Any move to curtail the right of Catholics to be educated in denominational schools would be "a new form of colonialisation" and create "a new injury, a new hurt", Archbishop of Armagh Seán Brady has said.
Asked during an interview yesterday on BBC World television if Catholic and Protestant children should not be educated together, Dr Seán Brady delivered a robust defence of denominational schooling.
He said there was no certainty that non-denominational education would eliminate tensions among the communities.
In the Balkans, he said, all communities had been educated together. "It didn't help them from fighting each other."
Dr Brady said it would be a "grave injury" to Catholic people to be prevented from attending Catholic schools.
"We had schools, and now they are being taken away from us," he added.
Asked if he was putting the narrow interests of the Catholic Church ahead of the broader interests of reconciliation, he insisted that Catholic schools were "not narrow and not exclusive".
"We know that as educators we have huge responsibilities and reconciliation is one of them," Dr Brady said.
"Our schools have played and will continue to play [ their part] in reconciliation here, by producing people who are tolerant . . . and taught values such as 'treat others as you would like them to treat you'."
Dr Brady reiterated his disapproval of the concelebration of an Easter Sunday Mass by a Church of Ireland minister and three Catholic priests at the Augustinian priory in Drogheda last April.
"There are many initiatives which are authorised and which are very successful in promoting unity," he said.
"I know it was well-intentioned, but it caused a lot of uproar."
While he accepted that not enough progress had been made in reconciling the churches, he believed a lot important strides had been made in recent years to forge better relations between the churches.
During the Troubles, all churches had played "an important part in restraining people" from the two communities, Dr Brady said.
"Ecumenism is the search for the unity which Christ desires," he said, but unity would not be easily arrived at.
"Let's not forget history . . . It's going to take time."
He did not accept that the church's response to sex abuse scandals had been "totally inadequate" and insisted that it had invested a lot of effort in the issue in recent years.
"[ Now] we want to work together to make sure children are safe," he said.