Why were the Catholic Church involved in education in Ireland? And why is it so important to them to remain involved? If you want to know, don’t ask the President, Mary McAleese.

She addressed the inaugural conference of the Le Chéile Schools Trust last week. The Trust was established, by what the Irish Times described in a report as some of the country’s best known religious teaching orders, to run their second level schools. It is intended to protect the Catholic ethos of the schools, against the backdrop of the decline in vocations – one obvious effect of which is that there are, and will be for the foreseeable future, far fewer religious personnel teaching in the schools.
Is it appropriate for the President to endorse the work of an organisation like this? I’m not sure that it is. In doing so she is taking what could well be considered a political position on the issue of religious control of the schools. But leave that aside for the moment: there is a different issue to rastle with.
In her speech President McAleese praised the religious orders on the basis that they brought high quality education to every corner of the country. Well, there are those who would dispute that – who would argue rather that the second level educational institutions run by the religious here in Ireland were, almost exclusively, horribly reactionary manifestations of a gender divided, sexually repressed, politically conservative, hierarchical attitude to society. But that is not the point at issue here either.
She also stated that Le Chéile is built on no greenfield site (though the Catholic Church has lots of them, she failed to note). And she went on: “It is built on hallowed ground, on timeless values and legendary selflessness, on a vision of Ireland and humanity that is grounded in the belief that, working together, we can heal this broken world.
“Your starting point is the education of children,” she added and went on in the same vein about the enormous benefits that the country has derived from the work of the religious orders.
But of course she is utterly wrong, when she says that the ‘starting point’ for the religious orders is, “the education of children.” The starting point for the religious orders was and is doing anything and everything they can to strengthen the position of the Catholic Church, and of their own order within the Church. Even if we hadn’t known it already, that much has become perfectly clear in the context of witnessing the reaction of the bishops and the religious orders to the detailed knowledge, which was in their possession, of clerical child sex abuse. The Catholic Church got involved in providing education from primary school level up, because it allows them the opportunity to directly indoctrinate the children, sent to their schools, in the Catholic faith. And this is why the Catholic ‘ethos’ of these schools is seen to be of such importance: they want to continue the process of indoctrination to the greatest extent that they can, and in order to achieve this they are now enlisting the assistance of members of the laity in the form of Le Chéile.
The Catholic Church (and they are not of course alone in this) are engaged in ideological warfare, which is being waged by the religious orders through their control of schools. The furtherance of the religious objectives of the Church – that is their real starting point.

REGARDING YOUR HEADGEAR...
On the subject of religious influence, The Irish Council of Imams has issued a statement which speaks out against the banning of the niqab – the garment worn by some Muslim women, which covers everything apart from the eyes. The Imams argue that a ban on the wearing of the niqab violates personal freedoms guaranteed by democratic systems.
Broadly speaking I am with them. If someone, male or female, wants to wear a tiger costume as they go about their daily lives, then that’s fine with me too (though I’d need some convincing that it was a good idea for someone to go out selling ads for Hot Press dressed that way). But I can’t let the moment go without pointing out how thoroughly disingenuous the statement is. For a start, how many predominantly Muslim countries offer complete freedom to all citizens equally to dress according to a purely personal code? Secondly, how many predominantly Muslim countries are democratic, in the sense that is implied in the statement – that is that all of the adult citizens are completely free to vote, for any kind of candidate, who can be put forward by any freely constituted political party? Thirdly, how ‘democratic’ is the treatment of women generally in Islamic states? And fourthly, precisely how many women Imams are there in their number? The answer to the latter, I suspect, is: the same as the number of women Catholic priests in Ireland, which is a princely none.
There is, in any event, another layer to the debate. As I said, I have no problem with anyone dressing up or down whatever way they want to and doing their shopping in the local supermarket thus clad. But the insistence among certain Muslims that the naqib has to be worn by females if they venture into any public area does represent a genuine issue. To put it at its simplest, why should Girl A be allowed to wear the niqab headgear to school if Girl B is told she can’t wear a beanie? To operate on that basis would be fundamentally discriminatory. More generally, in situations where a strict uniform is required, why should one person be given leave to dress differently, just because they say that it is a matter of religious importance to them, while others are denied it? Either you do away with the requirement for a uniform and allow people the freedom to express their religious or their fashion preferences equally. Or you stick to the principle that the uniform has a function, and therefore everyone has to adhere.
I am all for dumping uniforms. But the kind of discrimination which is involved in letting some people wear headgear on religious grounds and denying that right to others can’t be justified.

DISCRIMINATION ONCE AGAIN
A lot of newspaper coverage has been devoted to the way in which Jean Treacy, the some time mistress of Eamonn Lillis, was sneaked into the court by the Gardaí during the Lillis trial. A complaint is being made to the relevant authorities by the National Newspapers of Ireland, who are insisting that they should have been able to get pictures of a vital witness in a case of this importance.
This is not a very good argument. Make whatever ‘moral’ judgements you like about Jean Treacy’s willingness to get involved with a married man like Eamonn Lillis – but there isn’t a law in this country against what is termed adultery and rightly so. What people do in their private lives is a matter for themselves. Through no fault of hers, she got involved with someone who carried within an utterly unsuspected capacity for violence. Jean Treacy had nothing to do with the events that led to the death of Celine Cawley – and for her to be publicly exposed to an intense level of media scrutiny as a result of those events would have been extraordinarily difficult and in many ways unfair. She was the wrong person, in the wrong place, at the wrong time. But she did nothing to warrant the deeply upsetting exposure which would inevitably have followed.
And yet, the Gardai were wrong to offer her protection of the kind she was accorded. Writing in the Sunday Tribune, Diarmuid Doyle got it right. If the effect of offering her protection is to imply a special relationship with the police, then how might that be seen to affect the quality of her evidence to the court? And how might it also affect the position of other witnesses, in future cases, who feel that they are as entitled to protection as Jean Treacy but are denied it?
Don’t get me wrong. There is something fundamentally problematic about a situation where people can be plunged into a nightmare world of completely over-the-top exposure at the hands of the media, as a result of what amounts to nothing more than an accident of circumstances. But the issue of the over-zealous and in many instances downright exploitative activities of newspapers in and around the courts should be addressed separately.
In the meantime, it is still, I suspect, the lesser of two evils NOT to discriminate in favour of an individual witness like Jean Treacy. And it certainly shouldn’t be up to the Gardai to decide.