There has been a 30 per cent drop in Catholic baptism figures over the last 10 years. It seems obvious that there should be a similarly huge drop in support for Catholic patronage of primary schools. Yet that is not the case.
An Irish Times analysis of the Department of Education’s survey on patronage showed support for change was strongest in certain predictable areas like Dublin, Cork and Wicklow. Even then, support for changing from Catholic patronage was not as high as might be expected.
In fact, the Church of Ireland, a minority faith that no one wants to undermine, has the dubious privilege of being the school patron with the highest support for change in patronage. Across Church of Ireland schools serving more than 100 households, 58 per cent of parents favour a change to multidenominational education, with 85 per cent wanting to see change at one school in North Dublin alone.
Even in that scenario, 15 per cent of parents would have to be accommodated elsewhere in a Church of Ireland school. A small minority cannot be forced into abandoning their preferred ethos.
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Church of Ireland education spokesman Ken Fennelly was initially surprised but, after consulting some principals, speculated that the framing of the survey question may have caused confusion.
The question was: Would you prefer your primary school to operate under a denominational (religious) patron or to operate under a multidenominational (non-religious) patron?
According to the Church of Ireland, some parents may have thought that their school was already multidenominational.
There are some 2,705 Catholic schools. According to this news organisation’s analysis, at least 101 religious schools registered more than 50 per cent support for change in patronage, but of those, only 24 serve 100 households or more.
The multidenominational patron Education and Training Boards Ireland (ETBI), estimated there are 217, which is about 8 per cent of the total number of Catholic schools, which should “actively consider” changing to a multidenominational ethos for September 2027 but did not specify their size. ETBI also found 61 Church of Ireland schools should actively consider a change, which, given that there are fewer than 170 such schools, represents more than a third.
Funny, no one mentioned the multidenominational school, Scoil Chaitlín Maude in Tallaght, where 69 per cent of parents want a denominational ethos.
The patronage survey was limited. It did not allow a don’t know or don’t care response. For most parents, school patronage is not a high priority. Parents are highly stressed, juggling employment or threats of unemployment, commuting, parenting, expensive childcare, and, if they somehow manage to secure one, exorbitant mortgage repayments.
So how does that relate to the 30 per cent drop in Catholic baptisms? The Iona Institute (of which I am a patron) estimates that about 60 per cent of the drop can be accounted for by births falling by 17.9 per cent in the Republic and 21.3 per cent in the North. Declining birth rates should worry everyone.
Correlating the baptism figures with the 2022 census shows that about 65.4 per cent of children aged 0-4 were registered as Catholic and 15.6 per cent as having no religion. The corresponding figures for mothers were 67.9 and 15.7 per cent.
So it seems that the majority of those who still identify as Catholic are having their children baptised, even while weekly Mass attendance figures are at historic lows of about 31 per cent.
Are we a nation of flaming hypocrites? Again, the answer is not so simple. Sociologists categorise religious faith as having three aspects: belief, behaviour and belonging.
The number of permutations possible within these three is enormous. Think of a young dad who believes he has left all that religious nonsense behind but when his baby daughter is born with a heart condition, and a poor prognosis, finds himself in the hospital chapel on his knees.
Or the woman who has faithfully attended Mass weekly for years but feels nothing except a roaring emptiness and sense of loss every time she does. Nonetheless, she persists.
Or a parent in a Catholic school who rarely darkens the door of a church except for funerals, weddings and First Holy Communions that may never be followed by a second, but teaches her children to pray for granny and grandad every night.
Ireland’s primary schools have an excellent academic record despite years of chronic underfunding. They are also excellent at fostering a sense of belonging. The simple fact is that most parents like their local primary school.
From committed Catholics’ perspectives, Catholic schools are not so successful at fostering belief and religious behaviour, probably because most people who work in them more or less mirror the people who send their children to them. They are not particularly religious but not particularly opposed either.
Contrary to what a highly vocal but unrepresentative minority continually assert, the church is not desperately holding on to schools to preserve its influence, which is pretty minuscule these days anyway. It would prefer fewer but more authentically Catholic schools, but given the odd combination of parental comfort with the current system and the mildly antagonistic attitudes of the powers that be to Catholic education, that is not going to happen any time soon.
