http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/mar/19/catholic-church-child-abuse

What do you think of it?

This lady was, until very recently, a rather dogged apologist for the RC Church.

Such charming self-deprecation from an anonymous poster deserves an answer, but I cannot think of one, other than a polite response, which I trust you will find this to be.

What a superior attitude you adopt! “Maybe you are not without hope” ! “I could argue against your simplistic assumptions by throwing some Aquinas or Newman at you, but really, I’ve wasted too much time on this already and I’m sure it would be a further waste to bother” !

Perhaps one day you may decide to accept the full implications of there being no “God out there”. It is difficult to achieve, given childhood indoctrinations and religious nostalgia. But personally I have found the spiritual atheist conclusion a vast relief. No more theological contradictions! Wonderful! And plenty of hope and human spirit in our one life without a god or immortal soul, thank you!

Read the posts and think again.

@iainm
an inexplicit ethos is not the same thing as neutrality, just as unproven is not the same as innocent.

@Terry Gilbert
I dispute the BHA’s claim to promote pluralism by ‘simple’ inclusion and comparative teaching, it is much closer to promotion of a false neutrality.

It seems a bit perverse for one to be taught about others’ beliefs without the expectation to learn about ones’ own cultural context and historical foundation, so the BHA’s policy appears on first reading to be balanced – they accept, for example through their membership of the Values Education Council, that they don’t exist in a moral vacuum.

Yet I find it hard to escape the implication in BHA policy that they wouldn’t break the comprehensive system and thereby reduce the pluralism they advocate – because parents do wish for their children to inherit their own belief systems (as MatGB described, he and Jennie wish for their children to be liberal free-thinkers able to make up their own minds, not neutral or unbalanced non-thinkers).

I’ve always found it odd that so many people who are so quick and so willing to reject the fact of their antecedents or opponents motivations do so without acknowledging their own wishes to escape the cycles of political conflict and failure. It’s tantamount to promoting ignorance – not education!

Y’see inflexible opposition to indoctrination is doctrinaire too.

So, as someone who is a supporter of pluralism and diversity, I would encourage the BHA to expand their reasoning to it’s logical conclusion and support a more flexible collegiate school system allied to greater use of educational vouchers: I think is it irresponsible of the BHA to promote such a destructive policy – without, that is, proposing a positive alternative in its place.

I can see greater collegiality happening as a consequence of increasing specialisation of secondary schools and the so-called academies, but it would obviously be a massive upheaval from the current system. Nevertheless I think most people are agreed major reforms are needed to get out of this mired debate on education which is simply not doing enough for today’s children and causes intense grief for parents.

So how radical is David Laws prepared to be?

“If you lived in a country where authoritarianism was the norm, and considered so normal that people took it for granted and assumed it was the position most people would take so it was “normal”, that is precisely the position you might take. There are several countries in the world where homosexual practice can get you the death penalty, and many others where it is illegal and there is strong social disapproval of it. In those countries they may well think what we would regard as outrageously homophobic views on this issue to be “neutral”. Suppose you were a teacher in such a country and you were ordered to teach what its government minister said was a “neutral” position on this matter – perhaps that it was “dangerous” and a sign of “mental deficiency” and that the said government was a brave and forward-looking government on account of it not actually executing people for it? ”

The state exists and it necessarily – in so much as any given law either exists or it doesn’t – has to take a moral or ideological position on many issues, and that position will be more agreeable or less agreeable to different sections of the population at any given time. I don’t see anything that makes education a special case when compared to, say, employment legislation, so unless you are agitating for anarchism I don’t really see where this argument takes you.

Would you be comfortable with the idea of a whites-only school, or are you happy to allow the “nanny state” to judge what is neutral on some issues, but not others?

Does your employer have a religious ethos? Your local pub? Your community library? Your nearest public swimming pool? No, and yet you wouldn’t accuse any of these places of imposing an alternative secular ideology just because they don’t impose an explicitly religious one. It wouldn’t even occur to you to do so, they are simply… neutral.

Not imposing X is not the same thing as imposing not X.

Not saying that Y is correct is not the same as saying Y is wrong.

I’ve got nothing to add to the rest of your post because, once again, you are arguing as if Catholic schools or Catholicism in general are being singled out for special treatment, while I and I suspect everyone else in the thread are arguing against sectarian schools in general, be they Catholic, CofE, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu or whatever.

Hell, I’d even argue against explicitly sectarian atheist schools if the state allowed such things to exist (which of course it doesn’t). See, I’m neutral me.

