Catholic Education Service Strikes Again

Catholicism Eradication Service

There are days, I truly can’t recognise this country anymore. It seems to me as if certain news were actually a parody but no, they are true.

Let us consider this. Fr Ashley Beck is the Dean of the Archdiocese of Southwark in charge of the training of deacons. He says something which in my world is so banal that it wouldn’t even deserve mention: children of people co-habiting shouldn’t be admitted in Catholic schools. To me this is like saying that the Pope should be Catholic, but the fact that Fr Beck says that they should not shows that such a banality is, in fact, a piece of news and that apparently children of a cohabitation are admitted as a matter of fact in many Catholic schools.  One wonders how a Catholic school can even begin to raise children in a Catholic environment if it is not even requested that their parents follow I do not say the strictest orthodoxy, but at least a behaviour such that they do not live in objective mortal sin, give scandal and are excluded from communion. What is in my eyes surprising is that what Fr Beck asks is merely that the parents be married, not that they be Catholic! I might be missing something here, but it seems to me that Fr Beck’s words can only be defined as generous, and more inclusive than they should.

Apparently, though, the marital status of the parents cannot be considered by a school. A Catholic school is not allowed to consider whether the parents are married.
Someone here is seriously under the influence whilst in Government.

Am I missing something here? How else can the objective mortal sin of the parents be considered irrelevant in the education of the child, other than because a Catholic education is considered not important and the objective mortal sin of the parents utterly irrelevant at worst, or a sub-optimal option at best? How else can the fact that the parents are excluded from communion be neglected, other than because the exclusion from communion is ignored or considered a relic of the past? How can a faith school not be allowed a mainstay of that faith as an admission criterium?

After the words of the Dean (which would be absurd to define courageous; the adjective “obvious” comes to mind)  one would expect the atheist “dementigentsia” to cry foul (they hate Catholicism but hey, they want a Catholic school for their children…) and complain that……… the Pope is Catholic. This would be mildly amusing on a good day and no more than unnerving on a less good one.

But when one gets rather angry is when one discovers that such a statement of the damned obvious leaves Oona Stannard, the Head of the Catholic Education Service, “almost speechless”.

The woman is not speechless because children of non-Catholic christians are allowed into Catholic schools, leaving children of Catholic families out, nor is she angry because a Catholic school is not allowed to enquire about the marital status of the parents of the prospective pupils. No, Mssss Stannard is outraged that a religious would dare to ask that the parents be at least married!

What belief this Stannard woman belongs to? Some New Age stream? Wicca? Druidism?

She can’t be Catholic, for sure.

Mundabor