Watching the calm, dignified protest of the Buddhist monks in Burma this week, and the bloody repression that followed, it was impossible not to be moved by their courage writes Breda O'Brien.
Presumably this kind of "speaking truth to power" in the face of possible death or arrest is not what secularists have in mind when they say that there should be a complete separation of church and state.
Of course, here in Ireland, we still applaud those religious people who speak out on behalf of the oppressed, although the possibility of being dismissed as a bleeding-heart liberal is more likely than having one's life threatened.
However, when religious people are involved in more mundane ventures, such as the daily grind of running schools, approval disappears and suspicion takes its place - at least in certain quarters.
In recent times, a great injustice has been done to thousands of teachers and principals in Catholic primary schools all around the country. These people have been to the forefront of integration in this country, and had done so before half the commentators in the country had woken up to the fact that there was a problem in the first place.
For example, the much-maligned denominational schools in Balbriggan were asked to take the children of asylum-seekers being housed in Mosney, long before there was a multi-denominational or non-denominational school in the area.
Principals report that it was an extremely enriching experience, at a time when the dominant discourse in Ireland was very negative about asylum seekers.
When the problem of too few school places became apparent, some of the same principals who had welcomed the children of asylum seekers in earlier times, took in an extra infants class in already overcrowded schools.
For their pains, the implication was that Catholic schools were being racist and bigoted. This was despite the fact that there were no school places available in the Church of Ireland, Gaelscoil, or Educate Together schools either.
Even the Equality Authority got in on the act, with a warning that the enrolment policy of Catholic schools might breach some provisions of the Equality Act.
Not unnaturally, the Catholic Church sought legal advice on the matter. According to Margaret Bolger, BL, described as "a leading expert in the area of discrimination law", there is no question of the Catholic Church being in breach of provisions of the Equality Act.
Yet while that legal advice may be comforting, at another level, the future of Catholic schools does not lie in their enrolment policies. It lies squarely in the hands of parents. The stark reality is that priest numbers are dwindling, and those that remain are ageing.
Some priests question why they are providing schools for everyone in the area, despite the fact that Mass attendance is down and the real level of participation in the parish is much lower than the numbers on the school rolls would suggest.
It may be a case of "be careful what you wish for". The days of having Catholic schools around every corner may be numbered, and while it may be some militant secularists' dream to see them all disappear, the fact is that our primary schools are highly regarded, and at least part of this results from the ethos that animates them.
Catholic schools do not have a monopoly on care, and personally I wish the very best to the Educate Together schools. They provide a valuable alternative to denominational schooling, and the demand for the kind of schooling that Educate Together provides is only set to grow.
Yet if denominational schooling were to become a thing of the past, it is unlikely that the Department of Education would be handing the baton to Educate Together. After all, they are just another patron body, which benefited from the fact that denominational patron bodies had been facilitated in the past. No, the most likely model is an entirely State-controlled one.
With respect, our public services such as the health sector have not exactly thrived since the withdrawal of religious orders. In Ireland, our primary schools, the majority of which are under Catholic patronage, work very well despite historic levels of underfunding that have been pointed out in successive reports by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and others.
Are we certain that a completely State-controlled system would be so wonderful? Only one Vocational Education Committee-run primary school is on the cards, and part of the reason may be that the history of the VECs includes allegations of too much political control and "jobs for the lads". Parents may not be too enamoured of seeing that politicisation transferred to primary level.
In a speech at the launch in Northern Ireland of a new Catholic education website, Archbishop Seán Brady spoke of the triangle of home, school and parish working together for the good of children. That may still be true in many places in the North, but as long ago as 1999, Martin Kennedy in a report called Islands Apart declared that the links between home, school and parish were weak, and in some cases, non-existent.
His conclusions were that while the classroom is a place of positive religious discourse and experience, the home and parish frequently are not. No faith community can survive, much less thrive, under those circumstances.
Some things have changed since then. Many parishes have benefited from the influx of dedicated Polish and Filipino Catholics. Some parish-based programmes for preparation for sacraments have been rolled out.
However, the reality remains that parents often choose Catholic schools for a mixture of motives. Sometimes they have no other choice. More often, it is a combination of habit, a feeling that there is some indefinable advantage in having your child educated in a faith-based school, or just because they get great results. A minority actively choose the Catholic school because they fully support the mission of the school.
That minority, no matter how small, are entitled to have their children educated in a Catholic school.
The Constitution guarantees that right, as do numerous international human rights instruments. The passengers in the Catholic system, the parents who send their children there for all sorts of other motives, may not be able to piggy-back on the system for too much longer. When many middle-class parents in particular suddenly wake up and realise that something of value is passing from their lives, it may be too late.