Crisis Facing catholic Education in Ireland

By Caroline -

A report into the the future of primary school patronage in Ireland was delivered on Tuesday. It does not make for pleasant reading. A recent census indicates that 84% of the population are Catholic, but 89% of the primary school are Catholic. The Government wants to divest schools, (remove schools from the patronage of the Catholic Church) to cater for other groups within Irish society. But the recommendations within this report which will effect these newly divested schools, as well as our existing schools, are extremely anti-catholic in their sentiment. Yet they seem to have been greeted with relative silence by our Church leaders. 

I ask all readers and bloggers here at the Association of Catholic women Bloggers to pray for struggling Catholic Ireland. 

I have posted more on this issue on the St Genesius Blog

Comments

  1. Fr Seán Coyle8:35 pm, April 12, 2012

    Read John Waters' column, 'Attack on religious instruction in schools is wrong', in today's Irish Times, http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2012/0413/1224314681378.html .

    My teacher in Fourth Class in O'Connell Schools in Dublin, John Galligan, a great mentor who prepared us well, especially by example, for Confirmation, used to talk about his Jewish classmates in CBS, Limerick, who enjoyed being excused from religion class.

    A slight correction: this matter concerns the Republic of Ireland only, not the whole of Ireland. The figures quoted are for the Republic only. The percentage of Catholics in Ireland as a whole is around 75%.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ruth Ann Pilney5:01 pm, April 14, 2012

    Maybe you could explain to an outsider how it is that the government is able to do this legally. Are these Catholic schools public property, private property or what? In the U.S. the Catholic schools are private schools and funded privately. Very little, if any, government money is used to support them. Parents pay tuition for their children to go to Catholic schools. In addition these same parents have to pay taxes to the public schools, even though they don't use them.

    Even so, there are some government regulations concerning curriculum, but none that would eliminate the use of Christian symbols, celebrations, or catechetical instruction.

    ReplyDelete

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