Bishop Leo O’Reilly is no mind-reader but he has an uncanny ear for the voices in young people’s heads.He knows precisely what these voices are saying, because it was he and his fellow masters of religious indoctrination who insinuated them into the kids’ heads in the first place.
Like a stage telepathist, his stock-in-trade is the power of suggestion.
“I have no doubt that God is calling young women and men of this generation to give their lives to spreading the gospel,” said O’Reilly, the bishop of Kilmore, last week, inviting Leaving Certificate students to join the priesthood and religious orders.
Even in our much-vaunted knowledge economy, it seems, there’s always a chance that some school leavers might fancy undertaking a sorcerer’s apprenticeship.
It was hardly an accident that O’Reilly made his recruitment pitch during a speech in which he also scolded the government for purportedly diluting the role of religion in education.
Addressing the Parnell Summer School, he condemned what the Catholic hierarchy sees as the Department of Education’s “policy assumption” that all secondary schools should be multi-denominational.
His church, he explained, was “committed to denominational education”.
Coming from such an influential ecclesiastical figure, this was the strongest signal yet that Catholic bishops are preparing to fight to retain as much as possible of their traditionally all-pervasive control of Irish schools.
Use of the crozier may have been reserved for ceremonial purposes in recent years but, when wielded by an expert political swashbuckler, it can still deliver a formidable belt.
Having stated the obvious fact that education provision must reflect Irish society’s increasing diversity, O’Reilly went on to demand that his church be consulted on the provision of all new schools. “The Catholic Church makes no apology for its presence in education delivery,” he said.
By spelling out his church’s position, he helped clarify the parameters of what should become a robust public debate about the most pressing issue in Irish education: the future shape of school patronage.
Just as bishops feel no need to apologise for their stance, pluralists and secularists should develop a similar lack of inhibition. At no point should anybody in the debate be permitted to forget that the salaries of teachers are paid by the taxpayer.
The Catholic bishops are patrons of more than 90% of primary schools. Despite the proliferation of new post-primary models — vocational schools, community colleges and gaelscoileanna — Catholic and Protestant clerics hold sway over the teaching of more than 60% of second-level pupils.
However, successive opinion polls (not least a 2004 Department of Education survey) suggest that a growing majority of citizens favour the removal of all church control from publicly funded schools.
By extending the separation of church and state to education, we would have state-run primary and secondary schools, with religious instruction, where required, taking place outside school hours.
Catholic parents should always be free to send their children to Catholic schools. But those who do so in future may have to pay more for the privilege. Unless, that is, they believe the state should fund a comprehensive network of Muslim, Sikh, Hindu and Scientology schools as well.
Churches want control of education for one reason: the freedom to indoctrinate impressionable minds.
Give them a child of seven, they boast, and he/she will be theirs for life. If parents are happy to collude with such brainwashing, that’s their prerogative, but it’s unreasonable to expect anybody else to pick up the tab.
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