You write “So, there is some social good in these rituals? Maybe this is really what
the religion is all about, having a little club where we do flower
arranging and the like, and not, as has been claimed, where we damn
everyone else to hell.”

I would have thought that Catholics generally believe that if you do not believe in God that you will go to hell – not that all of them take hell very seriously.

Anyway, yes, there is some social good in rituals. Atheists, humanists and
secularists have them. But both athiesm and religion are of course more than that.
We have to find a way of holding good rituals (not to mention
flower arranging in churches!) – without people having to listen in silence in a church to
nonsense that they do not believe in. Just because a lie is good for you doesn’t make it good. Atheism is a conclusion about the non-existence of a god other than as an idea in the minds of those who believe there is one. At its best it is perhpas a kind of spiritual internalisation of our knowledge of the Universe and life and human spirit and morality on Earth, but without the invention of an all good creator god and an immortal soul.

You write ” It would appear to me to be somewhat hypocritical of people to say they
want a bit of what has been achieved by a community and its rituals
without contributing to it. If you say it is all nonsense, than have the
courage of your convictions and don’t get involved with it. You appear to
be taking a position of jealousy, you hate it because it works to bring
people together and people brought together achieve things.”

Of course we want to take advantage of human spiritual experience over
the centuries, but that does include not only our lovely churches but also the briliant scientific
discoveries and knowledge which makes the idea of a creator god of the universe concerned
with our cosmically insignificant lives so very unlikely. Things were different when when the
earth was thought to be the centre of the universe and flat, the heavens
were above and the sun was dragged overhead by some means or other.

I am not “taking a position of jealousy”. That which brings people together in religion, I see as a lie. The atheist conclusion is a vast relief from theological contradictions. Religions, as well as bringing some people together, also divide people unnecessarily. I would like to see our churches used for many secular purposes – including moral think tanks, as Bishop Trevor Huddlestone once said to me he thought they should be – at a wedding he was taking. In the meantime I am not going to be deprived of going to weddings and funerals of my friends and relations just because they choose to hold it in a church. I greatly enjoy singing the hymns, but draw the line at prayers and always thank the vicar at the door at the end, while also saying “But such nonsense about God and the afterlife”. He or she has had us as an apparently assenting silent audience for the address, so it is only right to give a bit of honest feedback.

You write ” If it works so well, but you hate the God aspect of it why is it that
secularists cannot achieve the same in some other way? Why can’t you
devise some little clubs which bring people together and achieve things?
Why moan about what others have achieved rather than try and achieve
something yourself?

I do not hate the God aspect: I just disagree with it, think it is nonsense and am sorry for
the unnecessary divisions it causes in the world. Although I do hate some of the ways the imaginary god causes people to behave towards homosexuals and women and people of other religions or none. Atheists and Secularists, myself included, join the British Humanist Association, who have non-religous ceremonies. The ceremonies will no doubt be improved over the years, as the non-religous culture grows up.

And as for “doing, not moaning”, and since you have turned personal, you might like to look at http://www.thinkweek.co.uk to see what the Oxford Atheist, Humanist and Secularist Committee, of which I was a member, achieved, together with the Sea of Faith and Sceptics in the Pub, to whom Evan Harris gave an excellent talk at the end of Oxford Think Week recently in the Copa Bar in George Street, Oxford.

Also, there is now a “giving without god” fund for natural disasters, I am glad to say.

It would appear to me to be somewhat hypocritical of people to say they want a bit of what has been achieved by a community and its rituals without contributing to it. If you say it is all nonsense, than have the courage of your convictions and don’t get involved with it. You appear to be taking a position of jealousy, you hate it because it works to bring people together and people brought together achieve things.

If it works so well, but you hate the God aspect of it why is it that secularists cannot achieve the same in some other way? Why can’t you devise some little clubs which bring people together and achieve things? Why moan about what others have achieved rather than try and achieve something yourself?

You write: “I don’t trust nanny state to know what is best for me on that matter”.

But you do trust an imaginary god and the Pope to know what is best for you. ‘Nanny state’ is democratic. Neither God, nor the Pope – so far as this country is concerned – is democratic. I would rather trust democracy than either.

Things would of course be different in the authoritarian dictatorship you hypothesise, whether theocratic or not, but the fact is – thank goodness! – that we do live in a democracy.

A lot of the Catechism is fudge – an attempt to paper over the difference between current liberal interpretations and what was said in the past. So it’s not actually going to say “what we said in the past as wrong”. You have to understand the politics in all this. My point is that if a document like this does not say “Non-Catholics will all go to hell”, and I have pointed out where it would say it if it did, you can be pretty sure that is not the current position even of those of a fairly conservative disposition.

