There are times I feel very sorry for the Catholic Church. I believe that most of our clergy are good, honest and decent people who have contributed far more to society than their critics.Over the past decade, our religious communities have been portrayed in the media as vicious, child abusing control freaks. It is fascinating to note how many Irish journalists refuse to criticise Muslim extremism, but are happy to put the boot into the Catholic Church.
A good example of this type of thinking was the recently published attack on the Archbishop of Dublin by the poet Paul Durcan in the Irish Times. In the course of a lengthy tirade, the unfortunate bishop was compared to Communist mass murderers such as Chairman Mao.
Call it a hunch, but I doubt a similar poem about Islamic fundamentalism will be published anytime soon.
The attack on the clergy has moved right into our classrooms, as their right to administer thousands of our schools comes under scrutiny.
Falling vocations have seen the number of nuns, priests and brothers in the classroom drop dramatically over the decades. But the Church still wants to be involved -- saying parents should have their right to send their children to a Catholic school if they wish.
It's quite clear, however, that there's a strong lobby group in Ireland who want the Church to have nothing whatsoever to do with our education system.
This philosophy is usually described as an overwhelming desire for "secular" teaching. In my opinion, this is little more than a smokescreen for hostility to Catholicism.
The truth is that millions of Irish people would be functionally illiterate were it not for the efforts of the religious orders. For 40 years, our fledgling nation was completely incapable of providing free education for its children. The well-off could afford fees for private schools. The poor were left to depend on the vocational decency of the clergy.
Though it may no longer be fashionable to say anything positive about the religious orders, our country and our society owe the Catholic Church an enormous debt of gratitude for their efforts.
In the new affluent Ireland, it is the 'Electric Picnic' people who dictate the agenda. These would prefer their child to be taught philosophy by a Buddhist monk rather than religion by a Catholic priest.
Influence
They campaign continuously to have our schools run by the State and will fight tooth and nail to reduce the influence of anyone who believes in organised religion.
But they should be very careful what they wish for as they might get it.
Catholic clergy are generally intelligent, competent and skilled professionals driven by a strong sense of vocation and duty. The same cannot be said of State-appointed administrators.
When the religious orders ran our hospitals, they were clean and efficient. Then the State stepped in with the health boards, followed eventually by the HSE.
In the absence of the discipline and intellectual ability of the religious orders, many of our hospitals have become dirty, dangerous places of which patients are often afraid.
The nuns are no longer in charge and the matrons have disappeared. They were replaced by 18,000 administrators who have repeatedly demonstrated their utter incompetence and inability to run our health system.
Now I fear the same fate will befall our education system. The Electric Picnic brigade need not worry. Their privileged offspring will always be able to attend fee-paying private schools.
The same cannot be said for the poorer and more deprived children in our society who depend on the Church for their education. Shafting the religious orders, and replacing them with HSE-style pen pushers, will condemn thousands of young people to a lifetime of academic failure.
For the love of God minister, do not sack the clergy!
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Sotto Voce
(Source: Herald.ie)