Lord David Steel, the presiding officer of the Scottish Parliament, has acknowledged "shortcomings" in the procession of dignitaries at the opening of the parliament last month, to which no children from Catholic schools were invited.
The move follows questions from a former lord provost of Glasgow, who demanded to know why no Catholics featured in a march along the Royal Mile by children from 20 Scottish schools. The intervention of Mr Bob Gray, lord provost of Glasgow between 1984 and 1988, is certain to fuel the debate over allegations of bias against Catholics in every aspect of Scottish society.
The general claims of bigotry were made on Monday by a Scottish musician, Mr James MacMillan, who composed a fanfare for the opening of Scotland's new Parliament, in Edinburgh on July 1st. Mr MacMillan, who says he was spat upon as a child for wearing a Catholic school blazer, cited the religion's desire for separate education as grounds for anti-Catholic sentiment in Scotland today.
He said Scotland was guilty of a "sleep-walking bigotry" and claimed that any moves to end separate schools for Catholics would amount to "vandalism". His views received a mixed reaction from the country's churchmen, academics and media commentators.
Mr Gray, who is also a Catholic, has written a series of letters to the parliament's presiding officer, Lord Steel, over the make-up of the child escort to the civic procession. Out of the 20 schools from around the country, not one was Catholic. Mr Gray, who now serves as convenor of Glasgow's education committee, confirmed his exchange of letters with Lord Steel's office yesterday.
He said: "To be honest, the question about Catholic schools was secondary to me. My first consideration as convenor of education for this city was that there were no Glasgow schools taking part.
"After I was unhappy with an initial reply from Sir David's office, I received a personal explanation from him, saying that the event had to be organised so quickly and that there was some problem with school holidays.
"He apologised for the oversight and said that, given more time, the event could have been better organised." Mr Gray said that Catholic schools and Glasgow schools took part in a separate children's procession the same day. However, although he said he was only "reasonably satisfied" with Lord Steel's explanation, he stopped short of saying he believed the omission of Catholic schoolchildren from the civic parade amounted to evidence of bigotry.
"I don't want to cause a song and dance about it now," he said.
The procession was organised on behalf of the Parliament by Unique Events, an Edinburgh events producer. A spokeswoman there said the idea for children to escort to the civic parade was put to them "late on" by the Scottish Office. She said the organisers had already made arrangements with a large number of schools for the children's procession and had felt unable to go back to them to request more children.
Instead, the children who took part were nominated by the Scottish School of Music and Drama and the Modern Studies Association.
All 20 schools chosen were nondenominational. The Unique spokeswoman added: "I don't think the religion of the children who were taking part even entered the head of the organiser."
In his letter to Mr Gray, Lord Steel said: "I recognise that the outcome of this approach, adopted under pressure of time, had shortcomings from your point of view. There is absolutely no question of any snub to Glasgow schools or Catholic schools or to any other parts of the country who were not represented in the first procession.
"Obviously, after the event, there is nothing else that we can do, except to note your concerns carefully for any future such occasion."