Irish Catholic schools are “gone” and it’s time to take faith formation and the sacraments out of schools, a prominent Catholic priest has said.
Fr Brendan Kilcoyne, a well-known commentator who hosts ‘The Brendan Option’ on Immaculata Productions, said he believes “woke hasn’t gone away” and that Catholic schools will be forced to teach more ‘woke’ ideology, meaning that when it comes to faith ethos, it’s time to “hand it over.”
The priest has a masters in education, and was also the Principal of St. Jarlath’s College in Tuam for five years. Now based in Co Mayo, the parish priest was speaking during a conference on the future of Catholic schools in Ireland.
He was joined on the panel by Dr Tom Carroll of Mary Immaculate College, Dr Aine Moran, a post-primary school principal, and Alan Hynes, the CEO of the Catholic Education Partnership at the event run by The Catechism Cafe, which took place in Knock Shrine.
Organisers of the event told Gript that people had travelled to the event from all over the country, including from Derry, Navan, Tipperary and Galway, to hear more debate on the issue of the future of school patronage.
It follows the Department of Education’s launch of its largest ever school survey, which assessed the demand for faith formation at primary school level. Some 168,000 households responded to the survey, which closed in December.
“One group of teachers travelled from Wicklow. We found there was a real hunger for this conversation to happen. And it’s a conversation that needs to be happening in every parish and diocese. There is a sense that this issue really needs some debate and discussion,” said Fr Mark Quinn, one of the organisers behind the project known as the ‘Catechism Cafe’.
“This is important to people and they’re concerned. There are all types of views, and many people made very valid points. The important thing is that we discuss things.”
Others on the panel argued that schools cannot be the only source of faith formation for children, while Fr Kilcoyne made the argument that the Catholic Church in Ireland is “beaten and weak,” and that young Catholics look on and see “beaten people.”
“The schools are gone,” the Mayo priest told the meeting. “Politics is downstream from culture. If you lose the culture, you’ve lost the lot.”
“I once felt that we could have done a deal; that we should have done a deal. Now I feel [we could have] thirty years ago, when we still had friends,” said Fr Kilcoyne. “When Bertie was still around, and John Bruton. When we had these believers who were still in politics. That was the time to cut a deal.
‘I’M NOT BLAMING ANYONE. I’M JUST SAYING IT’S GONE, IT’S OVER’
“That’s what you do, you make a deal when you still have the muscle. Not now when we’re beaten and weak and we’ve nothing left and we’re tired.
“Even the young Catholics look at us and we’re beaten people because we drank the land, we lost the deck of cards, their inheritance – what is it? They’re going to have to start from scratch. Some of them are homeschooling.
“These assumptions are running right through our schools now because politics are downstream from culture. You lose the culture, you lose the lot. The culture has got that carbon monoxide invisibility – it’s odorless, it’s sinuous, it’s just fluid. It moves around you. ”The schools are gone. The schools are full of lovely people. I’m not saying this to get at people. I’m not being mean to people. I’m not saying it to be nasty.
“We should be proud of the schools, in the sense that they do excellent academic work and in the sense they’re doing excellent wellness work, and in the sense that they’re run by the most fantastic people. I’m not blaming anyone. I’m just saying that it’s gone, it’s over,” he said.
“We didn’t do a deal when a deal could have been done. You do a deal now; what are you bringing to the table? Any intelligent civil servant would know how to deal with this. We’re absorbing all the hassle on the ground. They have the Church exactly where they want it, and we’re there,” said Fr Kilcoyne.
“I’ve come to believe – because I may be wrong – but I’ve come to believe that it’s time, not just to go, but to leave the whole lot behind us. In fact, I would take nothing I couldn’t carry. Get to hell out before we end up being complicit in scandal being given to successive generations as everything being done in the schools and being taught in the schools will be done on our watch.”
The well-known priest referred to the ‘Trans Rights Guide’ released by the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL); Transgender Equality Network Ireland (TENI); and LGBTQ+ youth organisation, ShoutOut, in December. He expressed concern that Catholic schools could be enabling the teaching of such ideology.
As reported and queried by Gript’s Jason Obsorne, the guide controversially claimed that “your school must make every effort to update your name and pronoun in relevant systems and documents” and additionally, that it “must also use your correct name and pronoun in day-to-day interactions”.
However, in January, the Department of Education, in correspondence with the Irish Times, contradicted the guide which claimed that schools were legally obliged to use the preferred pronouns of trans students.
The ICCL guide, funded by the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission (IHREC), cited “Department of Education guidelines” when advising that students had a legal right for schools to use their preferred pronouns.
However the Department of Education confirmed to The Irish Times last month that it has issued no such guidelines, stating: “No guidelines have been issued.”
In a statement to the newspaper, the ICCL reiterated the view expressed in the guide.
“All these things are being taught and we say nothing,” said Fr Kilcoyne. “This is an NGO, yes another NGO, which is part-funded by the Government,” he said of the guide’s authors, representatives of Teni and Shoutout.
Referring to transgender ideology, he told the meeting: “We will end up having to teach this. We will end up having to tolerate it, because the woke thing hasn’t gone away.
“The woke thing is a perfectly logical, if mad, argument based originally on the dignity of the human being. It is an insane heresy, believe it or not, of Christian philosophy and culture. It’s just personal freedom gone absolutely crazy.
“This isn’t going to go away. It’ll rename itself, it’ll calm down like all revolutions but it’s not going to go. But [Catholic schools] are going to have to teach it.”
“Let me make a plea to you. We’re not good at this. We’re not good at losing with dignity. We tend to start fouling – we tend to start arguing with the ref. For once in our immense history, could we accept that we have what others don’t? We have time. We can afford to take the hit. Let’s go out the gate with colours and drums, with dignity, and hand it all over, and then start again.”
PRINCIPAL ON ‘NOSTALGIC’ TIKTOK TREND
Dr Aine Moran, a post-primary school principal and teacher whose career has spanned 35 years, said that she and others had seen a “massive gap” between the vision of Catholic ethos and the formation and support that exists on the ground for teachers.
“We do not see that Catholic education is failing, but it is changing,” said Dr Moran. She spoke about a trend, seen on TikTok, of young people posting videos of themselves singing Catholic hymns.
“These are known as ‘Mass bangers,’ said Dr Moran. “It got me thinking. You’ve young people in New York and in Brisbane and in London, and they’re getting together and they’re singing hymns. And it’s not in mockery. It just struck me as being a memory. Music carries this faith that someone in their lineage once had, and these are hymns that they learned in childhood. Now, they may be full of argument and critique of the Catholic Church. Their belief has become very complicated, but within that, they’re singing these very familiar hymns.”
“For those of us concerned with formation, this shouldn’t be something that we dismiss. It could possibly be something that gives us hope. There is hope. The seeds that are sown in childhood are not lost, but I would say really strongly that memory without formation is just nostalgia. And nostalgia will not carry the Catholic education system.”
Dr Moran raised concerns that a “disconnect” exists between priests and teachers. She said she agreed with the panel that “we need a whole lot less Catholic schools,” adding that she felt the Catholic schools that do exist must be “intentionally so.”
“We’re facing a situation where we have to downsize – we have get realistic that we can have quality or quantity. We can’t have both anymore,” said Dr Tom Carroll.
“The research is interesting and shows that parents want Catholic schools. There’s a variety of reasons they want it. It’s not always ethos itself [and] it’s not always sacramental preparation, but there’s a reason they want it.”
You can watch the event and discussion in full here.