Madam, - It is good to see the Government recognising the value of faith-based groups ("Faith groups meet Ahern", The Irish Times, October 12th).
In 2000, the British government issued a white paper entitled " Our Towns and Cities: the Future". Its significance lay in its belated recognition of the value of faith-based organisations as a positive force for good in society. It highlighted the contribution of such groups in building community and promoting moral values.
Significant funds were made available to support groups in order to "rescue" some of what had been perceived to have already been lost in Britain.
Looking at modern Irish society, and our apparent rush to abandon our Christian heritage in the pursuit of questionable secular and ethical values, I wonder if it is time for a similar funded strategy in Ireland. Those who worry about the increasing economic costs of educational, social and health service provision need also to reflect on the lost economic and social value of such services provided by Irish priests, nuns and brothers over the past 100 years.
Contrast the added value of such faith-based vocational service provision with the secular professional services offered to the public today. Without criticising the honourable intentions of our modern professional service providers, I do question their real costs to Irish society when contrasted with the deeper, faith-driven vocationalism that served Ireland so well at so many levels, physical and spiritual. The failure of the State properly to engage with the religious and take on responsibility for the regulation of such social, educational and health service provision inevitably exposed serious structural and administrative flaws and the needless human suffering that accompanied such mismanagement. Nevertheless, in seeking to rectify administrative flaws we must avoid replacing the deeper values of faith-based vocationalism with mere secularism and professional service provision. Surely those who suffer within society continue to need spiritual hope as well as physical service.
Unfortunately, the secularisation of public services is already well under way and its impact can be measured by the withdrawal from social, educational and health service provision by religious and faith-based organisations which previously formed the backbone of such services for the people of Ireland. Apart from the extraordinary economic costs of these dramatic changes, there are significant social costs that I believe are reflected in the increased rates of crime and social illnesses such as alcoholism and narcotic abuse. Ireland is in danger of losing her spiritual soul.
As CEO of a faith-based development organisation, I regularly encounter professional volunteers, young and old, who, while rejecting much of standard Christian religious practice, nevertheless retain strong Christian values and a deep affinity with vocationalism, nowadays known as volunteerism.
I believe that the time for serious reflection is at hand for a generation of Irish parents who, while rejecting Christian social and theological teachings on many issues, nevertheless appear to want Christian school education and the values that accompany such education. You can't have one without the other! - Yours, etc,
Dr VINCENT KENNY, CEO, Volunteer Missionary Movement, All Hallows College, Dublin 9.