AN OVER-EMPHASIS on the commercial value of research could mean the end for third-level institutions, the Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin John Neill has warned. He also said new ways may have to be found for the expression of faith in primary and secondary schools.
Speaking in Trinity College Dublin yesterday he said that: “research is of course of immense value to industry and to national development, but if this becomes the sole criteria, the ancient universities could become as extinct as the creatures found in our Natural History museums”.
He said it was important that “the traditional role of universities in the teaching of young minds, the planting of a thirst for further study, the testing and developing of critical powers, is never made secondary to the productivity of the great scholars researching within these hallowed walls”.
In an address at the Trinity Monday Order of Commemoration and Thanksgiving, in the College Chapel, he also said “the debate about the role of religion in education is very much alive . . . and it is very easy for arguments to be formed that would remove all issues of, and traditions of, faith from the educational system.”
But, he said, “the human spirit is impoverished if its spiritual and indeed religious dimension is ignored”.
He said “new ways may well have to be found at the primary and secondary level in education to express a place for the faith dimension, without the aspects of ownership and limited control that have been inherited from the particular history of Irish education”.
He said the historical experience of Trinity had been “that the religious and the secular must interact; that a mutual respect can be established and that a proper humility can be observed by all in the realisation that truth is greater than any of us can conceive”.
More generally he said that “so much division, so much conflict, so much damage, is caused by the attempt to limit the endless possibilities in creation and in humankind, and to deny the rich variety of truth”.
He continued “at times, Christian apologists have tried to ‘batten down the hatches’, and to deny and even silence the advances of science.
“At other times, the secular agenda has been equally limited, denying a role for faith and religious expression as being worthy of consideration.”
He welcomed the stress in Trinity on the teaching of divinity.
“In a secular age, this may be regarded as a mere hangover from the past, or it could be saying something very profound concerning the unity of truth. It is the latter that speaks to me of the authenticity of the Trinity experience across four centuries.”