The Catholic Primate of All Ireland has said the Church is committed to upholding the constitutional rights of parents who wish to provide their children with a Catholic education.
Speaking at the launch of Catholic Schools Week 2012 at St Mary’s College Dundalk, Cardinal Seán Brady said the Church held the view that the children of Catholic parents have “first claim” on admission to Catholic schools, just as Protestant children have first claim to admission to Protestant schools, and Muslim children have first claim to admission to Islamic schools. Wherever possible, provided they have places and resources, Catholic schools, he added, would welcome children of all faiths and none.
Welcoming the representatives of the various bodies involved in Catholic education and TD Damien English, Chair of the Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Social Protection and Education, the Cardinal underlined that Catholics schools continue to “form a vital part of the local community.”
Paying tribute to the work done by members of Boards of Management in the Republic and Boards of Governors in Northern Ireland, the Archbishop of Armagh said they form the structures that have underpinned governance in the Irish education system for decades.
These volunteers offer their wisdom and life experience out of loyalty to the local community and their keen appreciation of the importance of a good school for the sake of the pupils and of the community.
“These Boards are exemplary models of subsidiarity at work in our parishes,” the Cardinal commented.
“They are expressions of local participative democracy in our educational system of which we should all be proud,” he said.
The Cardinal referred to the findings of recent research among a broad sample of school boards, which showed that 88 per cent of respondents felt that their board was functioning effectively.
“This is good because it is accepted that there is a strong correlation between governance effectiveness and school effectiveness,” the Cardinal stated.
One of the key roles of the Board of a Catholic School is to, “preserve the religion and moral ethos of the school,” the Archbishop of Armagh explained.
He said his hope for this year’s Catholic Schools Week was that it would help the community to better appreciate the, “invaluable service to the community,” that Boards of Management and Boards of Governors provide.
The leader of the Catholic Church in Ireland noted that there are 26,600 members of Boards of Management in the Primary sector in the Republic alone, representing parents, teachers, the local community and the patron.
The patron is the representative of that section of the community that holds the school in trust for the sake of the community, not only the present community but the community of years to come.
The Director General of the Conference of Religious of Ireland, Sr Marianne O’Connor, OSU, paid tribute to the, “enormous contribution generations of religious sisters, brothers and priests in partnership with lay teachers have made to the education of children in the Catholic tradition.”
She also welcomed the “establishment of new forms of trusteeship for schools which will foster the Catholic education needs of children for generations to come.”
In his keynote address at St Mary’s College in Dundalk, Fr Ron Nuzzi, Director of Catholic Leadership Programmes in the Alliance for Catholic Education at the University of Notre Dame, discussed how Catholic schools can be Eucharistic communities.
The American academic explained that in the US as in Ireland, those involved in this field grapple with the question of, “what is uniquely Catholic about our school?”
“Whatever humanises divinises,” he suggested, might be the ethos of Catholic schools. This outlook would allow every subject to be seen as contributing to the development of students and in the participation in the mystery of the Incarnation.
Everything that happens in the life of the school should be seen as having a religious purpose, Fr Nuzzi said, and added that the school, the home, and the altar, are the places of ongoing formation and incarnation.
Fr Nuzzi, whose research interests are focused on school leadership issues that help hasten the revitalisation of Catholic schools in the US, referred to the Congregation for Catholic Education’s 1997 document, The Catholic School on the Threshold of the Third Millennium, which asserted that Catholic schools are at the heart of the Church and participate in the evangelising mission of the Church.
The priest of the Diocese of Youngstown, Ohio, who was ordained in 1984, told the representatives of Catholic education from North and South of the border, that the leaders of Catholic school communities had an obligation to protect and grow relationships as well as heal them when they became damaged.
Citing the Incarnation, the Trinity and the Paschal mystery as the bedrock of the faith, Fr Nuzzi said Catholic education needed more Catholic educators who could enter into these mysteries.
“The best way to teach doctrine is to live it in a way that is inviting,” he said.
While he acknowledged that academic excellence is not a Gospel value, he said Canon Law #806 is the benchmark for Catholic schools and it demands that Catholic schools be as good as they possibly can or at least as good as the local competition.
He suggested that what makes a school Catholic is tied to the importance given to the central mystery of the faith – the Eucharist. Referring to Pope John Paul II’s exhortation to, “Open wide the doors of the heart”, he stated, “Catholic schools are the best means of evangelisation the Church has ever invented.”
Catholic Schools Week will continue until February 4.
During that time, RTÉ Radio 1’s A Living Word will offer personal reflections on the value and experience of Catholic Schools.
This year’s celebration will conclude on February 5 with a Mass broadcast from St Patrick’s College Thurles to celebrate the 175th anniversary of the college, which became a major seminary in the 1860s.