tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2524303232145501468.post2283205796703097231..comments2023-07-26T15:37:27.208+02:00Comments on Aggressive Secularist: Catholic Schools and segregationUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2524303232145501468.post-75295518691334669412009-12-23T12:52:42.135+01:002009-12-23T12:52:42.135+01:00Memes and organised religion makes for an interest...Memes and organised religion makes for an interesting study.fantasianoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2524303232145501468.post-34589926921135690182009-10-20T19:18:39.238+02:002009-10-20T19:18:39.238+02:00As a committed Catholic I am all for equality of c...As a committed Catholic I am all for equality of choice in education and I don't see the State as a barrier to that, but rather the failure of Catholic schools themselves to be well 'Catholic' to be the enemy of real choice.<br /><br />Personally I would like to see a voucher scheme where parents can use same to send their children to a school which best fits in with their vision of what a good education should be, be it secular, secular doctrinaire, theistic, denominational, inter church, whatever.<br /><br />The Spanish Bishops a few years back had the humility to proclaim a collective mea culpa and admit that they could not blame the State (i.e. Zapatero), for a secular invasion of their own institutions. Teh Irish Bishops have yet to show the same humility.<br /><br />We have had a very unhealthy situation here for too long where there is collusion between Churcn and State in provinding us with a hybrid mess of nominally Catholic schools and Catholic teacher training colleges. Indeed having done some research on it, the same club of Catholic academics who have destroeyd primary and secondary school catechesis still very much have the ear of the Bishops. Secularists who hate the Church owe them much more than the State for the delicne of the influence of the Church in the public sphere, in the world of ideas, even more I would say than is due to the evil perpetrated by so many clerical and religious institutional child abusers. <br /><br />This club have the mind of Pelagius and not the Church when it comes to how to transmit the faith, how to ingite the spark of reason, and actually how to train people to think properly. <br /><br />In the words of Vincent Towmey there are not enough Catholic Educationalists who have the courage 'to think with the Church'. They are more interested in being published in some journals, or the Irish Times and have their groupie seminars and plaudits among themselves.<br /><br />Quinn and the Iona institute are too quick to point the finger at the State for the mess which is Catholic Education and not the Church itself and while it might be a good idea for the Church to get out off the many schools it is involved in, I don't have Quinn's confidence that the Church will run the few they'll have left properly, if the colleges of Education they are responsible fro continue on their merry spirit of the age way. <br /><br />I mean when St Pat's can have a fund raiser to help two female colleagues (one a former colleague),to challenge the natural law understanding of marriage in our constitution, and Mary immaculate college fetes every dissenting theologian in the County, well, you get my drift. <br /><br />One final thought, any fair minded secularist would admit that it was the Medieval Church that gave rise to Europe's great universities, and the Church by and large with rare exceptions (Gallileo,) has been a patron and facilitator of reason, science and the Arts.<br /><br />What the Church in Ireland has lacked most is a heart, it has been only strong in the weakest way, in a cultural conformity, when it and the State were one, and it's bishops and priests were beyond question. I for one celebrate the loss of that kind of church, one that did not understand the difference between authoritarian and authoritative, between the letter and the spirit of the law, between charity and hard heartedness. A Church that does not know how to give witness to the Truth in love, cannot be loved.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2524303232145501468.post-58809549063693561522008-11-26T13:02:00.000+01:002008-11-26T13:02:00.000+01:00The Church will fight any diminution of its power ...The Church will fight any diminution of its power in the Education sector - and they've been well able to wield the power they still have ... Quinn has no problem writing baseless stuff, he's been an apologist for the Religious Orders who managed the the Industrial Schools. He didn't seem to even pause in his behaviour when the same Religious Orders admitted many abuses and apologised!The Knitterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06447618539832675360noreply@blogger.com