A Catholic bishop has criticised “ideologically driven” narratives around the role of the Catholic Church in education, describing efforts to play down the positive role of the church in the sector as “pure revisionism”.
Bishop of Meath Tom Deenihan said: “Various groups, supported by funding from ideological philanthropical entities, many from outside the State, continue to lobby politicians and media with a rather narrow, nuanced and distorted narrative.
“Yes. There were atrocities. We share that shame. But Catholic orders and congregations were providing education long before free education in Ireland.
“Independent and reputable research has indicated that Catholic schools are the most inclusive, not just in terms of religion but in terms of ability, socio-economic background, ethnic background and nationality.”
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Speaking at a Catholic school event in Co Meath, the bishop said: “One could be forgiven for thinking that the Catholic school is the reason for every current ill in the world of Irish education.”
He recalled a conversation with an academic who told him “it was a feature of the examination papers that he was correcting in social history that every one of the social ills that Ireland had experienced was due, in the minds of his students, to the influence of the Catholic Church”.
This, the bishop described as “pure revisionism and an unreflective absorption of a particular and, perhaps, fashionable narrative”.
Deenihan, who is chair of the Bishops’ Council on Education, referred to “negative, ideologically driven and adversarial depiction of Catholic schools” as “grim places of indoctrination that children are forced to attend by Church and State.” This was “ill-informed and false,” he said.
He referred to the recent survey on divesting of schools, published earlier this month, which found “over 60 per cent favoured their school remaining under Catholic ethos.”
This was “not surprising. In fact, it is most surprising that our journalists and many of our commentators and politicians are surprised,” he said. “Lived experience must inform one’s opinion, and I suspect that has not been the case in the discussion on Catholic education.
“Democracy, maturity, pluralism, respecting parental choice, and even inclusion itself, demand that we accept the result of that survey.”
For his part, he said, if there was a wish for divesting in any part of his diocese “I, like the other bishops as patrons of Catholic schools, would happily engage with the Department of Education and Youth to initiate a closer examination of the wishes of parents and staff. If there is a wish for divesting, I would respect that and it would happen.”
The bishop was speaking at an event marking the 50th anniversary of the St Oliver Plunkett national school in Navan, of which he is patron.
It is a Catholic, coeducational school with 397 pupils of 12 different denominations, non-faith pupils, two special classes, and where 40 per cent of parents were not born in Ireland.
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