IS IT TOO LATE FOR CATHOLICS IN NORTHERN IRELAND TO GROW UP?


In a speech on Friday, Mr. Peter Robinson described the education system as a 'benign form of apartheid'. He said that while he had no objection to church schools, he objected to the state and the taxpayer funding them. In the Republic of Ireland the RCC owns over 90% of primary schools and has an overweening influence on all others, including so-called third level colleges and universities.

In support of Peter Robinson, Mervyn Storey described Mr. Robinson's remarks as 'forward-looking and incisive' but described his detractors as 'backward-looking and predictable'.

"The First Minister rightly noted that people would find it appalling and immoral if we educated children separately on the basis of their race, yet we choose to maintain and fund a system which educates children separately on the basis of their religion.”

And who can differ with him when he says:

"It is disappointing to see certain vested interests in Northern Ireland rushing to defend the religious apartheid that exists in education. Clearly some people fear a loss of power and control."


It is hardly surprising, then, that the Deputy First Minister for Northern Ireland, Martin McGuiness has warned his First Minister Peter Robinson against 'taking on ' the Catholic Church over the provision of education.

"If Peter thinks taking on the Catholic Church, the Catholic bishops and indeed the Protestant churches for that matter and other interest groups is a sensible route to go, I think that is a big mistake.”

But if Peter Robinson doesn’t take on the Catholic Church, who will? Given the fact that no one in the Catholic Community in Northern Ireland gives a cabaiste about how their children are educated or, for that matter, bullied and buggered like their brethren across the border, who will bring the RCC to book?

The funny thing about Martin McGuiness’s stance is its obduracy and the absolute self-serving illogicality.behind it. Take the following points at random:

1. Traditionally, it was the RCC – not the British or Scottish – who sold the native pagans into Norman slavery;

2. The RCC has never let go of their subversion and hatred of the secular state, which whether English or Irish, they saw as antagonistic to their absolute control of people, not unlike those in Sinn Fein/IRA;


3. . In the recent set-off between Peter Robinson and Martin McGuiness, the one not wanting to personally welcome the Pope to England and the latter not wanting to greet the Queen, there is the slight matter of skewness in the equation. The Queen (and her government) works and pays and provides for all those who live and work within the United Kingdom. All the Pope provides, like the priests in Tibet, is prayers and aid gathering organizations. Moreover, it is the Queen and her government that provides Martin McGuiness and his fellow Republicans with the wherewithal they receive for doing absolutely nothing but swanning unemployed around Northern Ireland. None of the Pope’s people produce as much as loaf of bread between them towards the NI economy; but are ever ready with the open hand and the subversive remark against secularism. In this way the RCC – and Sinn Fein -- chime in with their constant subversive‘ holier than thou’ refrain that milks the good government of the secular state.

4. Sinn Fein/IRA is never done talking about Karl Marx and/or Wolfe Tone. It’s really a pity that they have not studied either in a secular
College, rather than in those Opus Dei-spun seminars, Confessionals, and Danny-Boy ballad sessions that keep the subversive flag flying. The first steps, I would have thought, either to Socialism or Communism or indeed, Republicanism or Patriotism, is the acquisition of a secular and judicious mentality – and that is nowhere present in either Northern or Southern Ireland and certainly not in any form of Catholicism that I am aware of . And it was Wolfe Tone who recognized that Catholics were pre-capitalist and pre-modern, when he urged them to become citizens. In becoming citizens, he meant that the first allegiance was to the secular state of Ireland or Northern Ireland – not to some medieval imperialism, which Republicans are constantly‘ fighting for’. What on earth have you been fighting for, Deputy First Minister, if not for the fair playing field that Peter Robinson – and others before him – have recommended?

5. One understands why the Catholic Bishops are afraid to have unified
Educational establishments in NI, as in Poland, India and east Timor; but why should Sinn Fein want for their own country what imperialist Catholic Bishops want for India and Rwanda? Why is Sinn Fein so afraid of the secular liberties already won by Protestants for their constituents and the secular knowledge they have won for NI’s future?

6. Peter Robinson is right.

7. In the Republic of Ireland the Catholic Church has destroyed all possibility both of Gaelic culture, which they destroyed, and secular knowledge and science, which the Pope and successive departments of education have seen as the implacable enemy of the church’s seisin of Irish society in its entirety. Indeed, the RCC has arranged for such a deep fissure between the governmental institutions they control and the people -- a fissure characterized by the split between those destined for a CBS education and those ‘’governors’ educated at Belvedere, Clongowes, and other Jesuitically controlled schools. All this unquestioned religious control has lead to two certain results: medievalism and/or mediocrity.

8. Does Martin McGuiness really want Northern Irish Catholics to join the ‘Republican Economy’ and have their children enslaved for generations paying tribute to the new Banco Ambrosianas of AIB and Anglo-Irish? Is this what he considers a just end for a system of Catholic education that has enjoyed total and absolute sway for almost a hundred years? And that’s not to mention the appalling beatings prevalent in ordinary classrooms, buggaries in reformatories, a wretched school monopoly, an equally wretched system of hospitals, an overburdened civil service and emigration, anger , demoralisation and crony capitalism everywhere. Does Martin McGuiness not know that the corrupt Church has spawned a corrupt State and, while the State is broke, the childless, womanless, careless Church marches on to filch from other healthier cultures.

9. How could any self-respecting or reflective politician inflict such
Imperialism on a people, who have had the personal liberties, sexual and other, long before they were conceived in the Republic of Ireland. Maybe Martin McGuiness should live in the Republic. He might even open his eyes and his ears and discover that notions like‘ The Separation of Powers’ -- like that of Parliament and Democracy -- are entirely Protestant concepts for good and prudent gov ernment. Unfortunately, such concepts have never really reached the very Catholic and anti-secular Republic except in fictional form.

Wouldn’t it be better, Martin, if you let the Holy Roman Cardinals and Bishops and Priests and Ministers for Education, speak for themselves. . .

Seamus Breathnach

www.irish-criminology.com