Beyond Belief: Can a Non-Catholic Teacher Provide Faith Formation in an Irish Catholic School?
Many people say it's possible but is this only because of what they have to lose?
If you were a fly on the wall of an average Irish primary classroom, chances are very high that at some point in the school day, you would likely see the teacher blessing herself, leading at least one prayer, and referring to Jesus Christ. It’s quite possible if you were that fly you might read that and think nothing of it.
(Though if you're a teacher in one of Ireland's very few non-Catholic schools, your head will already have perked up!)
However, step back into that typical classroom: what if the teacher isn't Catholic? Is this a problem? The answer, as I've found, is far from simple.
The question of whether a non-Catholic teacher can effectively provide faith formation in a Catholic primary school in Ireland isn't straightforward. It really depends on who you ask, and the spectrum of opinions, to me, is fascinating. What might seem like a clear-cut issue for some quickly dissolves into a nuanced debate for others.
Faith is Not a Subject
At one end of the spectrum, you find devout Catholics who have no direct stake in the day-to-day running of a school. For them, the answer is a resounding "no." Their conviction is that faith isn't just another subject like maths or history. It's a way of life, a relationship, a deeply personal journey. To have someone who doesn't share that faith providing "formation" in it is, in their eyes, bordering on madness. They believe the very essence of what a Catholic school should be an education deeply rooted in faith. In their view, it is compromised if its religious instruction comes from someone that doesn’t believe in its core message. It's not about teaching facts about religion; it's about nurturing belief, and that, they argue, requires genuine faith. Robert Nugent is an example of somebody that falls into that category.
The Believer that Believes non-Believers can nurture Belief
There are, of course, some devout Catholics that do believe that faith is a subject and that anyone is able to pass on the message of Jesus Christ to children even if the person passing the message doesn’t believe the message themselves. I would suggest there are more people in this category than the last one.
People like Robert Nugent, to me, are brave Catholics. They stand up for their beliefs, they are proud of their love for their faith, and even when it is unpopular, they stand up for the doctrine. While I may not agree with much of Catholic dogma, I have much more respect for people like Robert who is unapologetically Catholic. He is someone that is not afraid to sacrifice power, privilege and numbers to ensure the strength of his religious community lives on. He is critical of the clergy and of schools that are afraid to uphold their own ethos, and he believes that, if we are moving to a secular world, then the schools should reflect that.
Then there are the Catholics who have "skin in the game" – parents with children in the schools, school board members, members of Catholic representative groups or, often, staff directly involved in the system. While they might agree with Robert Nugent that "faith isn't a subject,” their position often becomes, let’s say, half-hearted.
I can’t 100% say that it is hypocrisy, but it could be argued that it’s the only way that can navigate the reality of navigating the landscape in front of them. While they would be the first to admit that it is frustrating to see that most of the children, parents and staff in schools do not practice the faith in any meaningful way, they have genuine fears of what would happen if the current system collapsed. Essentially, the question they ask themselves is what would we lose if religion was removed from schools. It is a question I get asked a lot and it’s a question I tend to ask them to answer.
For representative bodies, the loss is obvious. If we have no Catholic schools, we have no CPSMA and we have no Catholic Education Partnership. We also possibly lose the education officers in the various dioceses.
For the Bishops, the loss might be welcome in some ways, as they don’t have enough priests to run the schools, but there is a loss of power that has to be taken into account. I don’t mean this in a megalomaniac way; I mean this in terms of how successful schools are for creating the next generation of people who tick the “Catholic box” in the census. Ultimately is it better to have a non-believer teaching their messages half-heartedly than not have enough believers to teach the message? Is there also a longer term possibility that churches will become even more empty and then have to shut down?
For religious parents, their fear is probably the same as it is to most parents. While they might have the same frustrations as Robert Nugent, especially during the sacramental season when the vast majority of their peers are more interested in the fashion rather than the Passion, those I have spoken to tell me that they hope that some of the children will discover the love of Jesus Christ, even if their parents don’t. In a way, it is better to have something, than nothing. Again, similarly, is the compromise of having a non-believer being forced to pass on the faith to their children better than what they perceive would replace the Catholic faith?
These are fears shared by everybody and because we don’t know what the answer to that question is, for sure, even though it would most likely be an ethical education programme, many have invented ideas of moral panic, which essentially brings them back to the compromise of better the devil you know.
