Month: April 2016

Roisin Ingle on Question 12 in Census 2016

Roisin Ingle writes about getting ready to fill in her family’s Census 2016 form in last Saturday’s Irish Times (23 April).

She shares our view that the religion questions must be reformed before we conduct the next census.

“It’s unfortunate that yet again the religion question is not about religious practice. A question about practice would provide a useful barometer of Irish society in 2016.

Instead the question is “What is your religion?”

When faced with this question many will still tick the Roman Catholic box because they associate culturally with that belief system. Not because they go to mass every week, or confession on a regular basis or because saying the rosary is a vital part of their lives. Cultural Catholics will tick the box because it’s the system they were born in to and the system many still use to commemorate important life rituals around marriage, birth and death.

The box will be ticked because when they read Question 12 they don’t really have to think. For many people who grew up in this country, when asked “What is your religion?” Roman Catholic would seem like the obvious, perhaps the only, answer”.

“The question, for many, doesn’t require pause for thought. But “What religion do you practice?” That’s a whole other question. That is one that makes people reflect and consider their own religious practice and that of their children. It’s a question that keeps us honest”.

http://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/people/r%C3%B3is%C3%ADn-ingle-on-filling-up-my-census-1.2617909

Baptism barrier ‘a dark stain on national conscience’ – Ferriter

Prof. Diarmuid Ferriter wrote this in The Irish Independent on 30 March last.

The so-called ‘baptism barrier’ to children getting a place in Catholic primary schools is “a dark stain on the national conscience that needs to be removed”, according to Professor Diarmuid Ferriter.

The UCD Professor of Modern History told the INTO conference that “unbaptised children and their parents are treated as second class citizens and that has to stop”.

Prof Ferriter, both of whose parents were long-standing activists in the INTO, traced key developments in Irish education since the 1916 era in the course of an hour-long address to the conference.

He spoke of the scale of “enlightenment” of the current system, such as the focus on well-being, learning communities and gender positive action. He said 100 years ago Padraig Pearse was preoccupied with the idea of the “charismatic teacher and a child-centred approach”.

Prof Ferriter said while there was a shift away from religious control of schools, “nevertheless we have a denominational system”.

He said parents had a constitutional right about the choice of school to which they sent their children, but then he cited legislation that allowed schools to protect their ethos and asked “in reality do the really have that right, do they really have that choice”?

The legislation to which Prof Ferriter referred is the Equal Status Acts, which prohibits discrimination across society on nine grounds, including religion, but religious-controlled schools were given a derogation which allows them to give priority children of their faith.

In practice this means that, in Catholic-run schools, which account for nine in 10 of the country’s primary schools, children who have been baptised get priority enrolment over children who are not baptised, but live closer to the school.

It puts many parents who do not necessarily want their children baptised in the Catholic faith into a situation where they feel forced to do so in order to secure a place in the local school.

Prof Ferriter described it as “another dark stain on the national conscience that needs to be removed if we are to have truly republican education system”.

He said the current system did not protect those of no faith, even though the Irish Republic was to have a toleration of all faiths and none.