THE CATHOLIC Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin has welcomed “very much” last week’s announcement by Minister for Education Ruairí Quinn of the establishment of a national forum on school patronage.
In doing so, the archbishop said he was not downplaying “the extraordinary work that our Catholic schools – run by religious or by lay teachers – have done for Irish education,” he said.
The proposed national forum “will have to take into consideration the aspirations of all stakeholders”, he said. Parents were “the crucial factor”, as it was “not the State’s job to bring up children; it is the job of parents.”
He criticised the State’s record in childcare as “not one that we can be proud of”, while acknowledging “serious mistakes” and “wrongdoings” by the church in the area. Measures needed to redress these inadequacies would “require huge effort and go way beyond the creation simply of new structures,” he said. Other areas where weakness of State management was evident included “our prison service – for which the State has sole responsibility”, he said. This had “been the object of continual and stringent international criticism by highly respected human rights institutions. The inadequacies of our health system require no illustration by me. Exclusive and direct State provision of services is no guarantee of their quality.”
Ireland, Dr Martin said, required “a new political culture and I believe that this is certainly one area where the church, through its proclamation of the teaching of Jesus Christ, can bring a special contribution.”
Ireland also needed “a younger generation of men and women who enter into politics – respecting the legitimate autonomy of secular realities – with a clear vision of where they want society to go in the long run and not just short-term point-scoring,” he said.
The contribution of Christians to creating a better society in Ireland was “about upholding and insisting on the recognition of the dignity of each human person”.
The archbishop was speaking at the Mater Dei Institute in Dublin.
On church-State relations, he said “giving to Caesar the things of Caesar means that the church respects the autonomy of the secular sphere. It also means that Caesar does not play God and does not try to banish God out of the reality of society into the most remote private corner of individual conscience.”
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