So, to argue my side, I have given just about the most authoritative source that can be given. To argue the other side, someone has given what they though some author said about some atypical school several decades ago.

How dare the state force its ideology on my children by not providing me with such a school. Non-political people like to say that ensuring that schools have no political affiliation is somehow “neutral”, but of course it’s not, having no political affiliation is an explicit political position in its own right!”

If you lived in a country where authoritarianism was the norm, and considered so normal that people took it for granted and assumed it was the position most people would take so it was “normal”, that is precisely the position you might take. There are several countries in the world where homosexual practice can get you the death penalty, and many others where it is illegal and there is strong social disapproval of it. In those countries they may well think what we would regard as outrageously homophobic views on this issue to be “neutral”. Suppose you were a teacher in such a country and you were ordered to teach what its government minister said was a “neutral” position on this matter – perhaps that it was “dangerous” and a sign of “mental deficiency” and that the said government was a brave and forward-looking government on account of it not actually executing people for it?

Who are you or I to judge what is really neutral? Sorry, but I don’t trust nanny state to know what is best for me on that matter. Nanny state may think she knows what is best for me and that what she is saying is a pure neutral position, I may disagree.

One of the reasons the current system of schools with a religious ethos came about was that in the late 19th and early 20th century, a sort of low church Anglicanism was regarded as “neutral” religious education. That is why the nonconformist churches by and large did not set up their own schools, they were content with what the state gave them. It was the Catholic Church which objected and said the view of religion being taught was biased. The state, being more liberal on this issue than I see people here are now, agreed therefore to let the Catholic Church have its own schools as part of the state system. What I have written here is based on the observation that by and large this had worked. Being involved in this state system to some extent “domesticated” the Catholic Church. As I have already said, several times, we have not seen large bands of Catholic extremists isolated from wider society. We have not see the development of a ghetto mentality in the Catholic community in England – which undoubtedly it had the potential for. State Catholic schools have tended to take a liberal approach to the religion which is why in Catholic circles there is some strong opposition to them from extreme conservatives.

It is really so weird to read the description of what people here suppose Catholic schools are like, and what conservative opponents of them in the Catholic Church say they are like. Those conservative opponents just LOVE the idea of religious education being forced into a private ghetto, and there is an air of triumphalism in them now with this current issue – their line to the liberals is “look, you try and co-operate with the state, you and your wishy-washy state Catholic schools, and see where you get”. What people in this discussion we have been having are portraying as outrageous concession to the “religious lobby” is, in conservative Catholic circles, being condemned as an outrageous concession to the anti-religious lobby by the liberal Catholic establishment.

Having seen the misassumptions of most posters here about these issues, such as the sincere belief that the main thing Catholic schools teach in RE classes is that everyone else is going to hell, sorry, no I just don’t trust those same people when they say they can dictate what is a “neutral” position on religious education. That is why my preferred option is a diversity of schools which don’t pretend to be neutral, but do have the oversight of being part of the Local Authority system. I’ve seen it and it works. It works in the Netherlands too, where Catholicism is notoriously liberal. If what people are saying here about what “faith” schools must inevitably lead to, the Netherlands would be torn apart by conflicts between Catholics and Protestants.

I can appreciate there are some difficult balances here. I am not fixed in my own mind as to where the best balance is between parents wanting to bring up children to have a particular knowledge and interest of their own culture and the freedom of children to make a rational choice. That is why I noted in the “snatched away” phrase that one end of the spectrum of view on this is obviously outrageous. I do see the difficulty in how we can achieve the balance of having the sort of religious-oriented but liberal schools with which I am familiar and somehow deny the right for religious-oriented schools for those with a less liberal approach to religion. So, yes, I am aware of all the issues I have been accused of ignoring. But I still see almost no awareness from anyone else of the real issues I have been raising here. Even though underneath they seem to me to be fundamentally liberal ones.

Oranjepan, I too would like to see education pushed up right to the top. I feel that it is the issue where all liberals, right or left, should come to consensus – that a good first chance in life for all is the only ethical way for society to proceed

On neutrality, whilst I agree that 100% nuetrality is impossible, saying that ‘we are CofE’ and this is what CofE teaches, that we only hire CofE and chose you because you were CofE is most definately not neutral.

Furthermore, you said that “we” are exhibiting here prejudice, so how could we pretend to be neutral? But as I have said, when it comes to religion, I would teach, sympathetically, many religions. This goes on now in most (if not all, not sure) community schools, and perhaps all faith schools. But it cannot be the same if you presuppose one religion to be your foundation, as simply not declaring.

