As Catholic Schools Week begins, George Galloway was given a surprisingly positive response for the following tweet:
For George and for countless others around the world, Catholic education represents freedom from the current madness of gender theory, Globalism and postmodernism.
But in Ireland, this has become the opposite, Irish Catholic schools are now perhaps more toxic for the presence of these than their non Catholic counterparts. We are generally not allowed to talk about this because many in the church are trying to maintain possession of Catholic schools as a lazy way of keeping a public presence in Irish society, but ultimately some of them are being permitted to doing incredible harm to the Catholic faith in Ireland by promoting (not just tolerating) gender ideology, LGBT activism and even abortion.
Paradoxically, it is very uncommon to see Rainbow Flags outside of schools run by the Multi Denominational Education Training Board schools, even less common to see them outside Non Denominational Educate Together schools. Yet is is becoming unusual at this point to NOT see them outside Catholic schools in Ireland.
In one school, a member of the ruling Fine Gael party, the party who introduced abortion to Ireland and even shut down the Vatican Embassy at one point, arrived and lowered the Irish flag, replacing it with a Rainbow one. She was then photographed close to a statue of the Virgin Mary as she told the Catholic schoolchildren of her sexuality (she is a lesbian) on behalf of the ruling Fine Gael party’s plan for the deCatholicisation of Ireland.
Fine Gael raising their flag in a Catholic school
Walsh also visited a more famous school, Belvedere College in Dublin. During their ‘Stand Up Week’, the students at the Jesuit School not only had the government representative arrive to raise its Rainbow Flag, but they were treated to a talk via Skype by Fr. James Martin SJ on his support for the LGBT ideology. Fr. Martin has recently supported anti Catholic LGBT activists in Poland after they faced trial for defacing Our Lady and orchestrating attacks on churches.
Who is in charge here, the state and their sexual policies, or the church and her teachings? The Catholic schools will argue that this is about avoiding bullying, but that is not how the NGOs pushing these events see it.
Another Catholic school recently invited Hollywood star Saoirse Ronan to speak at their school, where she was asked by the children ‘What are the issues facing Irish women and girls now?’ to which her answer was ‘‘One thing that has helped me as a woman has been the Repeal of the Eighth. I feel like it opened the door. A lot of the things we felt and talked about in private, we are able to do in the open now.” Like what, aborting a baby?
More absurdly, one Catholic school in Cork decided that their children needed to spend some time observing an exhibition on Drag Queens for some reason. It’s an insult to our intelligence to try to pass this off as Catholic education, you could get this sort of learning in any alley way in a big city.
Many of the schools touting these Rainbow Flags come under the the patronage of the Le Cheile Trust, who have amalgamated the trusteeship of many religious orders such as Loreto and Dominicans amongst others.
A few months ago, we asked Le Cheile for an explanation as to why alternative sexual lifestyles seemed to have a more prominent public part of their schools than Catholicism did. We quoted Pope Pius XII’s quote that the purpose of Catholic education is ‘The object of Catholic education is the formation of the perfect Christian’. Our motivation was not to taunt them, but to draw attention to the fact that they were promoting an overtly state promoted symbol (the rainbow flag) on the same week that it was announced that Catholic symbols were being phased out from State schools. Instead of responding to us initially, Le Cheile ‘liked’ a tweet that was mocking us in reply to our sincere question, ‘You obviously need glasses. There are countless Catholic schools in Ireland that have rainbow flags AND Irish flags’. When we pointed out that this was a childish reaction, Le Cheile did respond, pointing us to the 1986 Document on Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons.
We checked that document out, only ending up more confused, for it stated:
Although the particular inclination of the homosexual person is not a sin, it is a more or less strong tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil; and thus the inclination itself must be seen as an objective disorder.
Therefore special concern and pastoral attention should be directed toward those who have this condition, lest they be led to believe that the living out of this orientation in homosexual activity is a morally acceptable option. It is not’.
‘Against the background of this exposition of theocratic law, an eschatological perspective is developed by St. Paul when, in I Cor 6:9, he proposes the same doctrine and lists those who behave in a homosexual fashion among those who shall not enter the Kingdom of God.
