THE CATHOLIC Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Diarmuid Martin, has said that “we are facing a ground-breaking rethink regarding the ethos-mix of schooling in Ireland and we have to ensure that we get it right”.
This, he said, could be done “through carefully listening to the various stakeholders and fully respecting the various traditions present in society”.
It also had “to be done in an economic climate that only some months ago we would not have imagined”. This takes place “while we realise that our expenditure on education is below that which would be desirable,” he said. But, he advised, “we have to recognise that education is different.”
It was “not just part of the problem of our expenditure but education is an irreplaceable part of the answer. It is people with their creativity and talent who are and will be the backbone of economic recovery”. We had to ensure that young people were “not held hostage to purely economic decisions in such a way as to create long-term damage for them . . . We owe our children the best even in leaner times.”
Dr Martin was speaking during a Mass to mark the opening of the school year at the Holy Redeemer Church in Bray last night.
“Educational policy cannot be based either on ideology or pure pragmatism,” he said. “There are demographic changes and a new shape of religious demography. Yet this does not mean that there is an automatically widespread demand for a totally secular form of education.”
He continued that “our educational system in Ireland has always had a deep-rooted religious dimension. Freedom of religion in the educational field was a hard-fought-for right. Ireland is now more secularised but its religious heritage is still very much alive, even for those who are unhappy with it.”
But “in the face of a different cultural climate, religious education must also change”, he said. “One might say that in today’s Ireland so much of our society lives as though God does not exist. One of the problems is that we have at times inherited and preached a false God.
“I remember at various stages of my religious formation when we were presented with what seemed a harsh judgmental God,” he said.
“We need to recover the true sense of a God who is love; a God who reveals his power . . . in caring for each and every one of us. Jesus never healed crowds; he placed his hand on and encountered each one individually. That special care for each individual must be a mark of Catholic education,” he said.
“Catholic education is about preparing people for life. It is about the bond between faith and life, between faith and culture.”