Religious teachers face the same ethical dilemma. While they know most of their colleagues aren’t passing on the faith, and this may be deeply frustrating, at least they feel they are safe to do so, most of the time. As far as I can see, most parents have a very high tolerance to faith formation, despite the grumbling if the teacher is “too religious.” Again, a better the devil you know, conclusion is likely for devout teachers. They have the autonomy to pass on the faith correctly in the confines of their own classroom and they also have the patron body for protection should any parent complain about them professing their faith.
I have some sympathy for these teachers. One often reads stories in the press and online about their perception about how difficult it is to be Catholic in Ireland.
It must be difficult to practice a faith, go into a job where part of your duties is to share than faith, and then have your colleagues, your pupils and parents mocking what you do as “too Catholic.” However, my sympathies do end because, at the end of the day, these people can work in almost 96% of primary schools in Ireland and almost 100% if they can extend their Catholicism to general Christianity. Those that aren’t Catholic don’t have that luck.
Even with all of that, many of the above cohorts will argue that faith is a small part of their job. They will argue challenges like teacher shortages, funding crises, and the desire for inclusion are far more important than the “small” matter of faith formation. As figures like Alan Hynes have highlighted in the past, the practicalities of staffing schools sometimes necessitate compromises that devout individuals might not ideally wish for, leading to a more nuanced, sometimes reluctant, acceptance of non-Catholic teachers in these roles. Ultimately they all might argue that they are prioritising pragmatism over their missions.
Culture Over Creed: The "Cultural Catholic"
Moving along the spectrum, we encounter Cultural Catholics, also known as Bouncy Castle Catholics, and more recently, Cradle Catholics. Ultimately they all mean the same thing, they may have been baptised (in the cradle) but they don’t see Catholicism as part of their day-to-day lives. Unlike many non-practicing Jews and Muslims, who could describe their religion also as an identity or ethnicity, Christianity is not an ethnicity. For many, particularly in Ireland, "Catholic" isn't a deeply held religious belief, they claim it as heritage and identity and, therefore often believe that these values are not only Catholic, but also what it means to be Irish.
This creates a very complicated dilemma for Catholic schools in Ireland. These cultural Catholics have little to no interest in the dogma of the faith but they have great interest in the milestones and rites of passage. Essentially, as many a journalist has stated, there is nothing religious about the Communion.
For this group, the idea of a non-Catholic teacher isn't a problem. Brady describes receiving the holy sacraments as, “very honestly, that part is kind of unimportant” and Moncrieff admits he “ticked ‘no religion’ on the census form.” They often argue, possibly to themselves, that the religious instruction in schools is more about Irish culture, tradition, and history rather than, what it actually is, imparting religious doctrine for spiritual formation. This is more than likely backed up by the majority of teachers in Catholic schools who are also cultural-Catholics.
When I hear parents and teachers tell me that religious education in Catholic schools isn’t really about the dogma, but it’s about the values, I have to try very hard to practice one of those values: self-control. Catholic values, at least the ones they choose not to ignore, (you know abortion, birth control, IVF, homosexuality being a sin, children outside of marriage being a sin, living in sin, the role of prayer, being born with original sin, etc.), tend to be exactly the same as human values.
Ultimately, given that it is celebrations and milestones that are more important than faith and worship, it doesn’t really matter who is in front of the class, as long as they prepare the children for the celebrations. If everyone makes believe that they are learning values along the way, all the better. The truth is that very little Catholicism is being passed on to the children, which is why most people are happy to turn the other cheek, as long as the teacher is also happy to go along with the pretence; and should anyone raise their head to object, these people are very quick to tell them to go find another school.
The Nones and Others
Speaking of which, finally, we have the non-Catholic perspectives, which might surprisingly mirror some of the devout Catholic views.
While some non-Catholics might not mind teaching religious instruction because they view it as meaningless pretence anyway, who teaches it doesn't really matter. It's just going through the motions.
However, there's another group of non-Catholics who actually agree with the devout Catholics that faith is not a subject. This is a group of people that represent a significant minority of the population, anything between 30 and 50%, and they have a choice of about 5% of the schools in the country. In some counties they have no schools to choose from and in others just one. Essentially, most of them are forced to send their child to a school under Catholic patronage, where they opt out of faith formation to minimise the impact of the prayers, worship and messaging that they don’t associate with.
