This week the Equality Tribunal, gave judgement against a Tralee primary school.
Damages were awarded against the school because the Head invited the police into a meeting with the child and his mother. It was meant to be a meeting to discuss the child’s educational needs, but the Head involved the police without the mother’s agreement.
I found that behaviour by the Head shocking.
Additional damages were awarded because the parish priest denied the child “Confirmation”. The mother had taken an action against the school because she felt her child was being unfairly treated. The parish priest was on the school management committee and he decided not to put the boy forward for “Confirmation”.
I found this decision by the Equality Authority shocking, and welcome. [€4,000 in all was awarded.]
I thought the “Confirmation” matter would be treated as if it was an internal affair of the Roman Catholic authorities - even though “Confirmation” is a societal rite of passage.
I reconsidered my views on the role of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland.
I think I’ve gone through about 10 different points of view on this in my life:
(1) I was a devote practising Roman Catholic religious person, who questioned none of what the Church decreed or did.
(2) I figured out intellectually that I couldn’t actually commit a mortal sin and consequently couldn’t go to hell. This led me to stop going to Confession and to Mass.
(3) I became attracted to dialectical materialism and increasingly persuaded that all religions were distractions from the struggle to make society a better place for the living.
(4) I became completely opposed to the social power of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland and did my best to undermine it in every conversation.
(5) I left Ireland and continued to oppose the social power of the Irish Church, but gradually lost my fervour.
(6) I mellowed, lost interest in opposing the Church, and developed a love of Taoist thinking, playing with it.
(7) I was taken aback at the steam of revelations about child abuse by clerics in Ireland. I don’t think I ever suspected so many children had be so abused by Irish clergy. But I wasn’t surprised to hear that bishops had done their best to cover it all up. Above all I was glad the aura of sanctity had been destroyed.
(8) Around that time, I persuaded myself that churches were really good places for burial grounds. I decided I’d like to be buried in a country churchyard, so that I could have plenty of good company and fresh air.
(9) I began to see the point of having a Catholic Church, and other Churches, so that we could have proper rituals and ceremonies to mark important stages in life. I moved back to Ireland.
(10) Now I’m beginning to think that we should fund the Churches, both privately and publicly, to do the job of facilitating the celebration of life and death.
The priest abused his position of power:
So I feel very critical of any priest, or bishop, or nun (or other religious cleric) who denies or restricts Baptism, First Holy Communion, Confirmation, Wedding, Extreme Unction, or any other religious ceremony that has an important social function - no matter the religion. [I think anyone who wants to be married in a Synagogue should be able to do it.]
Such ceremonies should be a constitutional right. And Churches should be obliged to carry them out, well.
Another excellent post, Omani. I think that you eloquently describe much of my attitude/relationship with Catholic Church/Organised religion.
I agree that the discrimination by the School teacher on the face of it deserves sanction. But I’d disagree with the sanctioning by the State of the actions of the Church in respect of access to confirmation. Confirmation is a religious act and regardless of what societal connotations it has picked up, it has to be the perrogative of the Church to define how it administers its rights.
While the Catholic Church (the corporate body) has done a great service in education in Ireland over the years, I’m of the opinion that we should separate Church & State. But we cannot pick and choose the extent of this separation. So if we make the Church accountable under equality legislation, then we can’t complain if that same church tries to influence what laws we constitute.
The Catholic Church did not abuse children ; it was paedophiles within the Church. The Catholic Church did not cover up these scandals, it was people (mainly Bishops) inside the Church.
If the Catholicism is a racist and discriminatory religion, then it should be exposed as such with the same vigour as we might Scientology or the followers of Sun Myung Moon.
I suppose my point is that it is too easy to go after the corporate body rather than holding individuals (who are first and foremost Irish citizens) to account.
The problem arises when the state tries to control the church or the church tries to control the state.
Paige
Comment by blankpaige — June 21, 2006 @ 12:16 pm
Hi Paige,
Great to have such a long comment from you. As usual you provoke me in thinking. So here’s a response to some of your points.
(1) It’s really satisfying to find out that what I wrote about my religious autobiography struck a chord with you. I’m not as alone I as feared…
(2) It wasn’t a teacher who arbitrarily brought the police into a meeting between parent, child and school: it was the Head. The Head is meant to be the guardian of the vision, the modeller of the values, the setter of example. If the Head thought it was OK to involve the police in this situation, what does that say about (a) the whole school, (b) the selection of Heads, (c) the monitoring of standards? An individual teacher may be out of line and mistakenly judge that the police might help the situation, but a Head? Well done to the Equality Tribunal for their judgement. I hope this case becomes part of future training of school Heads.
(3) You argue “Confirmation is a religious act and regardless of what societal connotations it has picked up, it has to be the perrogative of the Church to define how it administers its rights.” Strong and clear thinking… but why so? Where is the evidence that “Confirmation” is a religious act? Even in my time it was a social occasion, with religious trappings. My religious life was in no way transformed by it. The main thing I remember was the belt in the face from the bishop. I joke, but we used to joke about the gentle touch on the cheek which the bishop administered as a symbolic representation of what soldiers of Christ would face in the battle for souls. After the day, nothing changed. I experienced “Confirmation” as a social event; we all did it because it was integral part of Roman Catholic culture. I never heard of anyone being excluded. To exclude a child from their “Confirmation” would be to exclude them from society, to make them an outcast. The more I think of that parish priest who excluded the traveller child, the more I find his behaviour reprehensible. A decent bishop would have disciplined him. Social exclusion is a serious business. No religious organisation should be empowered to do that. The consequences for that child, and for the society that must contain that child later, are incalculable and too risky. Imagine the worst: a man who’s psychopathic because of being so traumatised in childhood. If we permit religious organisations to influence and control the upbringing of children, I think we must constrain at every turn what they are permitted to do.
Otherwise the alternative is to ban all religious matters from schools and push such rituals as “Confirmation” into the private domain. That would greatly reduce the number of people who got “Confirmed” and undermine the social role of “Confirmation”.
(4) I agree with you that the Roman Catholic Church (and other Churches) has done a tremendous service in education. It would not be overstating the case to claim that the Church ‘civilised’ the people. I mean that the Church introduced a whole world view and, within that, did trojan work on developing an educated people. Like any ruler with absolute hegemony, it went too far. It discouraged difference, discent, diversity. The Irish Church specialised in rules and intellectualised judgements. There is a fine description of this in Loise Fuller’s “Irish Catholicism since 1950″, in a summary of how the Church dominated the society with a particular brand of legalistic thinking. For example:
“The moral question was judged and pronounced upon in the minutiest details, divorced from its human context, giving rise to the impression that there were specific hard and fast rules, which could be appplied whatever the moral dilemma one was confronted with, be it grave or trivial. It bespoke an attitude to morality which was more conerned with the letter than the spirit of the law. Morality was reduced to rule-following…”
She writes from the inside, having studied in detail the thinking of the Irish clergy.
(5) I have no problem with the Roman Catholic Church, or any religious, or non-religious, organisation trying to influence the laws. It is inevitable that the Church will try to influence the laws. Thank goodness they are not the only people trying to influence. The great thing now is that the Church is only one voice, or the equivalent. And the power of that influence wanes day by day, because other influences grow more informed, confident and competent. Thank goodness for the messiness of the result.
I better leave thinking about clerical abuse until another time.
Thank you again for all your words.
Comment by omaniblog — June 22, 2006 @ 8:54 am