Sir, – Further to Diarmaid Ferriter's article ("Kenny should confront State-funded schools insisting on baptism certificates", Opinion & Analysis, January 25th), this year, 2015, marks the eighth centenary of the Magna Carta and its limit on sovereign power. It ends in paragraph 63 with a royal oath that "the English Church shall be free and enjoy her rights in their integrity and her liberties untouched".
This demand attends the fact that any political system presumes a civil society that pre-exists the state; that the life of the civic community is fed by mediating institutions like the family, churches, and fraternal organisations. Democracy is built on two practical pillars that emerge from these institutions – co-operation and conflict. Cooperation satisfies a natural hunger for solidarity that makes all community possible. Conflict is necessary because people have competing visions of what’s right and true.
Thomas Davis’s vision, as recounted by Prof Ferriter, would whittle away the mediating institutions and replace them with an uncompromising state monopoly in terms of values and beliefs about human dignity and the purpose of human freedom. Religious faith is one of the necessary limits to this state power.
Prof Ferriter doesn’t mention the Catholic Church’s desirable agreement to transfer trusteeship of some schools to non-Catholic bodies. But planned excessive state restrictions on the educational content and approach of the remaining Catholic schools seeks to render them playthings of secular policy.
The restrictions also inhibit Prof Ferriter’s principle of people being able to live what they believe thus ushering in an undemocratic and degraded notion of liberty. – Yours, etc,
NEIL BRAY,
Cappamore
Co Limerick.
Sir, – It is quite dextrous of Diarmaid Ferriter to discuss the issue of parental choice while ignoring the Forum on Pluralism and Patronage in Irish Education. This official body has uncovered no significant evidence that parents are demanding any change in patronage.
Facts and figures are absent when Prof Ferriter refers to “pragmatic baptisms” as an issue. It is simply hearsay. By comparison, the CSO reports that in 2011, 3,831,187 people identified themselves as Catholics in Ireland.
It is richly ironic to see a historian discussing Archbishop Paul Cullen without any reference to the 19th-century context of the penal laws or the Famine. Prof Ferriter suggests that Cullen was motivated by some narrow-minded sectarianism. Instead, he should acknowledge the churchman’s tireless defence of his flock’s basic right to live out their faith, as part of an inclusive nation, of course. – Yours, etc,
DAVID BURKE,
Navan,
Co Meath.
Sir, – Further to John Kelly’s letter (January 27th), the Rules for National Schools and the infamous “Rule 68” insist that religion is the “most important” element of schooling. The department’s own rules require that a large portion of the curriculum is given to religion, almost as much as maths or English and twice as much as PE. I have experience of such rules being imposed.
I appreciate that Mr Kelly does not ask for baptismal certificates on admission. Does his school’s admission form ask what religion the parents are? And does he consider that his ethos and admissions policy may influence their answer?
There are many pragmatic principals and teachers ignoring or working around these rules but that does not make them right. – Yours, etc,
ANDREW DOYLE,
Bandon, Co Cork.
Sir, – My three children attend national school in Leixlip. When enrolling them for school, I was asked for a birth certificate, PPS number and a utility bill. Later, I chose to present my children for first communion preparation and was, at that time, asked for a baptism certificate. Either my experience was highly irregular, or Diarmaid Ferriter’s sweeping observations of State-funded schools insisting on baptism certificates are a bit far-fetched. – Yours, etc,
GRAINNE HYNES,
Leixlip,
Co Kildare.