THE "real root source" of sectarian hatred in Northern Ireland is the home, rather than the school, the leading Catholic lawyer and lay activist, Prof Mary McAleese, has said.
In an interview in the current issue of the Redemptorist magazine, Reality, Prof McAleese, who is Pro Vice Chancellor of Queens University, Belfast, makes it clear she does not see integrated education as a key route to bring people together, stating: "Until the adults in this community are capable of relating to each other, it is actually quite mischievous, if not quite dangerous, to insist that the children should integrate."
The transmission of sectarianism is clearly rooted in the home and in the community, and its locus is essentially in families, Prof McAleese says.
"What I would love to see the churches do is to take responsibility at parish level for challenging the transmission of sectarianism in all those places. Quite an amount of work has already gone into dealing with Education for Mutual Understanding through the schools, but it seems to me that the real root cause of the latent hatred that is so evident in the community is the home; it is the crucible of hatred, unfortunately."
On integrated education, she says "I don't have any difficulty with those people for whom it is right, but as a mandated form of social engineering for the entire school population, it seems to me that we have put the cart way before the horse.
The argument for integrated education also "fails to see the intrinsic value of the kind of education system which, for example, the Catholic Church regards as important". She believes "deep-rooted forgiveness" among Catholics and "the marginalisation of the men of violence" have come out of the Catholic schools system.
However, she also thinks it is incumbent on Catholics and the Catholic Church to "actively promote opportunities" for inter-denominational mixing.
Prof McAleese criticises what she calls "an abject failure" on the part of the churches "to take to heart" the document on sectarianism presented to them by the Irish Inter-Church Meeting three years ago.
"The kind of thing we need to do is to understand how sectarianism is transmitted. It is transmitted daily in a million little acts by parents, friends, the community.
"It is sustained in the golf clubs, in places where people think they are talking among their own, and in order to really tackle the pervasiveness of sectarian thought-ways you have to be vigilant and pro-active every day. But I don't see that level of sustained effort being made by the churches, or by the individuals in them."