As part of Catholic Schools Week 2011 Bishop Donal McKeown spoke recently of the future of Catholic Education in Northern Ireland. In his address at Holy Cross College in Strabane he reflected on this year's theme: 'Catholic Schools - Rooted in Jesus Christ'. At the heart of his message was a call for a new relationship between school, parish and family in the education of young people: 'How we were schools in past is not the model for being a Catholic school in the new environment.' When the default position for Catholic children is now generally assumed to be non-involvement in a parish church, schools and parishes must do things differently, recognising 'what schools can do, and to accept what schools alone cannot do.'
In a society where the greatest threat, he believes, is 'religious indifference', he reaffirmed the centrality of faith to all of life and all of education. Such formation in the faith could not be reduced to a qualification in RE: 'A GCSE or an A-level in RE is no substitute for conscious formation in the faith, within the family and through the parish.'
Interestingly, the Bishop makes two other points worth noting: First, he calls on Catholic educators to 'work increasingly closely with educational leaders in the Protestant churches' and, second, he invites Catholic educators 'to promote... the right of many people who have no religious convictions to have access to a secular model of education.'
The exact implications of these points are not spelled out but both raise significant questions, not just about the future of Catholic schools, but the shape of school governance and the teaching of religious education in Northern Ireland more generally.
The full statement from Bishop McKeown is available at the website of the Irish Bishops' Conference.