For all its problems, the Catholic church looms large in the lives of Northern Irish youngsters
By B.C. DERRY
IT WAS one of those improbable internet sensations. A routine report on local television about the hardships of going to school in freezing weather became a global hit after millions of users were baffled and charmed by the thick rural accent of a teenager from a County Derry village who declared: “Oh God, you wouldn’t be long getting frostbit ..."
As it soon emerged, Ruairi McSorley is no simple country bumpkin. He is a pupil at an academically superb Catholic grammar school, Lumen Christi, in the city of Derry (or Londonderry, as Protestants still prefer to say). As I write in this week’s print edition, these schools are a remarkable success story, and testimony to the ongoing influence of the church at a time Irish Catholicism as a whole is weathering some severe storms.
Lumen Christi is one of half a dozen Catholic secondary schools in Northern Ireland whose results place them near the top of British league tables. Such schools have their critics; some regard them as “grade factories” which will push children into relatively easy subjects and neglect their development as all-rounders. But they certainly do give plenty of children from modest homes or remote places a leg-up. Ruairi’s rural brogue wouldn’t be out of place in the Lumen playground, and nor would a working-class urban accent.
It’s still not enough, say the local Catholic bishops. In recent public statements, the hierarchy has renewed calls for schools like Lumen Christi to open their doors to children of all abilities. “Catholic schools are called to serve all pupils and especially the poor and most disadvantaged of society,” declared Archbishop Eamon Martin, the Irish primate, a few days ago. “We must always be on the lookout for those who are being left behind or neglected in any way by our Catholic education system.”
What lies behind all this egalitarian talk? Well, it may be perfectly sincere. But to critics, it amounts to a strategy for retaining influence over all classes of a society that is certainly not immune to the inroads of secularism. In the Republic of Ireland, the church has seen a vertiginous decline in its prestige thanks to scandals over cruelty to children, and the cover-up of these ills by priest-ridden politicians. The church’s social and moral influence has probably held up a bit better in the north, where Catholics still feel they must fight their collective corner in a divided society. But Northern Ireland is no longer a conservative place; in both Belfast and Derry, only a minority of children are born to conventionally married parents. The church has to think of clever ways of keeping its stock high.
For decades, Catholic schools were seen as one of the collective assets of an embattled community. But arguments over education in Northern Ireland are going to get fiercer as the total budget shrinks. Advocates of “integrated” schools - where the intake and curriculum are self-consciously balanced - complain of being sabotaged by the church. A church spokesman recently returned the complaint by saying a Catholic teacher-training college was being starved of funds by politicians with a pro-integration agenda.
But as of now, the cause of “integration” has a long way to go. Only about 8% of children go to mixed Protestant-Catholic schools. For the foreseeable future, kids like Ruairi will be taught the rosary as rigorously as they are taught everything else.
