Sir, - Please allow me to comment on Dean Griffin's article on integrated education (Rite and Reason, January 19th).
Catholic education is not about learning, it is about formation - and transformation by the grace of God. The main objective is to teach love of God and virtue.
Catholic schools are schools of conscience. In France and Belgium, they are called les ecoles confessionelles. Catholic children are where they ought to be according to the conscience of their parents, obligations freely accepted in Baptism and the discipline of the Church.
Parents want their children to realise the meaning of life and the difference between right and wrong by being formed by prayer, sacramental life and by the sure and certain doctrines of the Church. This should lead to love of God and service of the neighbour, all mankind without exception.
I find Dean Griffin's vocabulary offensive. "Apartheid," "segregation", infecting "a new generation with the poison of tribalism and sectarianism". No Catholic school, no school in Northern Ireland, is guilty of the dean's accusations. - Yours, etc., Mgr Denis Faul, PP,
Parish of Termonmaguirc, Carrickmore, Co Tyrone.