The Cafe

Keeping the faith I
Brian Fitzpatrick

Few topics these days more readily bring out the rant in self-proclaimed rationalists than 'faith schools'. While rather enjoying Jill Stephenson's breezy overview of European liberalism/anti-clericalism, (SR 269), I wasn't sure whether to choke or chortle over her dotty assertion that '...when it comes to promoting divisiveness in British society, not even distinctions of wealth or the class system can compete with faith schools'. Maybe I had laughed too readily at the leaders' TV debates when Nick Clegg proclaimed that he was '...not a man of faith – but my wife is'. It seems some strands of liberalism warrant more serious scrutiny.
     As a product of a faith school (not Ampleforth or Stonyhurst but Bellarmine, a now demolished RC comprehensive in Glasgow's Pollok), I had never properly realised that all along we should have been deferring to Eton and Oxbridge for their contributions to British diversity. My benighted working class parents presumably should plead guilty too. 'Stand back the Duke of Westminster and co, the Fitzpatricks and Strongs deserve your place in the dock on charges of social division' goes up the cry from Stephenson and her ilk.
     There we were, thinking that finally we might exercise a hard-won, fundamental (and in Scotland, also statutory) right to educate our own children according to our conscience when, it seems, all we were doing was just fuelling social division. Let's ignore for the moment that when there was any social division going on about faith schools in Scotland it was Catholics who tended to be on the receiving end.
     Ms Stephenson might care to explain at some point why it is my children's Catholic headteacher can show that today working-class boys from Thornliebank prosper as much in his school as middle-class boys from Whitecraigs. And this at a time when so many middle-class parents in Scotland's two main cities have deserted our public schools and social mobility is stalled if not reversing. Or she might come sit with my own 'rainbow' parish congregation some Sunday as Poles, Slovaks, Italians, Pakistanis, Indians, Filipinos, Chinese, African and Latin American parishioners exchange the Kiss of Peace with their Scottish and Irish brothers and sisters in a local witness to diversity midst unity that finds no competitor outside.
     Usually, the charge is further elaborated in that faith schools are said to encourage ignorance, if not contempt, of other's beliefs. Yet my unchurched 'cultural Presbyterian' friends are surprised by my Catholic-schooled children's knowledge of the tenets of the Reformed, Judaism and Islam. It is an understanding much better than their own eccentric understanding of their neglected beliefs still less those of others.
     If lack of diversity is to be the charge, perhaps Ms Stephenson would care to escape the overwhelming monoculture of Edinburgh University and come join the many Muslim, Sikh and Hindu parents who eagerly enrol their children in my children's schools. Doing so, they are not seeking any social cachet – if that was their aim, there are ample private schools locally ready to take their money. What they crave is the ethos of a faith school and its community. 
     Ms Stephenson's tax contributions to the upkeep of public education are most welcome. I too have never jibbed at my own payments to support other folks' children and their universities and schools. All education surely is to be valued and all of society has an interest and benefits from supporting it. But it seems she goes further and is, in fact, proposing a return to pre-1918 days when Catholic families after paying up once for state schools they did not attend struggled once more to fund our own schools. Not perhaps the most liberal of views when subjected to any proper scrutiny. Then again the deep strand of anti-clericalism she mentions as an influencing factor for liberalism might be at play here.
     Step aside the featured Baroness Williams – for surely the better exemplar of anti-clerical liberalism (if not perhaps a great fan of diversity) was Otto von Bismarck? Should we folk of faith perhaps be readying ourselves for Kulturkampf II?

Keeping the faith II
Angus Logan

The remarks ascribed to the Free Presbyterians regarding the Pope's visit to the UK strike me as sounding uncharitable and boorishly expressed (if accurately reported by our Scottish press). On the other hand, the papal visit throws into focus some thorny issues. The present Pope has quite recently re-affirmed the age-old Vatican view that Reformed and Protestant churches are not real churches at all because they do not subscribe to papal authority etc. The Chuch of Scotland, the Free Kirk, the Baptist Church and indeed the Anglican church are thus (for Rome) in serious error.
     Now really, however graceless the Free Presbyterian Church may appear in its reported comments, the failure by the Vatican to recognise other valid and biblical churches is surely something of a scandal. Surely the Pope and his cardinals and bishops in the UK, good men as they are, should be challenged about this issue?
     Rome should be persuaded to recognise these other Christian churches as valid, and their rites and their priests and ministers as bearers of different but equally Christian values to their own. For example, bringing up children in one of these denominations ought to be recognised as just as good a path for spiritual nurture as is bringing up the child as a Catholic. And there should no longer be the old Tony/Cherie Blair dichotomy where the child of a Catholic/Protestant marriage invariably ends up being brought up in the Roman Catholic faith. The issue of this lack of real ecumenicism on the part of the Catholic hierarchy needs to be assessed and the lead-up to the papal visit provides a good opportunity to debate it. The problem ought to be resolved before any tinkering with the Act of Settlement can be considered.
    

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