ARCHBISHOP of Dublin Diarmuid Martin has called for fewer Catholic schools in the state to reflect the changing nature of Republic.
The religious leader yesterday repeated his support for increasing the number of non-denominational schools to meet the needs of non-Catholic families and said the church’s role in schools must reflect changes in the state.
Speaking on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland, the archbishop warned that the future of Catholic schools could be in jeopardy if the “educational establishment” within the church did not “stop dragging their feet”.
More than 90 per cent of schools in the Republic are currently under the patronage of the Catholic Church.
The archbishop has spoken in the past of the need for the church to divest itself of its role as patron in some schools.
Dr Martin yesterday said the church should be making its position “quite clear” but that progress had been “remarkably slow” to date.
Dr Martin said that the issue would not go away, adding: “The danger is we will end up without Catholic schools.”
Admitting that some teachers and communities were averse to change, he said: “If a school is working well in a community nobody wants that to change. But change is taking place. The population is changing, the views of teachers are changing."
Speaking on Sunday at a Mass in Dublin, Dr Martin had said the church needed to “respond more effectively to change”.
“Times have changed in Irish society and the church must change,” he said, adding: “The church must free itself and become unencumbered even from positions which may in the past have been positive and useful to both church and society, including in the control of schools and institutions. The church is slow to change. Inertia may seem to mean that things can go on as they were and are; but the opposite is the case.”