In Romans 1:18-32, still building on the moral traditions of his forebears, but in the new context of the confrontation between Christianity and the pagan society of his day, Paul uses homosexual behaviour as an example of the blindness which has overcome humankind.
Instead of the original harmony between Creator and creatures, the acute distortion of idolatry has led to all kinds of moral excess. Paul is at a loss to find a clearer example of this disharmony than homosexual relations. Finally, 1 Tim. 1, in full continuity with the Biblical position, singles out those who spread wrong doctrine and in v. 10 explicitly names as sinners those who engage in homosexual acts’.
‘To chose someone of the same sex for one's sexual activity is to annul the rich symbolism and meaning, not to mention the goals, of the Creator's sexual design. Homosexual activity is not a complementary union, able to transmit life; and so it thwarts the call to a life of that form of self-giving which the Gospel says is the essence of Christian living. This does not mean that homosexual persons are not often generous and giving of themselves; but when they engage in homosexual activity they confirm within themselves a disordered sexual inclination which is essentially self-indulgent’.
We’re assuming that they hadn’t actually read it.
Le Cheile have also defended their decision to allow pro abortion Amnesty International to speak to their students.
This invasion of Catholic schools with Queer Theory and Fine Gael politics is a far more insidious and pernicious threat than that of Crosses being removed from non Catholic school buildings. Our faith has a long history of stellar education throughout the world, it is high time that Irish Catholic ones also provided this, not merely in the halls of private schools and those in affluent catchment areas. Start with the basics, who created us and why. Love does not mean remaining silent while false ideas are put into people’s heads, love means to will the good of another. As the 1986 document attests, there is no good will in turning our back to the life that Our Good Lord intends.
In fact, such acquiescence means that the evil only intensifies. Shortly before the outbreak of Coronavirus in Europe, the Irish National Teacher’s Organisation allowed an group called Educate and Celebrate to instruct them on how to bring Queer Theory into their classrooms, they advised upon not using ‘He’ and ‘She’, using storybooks aimed at grooming children to become accustomed with the sexual activities of LGBT and most shockingly, they were told ‘don’t sent a letter home telling parents that you are about to embark upon this’. As if it couldn’t get any more repulsive, the universally despised Peter Tatchell is a proud patron of that group.
By some contrast, 2020 also saw members of Far Left Terror Group Antifa successfully intimidate a number of Catholic schools into cancelling an appearance by Catholic Jason Evert, when he wished to speak to them about Catholic sexuality. Such farce illustrates the sheer depth of the identity crisis in our Catholic schools. We need to make a start with regards to rectifying this.
We assume also, that many Catholic schools might not allow the Rainbow Flag to be so pervasive if they knew of its meaning. This flag is deeply problematic. It is not, as some claim, about equality or respect.
The Rainbow flag, for anyone who does not know, is anti Catholic not just in the sexual lifestyles that it represents, but also in the minds of those who created it. Gilbert Baker, who designed the flag in 1978, despised Catholicism and in 1979 formed a cohort known as the ‘Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence’, a Drag Queen group who dressed up as Nuns to mock the Catholic faith and performed provocative acts upon one another in Drag. In 1982, they interrupted an interfaith prayer meeting in St. Mary’s Cathedral in California in order to intimidate Christians. Starting in 1995, they carried out pub crawls which served as mock Stations of the Cross each Easter Sunday, handing out condoms and mocking the Mass by passing Vanilla Wafers and Jagermeister shots to attendees in a demonic parody of the Eucharist. In 1999, they brought a semi-nude ‘Hunky Jesus’ to carry the Cross through the streets of San Francisco in order to mock Catholics.
