Planning the future

The Church of Ireland is staking everything on education. During the coming years in fact, it is committed to a renewed effort to define the quality presented by Catholic schools, and above all to reaffirm and relaunch the overall educational duty that is the Church’s competence and for which it requests greater assumption of responsibility and commitment to be shared by everyone. Before the end of the year a special pastoral letter from the Irish bishops will address this subject, while a working group of 14 people is already preparing initiatives and establishing strategies.Monsignor James Cassin is the executive secretary of the Irish Episcopal Conference’s Commission for Education. Together with 6 Bishops, 6 superiors from religious orders and a nun who is part of the working group, and this is how he explains the Church’s commitment: “We are first of all convinced that education is the Christian community’s first challenge and that Catholic schools are a strategic place for a chance to evangelise the new generations, to communicate the Gospel. To achieve this we wish to invest with responsibility all those involved in the field of education, from families to teachers, and the students themselves, to promote cooperation, each according to their own possibilities”.What is the situation in Catholic Schools in Ireland?“We have a large number of Catholic schools in the country. As far as primary schools are concerned, for example, there are about 3.000 schools which consist in almost the totality of Irish primary schools. At secondary levels too there is a very important presence of Catholic schools with about 400 institutes amounting to over 80% of all schools available. As the Church, we are also involved in various high schools and in universities. This means that we can also look after permanent education. Catholic schools are sponsored by the State, which pays for daily expenses and the teachers’ salaries. This means families do not have to pay fees for enrolling their children in Catholic schools. Now however we are experiencing new problems”.What problems?“One problem with general characteristics concerns the organisation of Irish society, in which the number of practising Catholics has fallen; once they were the great majority, while nowadays a significant portion of the population, although generally speaking describe themselves as Catholics, are distant from the Church. This puts up for discussion the very presence of Catholic schools and their future. Then there is also the fall in numbers of priests and nuns in the schools, while there is the consequent rise in the numbers of secular staff with a series of consequences in the manner in which the Catholic schools operate and are perceived”.What do you mean?“The fall in the number of religious personnel and the rise in the numbers of secular staff in directing and managing the schools results in addressing the problem of how to train and motivate the new managers as far as the Catholic schools’ duties are concerned. There is of course a different way of feeling and acting. While on one hand this is an additional task for the Church, on the other is provides a great opportunity for rethinking and re-launching a shared responsibility and the involvement of everyone in the life of the Christian community. These issues too will be addressed in the next pastoral message from the Irish Bishops on the subject of education, probably before the end of this year”.What other initiatives are you planning?“For some time now a specific work group, of which I am a member, and appointed by the Episcopal Conference, has been addressing these problems. In the course of one year we hope to set up a special national office for service to Catholic schools, capable of coordinating and managing the many problems emerging in the country. In the meantime, we are holding a widespread referendum among the people, addressing the future of Catholic schools. We would in fact like to monitor, also thanks to a specific questionnaire, their attitudes and expectations on this subject, so as to plan the future. Finally, we have set up a negotiating table with the government requesting guarantees for the future of Catholic schools; in fact, while the current situation is good, changes in society could lead to changes and that is what we are discussing, so that the effective presence of Catholic schools for the education of the young does not decrease in any way”.