Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, Archbishop of Dublin has said, “If you
want to understand the value and the contribution of faith-based schools
in any society, I believe that your starting point must be a broad
reflection on the role of education.”
Archbishop Martin was speaking at a conference organised by The Irish Catholic newspaper in the Charlemont Hilton Hotel in Dublin on the theme of ‘The Future of Faith Based Schools in a Secular Society’.
Archbishop Martin said, “Pope Benedict on a number of occasions spoke of what he called an educational emergency.
He was not speaking, as I had imagined when I first heard the term,
about problems of the Catholic schools system. He wished rather to draw
attention to a fundamental “emergency” or uncertainty about the deeper
purpose of education in a growingly pragmatic and utilitarian world. He
was not speaking about the lack of classrooms and equipment; he was
talking about the very nature of education itself.
“The pressures to which young people are exposed today can lead to a
great fragmentation in their lives, due also to the great pressures and
concentration of academic programmes and due to a fragmentation
regarding where values are to be rooted.
“Faith-based schools can be defended only to the extent to which they
truly represent an integrated vision of what education is about. A
closed, ghetto faith-based school would betray the very nature of
education. Faith schools must be intellectually open and reach beyond
the purely pragmatic and utilitarian. Otherwise they lose their
purpose and their true contribution to society. If a faith school is to
win acceptance in today’s society, it must convincingly show that it
offers a true vision of education and show how this vision is beneficial
to society.”
Archbishop Martin posed the question: What do we mean by a secular
society? He said, “More and more people are finding that they can live
without any direct reference to God. Many of them will still turn to
the Church in special moments in their lives. Secularisation however is
not just about a fall in Mass attendance or weaker attachment of
individuals to their faith. It is not about a political or media bias
against the Church.
“Where the overall presence of God in society diminishes or becomes
relativized, then society as a whole begins to ask itself if God matters
at all. If society goes about its business without God really
mattering, then the overall place of faith in society changes.
“When a society which maintains an overall relationship with a God
who matters, changes into one where God is less and less present, then
men and women of faith find themselves talking a language with which
society finds it harder and harder to engage.
“Secularisation may or may not be hostile, but when it no longer
understands faith as relevant, then our faith-language becomes a foreign
language to many in our society. Pope Benedict said that our challenge
today is to speak about God to people who no longer know where to find him.”
Archbishop Martin said that there is also the danger that men and
women of faith develop an uncertainty and a fear of witnessing to their
faith in the structures of society, a fear of somehow offending others
or of offending pluralism and thus in their own way they contribute to
the privatisation of faith.
He said, “A faith-based school in a secular society will be different
to a faith school rooted in an active and practising faith community.
Despite affection for their faith, many parents and indeed children are
deeply affected by the secularisation of culture. Faith-language may
not be easily or directly accessible to their vision of life. How do
we translate our vision from a language which springs from our faith
into the language of reason and dialogue, without losing its
originality?
“Allow me an aside to underline what I mean. In one of the talks
which formed part of what he called “The President of Ireland’s Ethics
Initiative”, President Michael D. Higgins focussed on the principles
which should guide “a realistic future for Ireland as a nation and as a
democracy.
“He set out from the context of an Ireland which had just undergone a
major economic crisis. Ireland had moved from being top of the class in
international financial and economic jargon into an economy which
needed a bailout from a troika of sources. What happened and where do
we go now?
“President Higgins began by looking not at banks and austerity and
international monetary organizations. He began with values and ethics.
He asked about the values needed “as we set about the work of transition
from a society which was not the best version of ourselves to one which
is grounded in a more ethical version of our Irishness”.
He stressed
that the challenge requires change “in consciousness, institutional
thinking and indeed a new contemporary form of ethical literacy”.
“He set out to look at the fundamental philosophical underpinnings of
a view of the economy which almost unnoticed drove our society down
wrong roads and roads which inevitably pointed away from long-term
social sustainability.
“My point is that this same culture of narrow pragmatism which
damaged our economy is also a threat which can undermine education.
Ethical and philosophical reflections are not a luxury or a waste of
time. A lack of appropriate challenge to an individualistic
understanding of what economy is and what the social function of an
economy is, ended up harming many individuals and communities.”
Archbishop Martin continued, “Reflection and critical debate about
the type of society we wish to attain and sustain and the values which
should underlie it are part and parcel of an integral understanding of
education. The faith school must be a school which is rooted in solid
values. The faith based school must be one which fosters the ability of
critical reflection and societal conviction on the part of its
students. As believers we have to identify aspects of our
faith-language which find resonance, be understood and find attraction
in a more secular world where there is however still a sense of seeking
for meaning.
“The debate between faith and culture is not something esoteric for
the experts. It is vital for the healthy growth of a pluralist society.
It constitutes an essential contribution to the search for a common
language which can communicate with and captivate secular society.
There are some who would look on the introduction of faith into debates
about educational policy in more secular societies as an obstacle to
common reflection. For them it would be the introduction of a divisive
element. In that sense narrow secularism is hostile to pluralism.
“The faith school must be a place where young believers develop the
capacity to realise that their faith can bring an added integrating
dimension to their future professional life and in their life in
society.
“John Henry Newman wrote about his idea of a mature Catholic laity.
He wrote:: ‘I want a laity, not arrogant, not rash in speech, not
disputatious, but men who know their religion, who enter into it, who
know just where they stand, who know what they hold and what they do
not, who know their creed so well that they can give an account of it..”
“Pope Benedict noted in his homily at the beatification of Cardinal
Newman: “The service to which Blessed John Henry was called involved
applying his keen intellect and his prolific pen to many of the most
pressing ‘subjects of the day’. His insights into the relationship
between faith and reason, into the vital place of revealed religion in
civilized society, and into the need for a broadly-based and
wide-ranging approach to education… continue today to inspire and
enlighten many all over the world”.
Archbishop Martin said that faith based schools are called to foster
not robots but “keen intellects and prolific pens [capable of]
addressing the pressing subjects of the day” and that the future of
Catholic schools in Ireland will depend on their ability to help young
people find faith in Jesus Christ, but a faith that can bring its impact
effectively on the values which will inspire a future and different
Ireland.
“The Irish educational system is unique in Western Europe. Catholic
schools dominate the educational landscape as nowhere else. These
schools are at the same time State schools and Catholic schools, but in
some cases they have suffer from a split personality. This dominant
place of Catholic schools reflects a religious and cultural
demographical situation of the past. If Catholic schools feel that
they can continue to be all things to all citizens then they may well
end up with a compromised ethos, trying somehow to fit in with the
scrambled ethos of the student and family mix around them.”
Concluding his homily, Archbishop Martin said, “Faith schools are not
instruments of religious indoctrination. There is no reason why they
cannot and should not be open to receive children of other traditions,
just as they should not be limited exclusively to one social class. An
exclusivist ethos should be alien to any faith school.
“Faith schools will only be effective to the extent that they are
anything but compromised in their ethos. The opposite of “compromise”
is not “fundamentalist”. The opposite of compromise is commitment. A
faith school must be one committed to an integrated vison of education
which fosters a future generation who, to quote Newman again, “know
their creed so well that they can give an account of it” and give that
account in our times within a pluralist society.
“In that sense there is not just room for faith-based schools in a
pluralist society, but a pluralist society needs quality faith-based
schools.”