Also, whilst I personally may be more skeptical about religion, my governmental policy, as it were, would not be; in that I find it perfectly all right for teachers who are Chrsitian or Muslim or in any way religious to be in any school. That is the real meaning of neutral that is important when it comes to faith schools. Whilst any given teacher might not be, and so any given community school (potentially), faith schools CANNOT be.

Though I agree with your sentiment that too much has been said!

Brilliant!

RE your point on neutrality

“I want my children to go to a liberal school that only admits the children of other liberals like me.

How dare the state force its ideology on my children by not providing me with such a school. Non-political people like to say that ensuring that schools have no political affiliation is somehow “neutral”, but of course it’s not, having no political affiliation is an explicit political position in its own right!”

If that sounds ridiculous, then now you know how your argument sounds to everyone else.

You say: “Why? Now MatGB has put the case that in his area there are no reasonable purely secular alternatives, but he was not saying he had to lie to get his stepchildren into any local school.”

Very often, the best local schools are located in prosperous neighbourhoods, where children have many educational advantages before they even go to school. There is a middle class tradition of going along with Church of England religion for reasons of nostalgia, love of church architecture and of the church being the centre of parish/village life. These best local schools are often Church of England Schools for historical reasons. There is competition to get children into them, and nowadays some church attendance and going along with the religious nonsense is helpful to success in doing so. Certainly this is happening with a family I know well. The parents have had to dissemble. Volunteering to help with the church flowers is helpful. It is basically a middle class stitch up, based on implying or pretending a religious belief one does not have.

You say “What would happen if these parents did not lie? Would their children not get schooling? No. The state is obliged to provide them with schooling. If religious education is as bad as you and others say, then surely those schools with it will be the worst schools, so why should anyone lie to get their children into them? Surely it would only be the most useless and silly parents who would send their children to such schools, so why on earth should anyone else lie to get their children into them?”

If the parents did not lie, or dissemble, their children would get schooling, but not in the better schools. Religious schools are bad in this way for atheist parents and children. What is bad is not that the education at religious schools is bad. What is bad is that it is better, for the middle class stitch up reason, not for any reason to do with the religion. That is why parents dissemble and pretend belief that they do not have, which is dishonest but a price they are prepared to pay for the schools that are better for the middle class pretend-religion stitch up reasons. So you are wrong: it is not the most useless and silly parents who would send their children to such schools. It is the most advantaged, with the most advantaged children. That is why anyone would lie to get their children into the Churdh of England schools in more prosperous areas. That is what I mean by saying that state subsidised religious schools cause institutionalised dishonesty.

“People are saying they do not want state money to be spent on religious education. Well, if it is, since these schools do not get funded on any more generous basis than other schools, they must be giving a worse education because some of their funds are diverted to the religious stuff. However, if the schools did not exist, their pupils would still have to be educated, and since the schools do not cost more, exactly the same state money would be spent. As such, how can you say state money is spent on this when abolishing them would not result in any money being returned to the state? Net cost to the state is nil.”

Certainly State money should not be spent on religious schools. To say that some of their funds are diverted to the religous stuff is an astonishigly specious argument which causes me to lose respect for your case, which suddenly appears just to be a desperate rearguard action in defence of religious schools of all kinds, and not just of state funded religious schools.

Now I guess you are talking about private religious schools not existing. That is another argument altogether. If there were fewer private schools of any kind, more of the wealthy, articulate and influential parents would be sending their children to state schools. They would then be more concerned about standards in state schools and would be happier to pay higher taxes for state education, which would therefore improve, leading to less people opting out of the state system, in a virtuous circle – something I always hoped would happen back in the 1970s, and which seems to be happening to a small degree today. To encourage the process there should be VAT on all expenditure on private education, which is a luxury expenditure which helps to perpetuate the UK class system. But, as I say, that is another argument altogether, and not one worth having here, I think. My only reason for chipping in has been to express my disquiet at the institutionalised dishonesty pressure brought to bear upon atheist parents faced with local religous state schools.

The point about Voluntary Aided schools is that they come under LEA oversight, which includes the LEA appointing a proportion of their governors. This is a much stronger community oversight than exists with “academies”.

You agree that faith schooling is dangerous, yet you believe that just regulating it seems to be the answer. Yet it will always be impossible to stop teachers (or entire schools) saying one thing to appease visiting inspectors and then “correct” that in the much longer period that they aren’t visiting, or in other lessons.

And everyone else seems to think the answer is having some sort of madrassa system where there is no such inspection at all.