace. - Yours, etc,
ANN JAMES, Humanist Association of Ireland, Balbriggan, Co Dublin.