For those that are a different faith, cultural Catholics don’t seem to mind, as long as these people put up and shut up, and let them get on with their culture. As a reward, they might even have one lesson on Eid and Diwali during the year as a tokenistic nod to inclusion. Perhaps there might be a multicultural day where these people will be allowed to wear their traditional clothing so they can be fawned over for their exotic and pretty colours, like a zoo. Most people from different faith groups do comply and they don’t complain because often they come from migrant backgrounds. Sometimes, they simply don’t come to school for parts of the school year and nobody notices, or at least nobody says anything. This is not the cohort that I am focusing on in this section.
A much trickier cohort are Irish people that don’t believe in a deity. Most often they are people who went through the Irish education system and made their sacraments but, for whatever reason, have decided that they don’t want their children going through the motions. These reasons can be anything from disgust at the Catholic Church’s continuing attempts to cover up child abuse, to something as simple as not believing in a god and therefore it would be absurd to make their child believe in one while at school.
They are often castigated by the school community because they haven’t followed the cultural norms of going along to getting along, like most people. Most parents and teachers know there’s a compromise to be had in a Catholic school where you have to go along with blessing oneself, prayer to Jesus, going to Church, making Confession, and sometimes ignoring the odd value that might not chime with cultural Catholicism, but for those that aren’t willing to allow their children to be indoctrinated into a faith, this can be a challenge to those that are. After all, it’s going against the flock. If everyone is being a hypocrite as Moncrieff celebrates, then what does it say about them when there are those that aren’t willing to be hypocrites?
Even within this cohort, there are multiple layers. There are those that hate everything the Catholic Church stands for, whether that’s the patriarchal control or the abuse of women and children, and then there are those that simply have no association with the organisation.
However, ultimately, they probably share the opinion that if a group of non-believing parents are happy for a non-believing teacher to teach a group of non-believing children to believe, there is something completely absurd going on. They also might share a view that it’s not ok for a believing teacher to have the monopoly on the truth when it comes to belief and use this to evangelise. We need only to google the term: “puberty is a gift from God” to see why. There are many many more examples mostly visually when the non-Catholic child has ashes adorned on his forehead by mistake.
Ultimately, whether the teacher is a believer or not, is almost irrelevant.
Ironically, the atheist has more in common with the devout, and even more ironically, it is the cultural-Catholics that call those that don’t go along with it, anti-Catholic!
My Own Perspective
And where do I, an ethnic minority, an atheist, a primary school teacher stand on this spectrum? Surprisingly, I land firmly with the devout Catholics who assert that faith is not merely a subject on a curriculum. The concept of someone like me providing genuine faith formation, or worse, attempting to evangelise, strikes me as completely absurd. As far as I’m concerned, true faith, regardless of its form, demands an authenticity that an unbeliever simply cannot provide.
I’d argue that I am pro-Catholic, in that I admire anyone that stands for anything no matter what it is. I don’t care whether you are a cultural Catholic or a devout Catholic, as long as you don’t inflict your beliefs on me. To me, the place for faith formation, is the church. Unfortunately, the Irish primary education system imposes faith formation in spades in schools, however one receives it.
While the question of non-Catholic teachers in Irish Catholic primary schools is clearly more complex than it first appears, the perception that it satisfies everyone is beyond doubt. While it's also a conversation that touches on faith, culture, identity, and the evolving role of education in modern Ireland, it’s impossible to keep ignoring the ever-increasing cohorts of people, both devout and non-believing that can’t in their conscience go along with a pretence.
To make things harder, there’s no real way to measure this spectrum. The census doesn’t ask whether you are a devout Catholic or a cultural Catholic, though I am amused at the people that write “lapsed Catholic” into the box, almost as a last clutch to the “cradle.” Similarly, it seems there are a number of people that tick the “no religion” box that allow their children make promises to be Catholic in exchange for “princess dresses and money.”
More importantly there’s limited data on the teachers that are expected to pass on the faith to the children. There has been a couple of surveys and the last one showed only 50% of teachers under the age of 50 that believe in a personal god. However, this is only one survey and it’s hard to make massive conclusions from it. Interestingly, those in favour and not in favour of faith formation in schools both celebrated the survey results for different reasons.
With all this mind, it’s no surprise to me that nothing is changing. This is just another aspect of the muddy waters of patronage in Irish primary schools. Everyone seems paralysed by fear that if we remove religion from the system, that something dreadful will happen, so instead we keep flogging away no matter how bizarre it becomes. I wish I had faith that something going to change, and unfortunately, I don’t believe in miracles.