The rule recognises religious instruction as a fundamental part of the school day and permits a religious spirit to, "inform and vivify the whole work of the school.”
Its abolition was recommended last year by the Minister's Forum on Patronage and Pluralism, a recommendation that has been criticised by Church figures.
The Minister was responding to remarks made on RTÉ's Beyond Belief programme last week by Fr Michael Drumm, the chairman of the Catholic Schools Trust in response to a question by presenter Mick Peelo.
Fr Drumm was asked about concerns among Catholic bishops as regards proposals to remove Rule 68. He said that it would be a mistake for the Minister to implement such a proposal, but that Rule 68 needs to be rewritten.
He said, “If the Minister tomorrow, and he could by a Ministerial act, he wouldn't need to go through the Oireachtas, he could delete Rule 68. In my view he shouldn't.”
Mr Quinn responded that he has, “no intention of doing that.”
Fr Drumm acknowledged this, but said that such a deletion would, “appear as a very strong criticism of the whole spirit of Catholic and Church of Ireland schools. It would be completely the wrong way to go.”
Mr Quinn also denied that he or his Labour colleagues had an, “aggressive secularist agenda.”
He said, “Some of the Labour Party's opponents have regarded, have described myself and others as having a secular, aggressive secular agenda. Nothing could be further from the truth. I don't think you can be educated without understanding religion. We are pluralist in our approach to this matter and I think that pluralism which respects difference and accommodates difference is common ground that we can all share and share comfortably.”
Fr Drumm agreed that the Minister doesn’t have a secularist agenda, but he expressed concern about the recommendation made by the Forum that that, “religion would be the only bit of the curriculum that would not be integrated.”
He said, “From our point of view, that would be terribly difficult, because you can opt out, as Siobhán was describing earlier, you can opt out of religious education per se, as a subject ... but you cannot opt out of the ethos, of the characteristic spirit of the school. We would have to reverse everything we've done over the last 30 years which was actually to get schools to be better at expressing their ethos. All the patron bodies, Educate Together, the Community National Schools everyone will have an ethos they want to give expression to and we want them to do that. Otherwise we'll have a monochrome system, which I don't think anyone is arguing for.”