Sir, - Paul Brady (November 22nd) speaks of the "multitude of mentally, emotionally and spiritually formative experiences" that his Catholic education has opened to him. As a student of the Catholic education system until 1985, I still have vivid memories of many school-time experiences.
I remember seeing an elderly Christian Brother viciously beating an innocent, 12-year-old classmate with a leather two feet long, an inch wide and half-an-inch thick - because the boy didn't know some obscure Latin verb. I remember the joy in the face of our Christian Brother headmaster every lunch-time as he perused the line of "deviant children" he was going to beat publicly for the morning's petty misdemeanours.
I remember the sting of leather and wood on my palms. I remember the stories I would hear as a child about the orphan girls and "fallen women" who were worked to the bone in the secretive convent nearby.
I remember the absence of any participation in charity activities (except for the ubiquitous Trocaire box during primary school) and the absence of open discussion of life, God or organised religions. I remember realising as a young adult that I had absolutely no formal knowledge of sex, relationships, contraception or reproduction.
So my Catholic education was certainly a formative experience. It showed me how an organised religion can batter the hearts and souls of the most vulnerable in our society. It showed me that religious involvement in education, when confined to Catholicism only, has the effect of stultifying the mind and ignoring the huge realities of sex and contraception. However, I also learned that the brainwashing wears off - provided you can eventually open your mind to greater reality, unrestricted by a Church/State relationship that is still having a huge retarding effect on our entire society. - Yours, etc.,
Mountain View Cottages, Dublin 6.