The Churches' response
Schools of Reconciliation: Issues in Joint Roman Catholic-Anglican Education
by Priscilla Chadwick (Cassell, 1994)
By the summer of 1984 nothing had been done to answer the parents' cry for help. They requested regular meetings and a celebration of mass perhaps in a church in the city centre; their requests were met with a quiet refusal. Roman Catholic priests wishing to respond positively feared being sent into a kind of `internal exile' in much the way that had been experienced by Presbyterian ministers determined to build a bridge to Roman Catholic communities [11]. (The Ulster phrase for this is `sent to Rathlin Island', a rocky outcrop off the north-east coast of Northern Ireland). At Christmas 1983, when the school included Roman Catholic representatives among the invitations to its carol service, it was necessary to negotiate a private understanding that any priest who attended would not be subjected to penalty or discipline: yet in 1985, 1,000 attended Lagan's carol service in a Catholic church on the Falls Road. One consequence of the Church's attitude was a genuine concern among Lagan's Roman Catholic parents that their children might lose their distinctive Catholicism. The official policy of the hierarchy seemed to be that Roman Catholics should not go to Lagan College for fear of losing or diluting their loyalty to the Church, whereas their policy of coldly ignoring the institution seemed specifically designed to bring about the consequence they feared. In Roman Catholic schools, a class mass would normally be held at least once a term. On days of obligation pupils at Lagan who attended mass in the morning necessarily arrived later at school because no celebration at the school was authorized. The Roman Catholic parents felt that this deliberate policy was at variance with the pastoral care which they expected from their Church.
The Roman Catholic head of religious education even produced a dossier of quotations from authoritative Catholic documents to inform discussion of the topic `May Catholic parents choose Lagan College?' and these were cited to vindicate the parents' view. Three quotations suffice to illustrate the strength of the contention:
Acknowledging its grave obligation to see to the moral and religious education of all its children, the Church should special attention and help to the great number of them who are being taught in non-Catholic schools. (Vatican II, Declaration on Christian Education, Gravissimum Educationis, 28 October 1965: Flannery, 1981, p. 732)
The fact that in their own individual ways all members of the school community share this Christian vision, makes the school `Catholic'. (Sacred Congregation, 1977, p.14)
In situations where, for one reason or another, Catholics and members of other churches are educated together, every attempt should be made to diminish the inherent disadvantages for religious formation. It is to be hoped that whatever Church is in charge of such schools would agree to arrangements by which children of other denominations could receive a religious education in accordance with the requirements of their own churches. (Catholic Hierarchy, 1976)
The situation presupposed in the last quotation is evidently that of Roman
Catholic children educated in schools with a Protestant affiliation. But
the principle should apply a fortiori in the case of a school of integrated
character. It might have been easier for the Roman Catholic parents if the
cool policy of detachment had been replaced by complete negativity: a reluctant
toleration made for peculiar difficulties. As the number of Roman Catholic
children educated in integrated schools increased, however, the Church authorities
could less easily dismiss them as a small minority problem created by parents
of little judgement who had opted out of the Roman Catholic educational
system in defiance of their priests and pastors. As integrated education
continues to expand, the hierarchy could feel more threatened, resulting
in outright opposition to ecumenical developments in education. Alternatively
the Church authorities may be moved to take seriously and positively the
parents' desire to see an authentically Catholic education within an integrated
framework. In the meantime, the balanced, interacting triangle of relationships
of home, school and parish has one piece missing.
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