What happens in a small rural community when the 'village atheist'
decides to send his child to the local Catholic school?
Last week we
found out; he considers taking a human rights case against the school.
Martijn Leenheer is from Holland.
He and his wife live in the
picturesque Co. Leitrim town of Dromahair.
The local school is Drumlease
Catholic Primary School.
Leenheer is an atheist and so when he decided to send his
five-year-old to the only school in easy reach it was with the
understandable stipulation that the child be withdrawn from religion
class.
Leenheer probably thought it was problem more or less solved until he
discovered that his son stays in class when the school day starts and
ends with a short prayer.
He told The Irish Independent last week, he said: ''My belief is that
the school should be responsible for supervising children if they want
to opt out [of prayer] because the way it stands at the moment, they ask
me if I want to opt out, I say, 'yes' and basically nothing happens.''
Here we have something of a conundrum. Leenheer is perfectly within
his rights to ask that his child not be exposed to prayer in school.
But
if his son has to be removed from religion class, and then removed from
prayer time twice a day won't that make the child feel very much the
'odd man out'?
So, what's the answer to this? Is it to ban school prayer altogether?
To ban religious education altogether? To withdraw all State funding
from denominational schools and make them go their own way? In practice,
of course, this would force the vast majority of such schools to close
down. They would presumably be replaced by State-run non-denominational
schools.
Impractical
This, in effect, is the line taken by organisations like Atheist
Ireland. Jane Donnelly, Atheist Ireland's education policy officer
described the right to opt out in Irish schools as ''impractical and
illusory''.
''In my view we are in breach of our international obligations. The
opt-out clause must be practical and it must suit the wishes of parents,
but our opt-out clause just sits there in the education act.
''There are no statutory guidelines with it, and it is not sufficient
to guarantee the right to respect philosophical viewpoints such as
Martijn's,'' she said.
Both Leenheer and Atheist Ireland appear to have the backing in this
of a discussion paper issued by the Irish Human Rights Commission in
November.
Called 'Religion and Education: A Human Rights Perspective', this
paper verges towards seeing freedom of religion as freedom from
religion.
It therefore leans towards those parents who don't want their
children exposed to a religious ethos of any kind at any point during
the school day.
It wonders if this is possible when a child is attending
a school permeated with such an ethos, as any denominational school
must be.
In breach
Furthermore, it wonders whether this lack of protection for non-religious parents puts us in
breach of human rights law.
Two vitally important points must be made in response.
The first is
that the Irish Constitution gives very strong protection to religious
parents.
It recognises their right to send their children to a school
that reflects their beliefs, and it requires that the State respond to
this right by funding such schools.
It never envisaged, and doesn't envisage, that the rights of
religious parents could be trampled over to satisfy the conflicting
rights of non-religious parents.
Secondly, international law also upholds the rights of religious
parents. It doesn't view religious freedom primarily as freedom from
religion. It sees it as something more positive as well, that is, as
freedom of religion.
The interpretation of human rights treaties by various human rights
bodies is another matter.
Increasingly they view religious freedom in
negative terms, that is, as freedom from religion.
However, this does not take away from the fact that the rights of
religious parents are protected in international human rights documents.
Where does this leave us vis a vis Martijn Leenheer and
similar-minded parents? (He has since sent his child to an Educate
Together school over the border in Sligo).
What the case highlights is the need for the State, with the help of
the Church, to provide more schools to cater for non-religious parents.
This will mean that the Church will have to give up some of its schools.
However, it would be a travesty if, as a result of cases like this,
it was to be found that denominational schools were in breach of our
supposed human rights obligations and therefore State-funded
denominational education came to an end.
This would mean that the rights of non-religious parents had been
allowed to trump the rights of religious parents.
This would be
especially unjust in a small community like Dromahair where the vast
majority of parents are probably happy with their local Catholic school.
However, this case has put the writing on the wall more clearly than
ever.
Catholic and other religious parents must read it and wake up to
the fact that their schools are under threat.
But they should also know
that a very strong argument can be made in favour of such schools.
They
just need to start making it.