Scottish Catholic Observer

From UKIP Scotland Leader David Coburn’s ‘if we were starting from scratch, I’d prefer the French secular system, without religious schools’ in the April 15 SCO to Green Party Co-convenor Patrick Harvie’s reframed and renewed attack on state-funded Catholic schools—as rebutted this week by SCES Director Michael McGrath—time and time again Catholic education in Scotland is misidentified as the cause of sectarianism and not one of the solutions to anti-Catholic bigotry. Talk about blaming the victim.

We would all like to see the end of religious prejudice in this country and abroad. Wishing it did not exist, or pretending that it does not, is not going to achieve that end, however. What causes humanists, secularists and extremists to hate Catholic schools, protected in Scottish law, with such a vengeance? One cannot help but suspect the green-eyed monster comes into play among these smaller but noisy minorities.

Disguised as calls for equality, their condemnation of faith school comes from a place where it pains some opponents to see that the substantial Catholic minority in Scotland formally recognised and catered to through the things such as state-funded Catholic education. It underlines the fact that Catholic voices play an important part on our society to this day, so it does not fit their concept of a modern Scotland needing to be post-Christian to take it rightful place in the world today.

Those who abhor the parts of our system and society that thrive—such as Catholic schools—have no solid alternative plan. How can replacing faith schools with nothing be a step forward for progressive Scotland?

That said, there is always scope to improve the standard of Catholic education.