School patronage debate 'is about quality of faith' [Independent.ie]
- Published: 20 June 2011
THE Catholic Church does not see this week's national debate on primary school patronage as being about the number of buildings it will hand over to other bodies, Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin said last night.
Speaking in St Colmcille's parish at Knocklyon, Dublin, Archbishop Martin insisted that bishops were concerned about "the quality of the faith life of the Catholic school".
He was responding to Education Minister Ruairi Quinn's call for the church to divest itself of 50pc of its 3,000 schools from its control to accommodate the growing non-Catholic sector. The debate opens on Wednesday in the Department of Education.
"The current discussion on changes in school patronage is not just about management or ethos or about numbers," said Archbishop Martin. "Catholic patronage of a school does not on its own bring about a truly Catholic culture to a school.
"For the church the discussion about schools today is not about the number of schools that may change patronage, but about the quality of the faith life of the Catholic school."
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