Baker, fuelled by this hatred for Catholicism, was inspired by Allen Ginsburg, open paedophile and founder of the North American Man Boy Love Association, to produce the rainbow flag and disseminate it. When it was raised in 1978, it represented, not equality, nor fair treatment, instead it represented the following:
Pink - Sex
Red - Life
Orange - Healing
Yellow - Sunlight
Turquoise - Magic/Art
Indigo - Serenity
Violet - Spirit
Do the Catholic schools who bear this flag honestly believe that any 12 year old in their care has a pastoral requirement for a specific flag for sex? Or for Magic? Or whatever is implied by Spirit? And if they do, do they need this to greet them as they arrive in to school in the morning? If not, then it begs the question as to why any flag would be put their that is not for the child’s benefit, especially when it pertains to the sexual activities of adults that are ordained by certain political parties, such as the one that Maria Walsh is a part of.
Similarly, the very concept of a flag representing ‘Transgenderism’ represents an outright denial of the very basis of the Book of Genesis, the idea that God created man and woman. Mutilating a child’s genitals or destroying their little bodies with hormone blockers because of a parent with Munchausen by proxy, or worse still, undiagnosed autism, those are court cases which the church will be faced with in the decades to come. By tolerating this flag flying in the faces of impressionable little children, who are NOT taught a single thing about Catholic morality in its place, the church is leaving itself open to potential legal cases for enabling abusers and failing to provide protection for vulnerable children exposed to disorientating adult sexualities and forms of dysphoria.
Are the children taught that the inventor of the distinction between gender and sex was a paedophile who forced two children to kill themselves as adults because of the trauma of being subjected to his experiments? Or is that somehow inconvenient?
These schools are not producing Mass going Catholics, they are not producing vocations to religious life and they are not producing vocations to married life either. So what is the point of them?
The Irish church is sticking with these because it is what they have always done, but they are becoming counter productive. It would be better to withdraw from as many as possible, consolidating influence into a smaller pool of more faithful schools. The arguments against this are that the overall influence would dwindle as a result, but how could it possibly be any less influential than it is now? If anything that is a positive because the negative elements of so called ‘Catholic’ schools being removed would do more to assist the church than anything else.
Lastly, there is the topic of religious education in these schools. In most instances, it involves watching a film unrelated to religion, colouring in or being fed poorly formed catechesis that actually turns people off the faith. If anyone says that these things are untrue, they are lying.
Some Catholic schools will pat themselves on the back for their large assemblies that involve a prayer and for their school Masses. But then there are other incidents such as this recent one, where a priest held out his hands in an Islamic posture as a Muslim prayed on the altar to Allah. The Imam told the children that he was praying for his servants, ‘Abraham, Jesus, Muhammad’.
This article has focused on Catholic Secondary Schools, for good reason. The good work done by Catholic Primary Schools is all completely wiped out by what takes place when those children grow up and enter these moral wastelands. There are of course children who go on pilgrimages with their schools, there are children who take part in programmes such as the Pope John Paul II awards, there are those who are encouraged to take part in parish life.
But the effects of these pale into insignificance with the proliferation of these other instances of undermining the faith, there is no hope for the church in Ireland while these schools are allowed to continue in their current state.
Creative regular events for Catholic schools, engaging catechesis that delves deep into the Church fathers and lives of the Saints, regular and inspirational charitable work are just some of the simple ideas that can be tried. These young people are being lost to pornography, drugs and moral relativism. Unless the church puts up a serious fight, the students that they claim to educate will be the very ones punishing the church tomorrow. Simon Coveney, Micheal Martin and others who have brought abortion into Ireland are products of ‘Catholic’ education, as were figures such as Josepha Madigan. Either we start using Catholic education to serve the church, or the state will continue to use it to serve itself.
Muslim schools in Ireland, Educate Together schools and Jewish schools all serve their beliefs before bowing to anyone else. Catholic schools, by trying to please everyone, are now becoming schools that have no identity.
The church here should follow the example of other countries, training and hiring Catholic teachers who respect the faith rather than undermine it.
In Boston, the Lumen Verum Academy has been launched to try to do this very thing. The church in Ireland needs to proactive in the coming years to look at this type of model to rejuvenate Catholic education here, rather than offering secular education but with an occasional school Mass. As a church, let’s try get ahead of the curve for once instead of being beaten to the post by the rest of the culture and playing catch up for the next few decades as per usual.
Collins was a huge fan.