any thoughts ?

[Don Corleone]

Since you asked .
You are wrong Don , completely on all points mentioned there .
The holy catholic and apostolic church has a special position due to it being the religeon of the majority , but the state cannot endorse any one religeon , neither can it discriminate against any religeon(apart from on public safety grounds or something like that ).
One thing that is in the constitution though , the State guarantees free education , we don't get it though .

My mistake. I would have sworn that the Catholic Church wrote your Constitution, which was why divorce & remarriage was constitutionally prohibited until 10 years ago and why the Republic paid the settlements on the sexual abuse cases over there. Oh well, live and learn.

If you are a secular republic, by Constitution, than you're out of luck. You shouldn't be giving state funds to the Catholic church to run your schools, any schools the church sets up should be self-funded. Some would argue they shouldn't be allowed period, that all children should be forced to go to state schools (though I wouldn't). As long as the Church is taking State funds, they shouldn't be allowed to discriminate on a religious basis.

[Tribesman]

My mistake. I would have sworn that the Catholic Church wrote your Constitution, which was why divorce & remarriage was constitutionally prohibited until 10 years ago and why the Republic paid the settlements on the sexual abuse cases over there. Oh well, live and learn.

Live and learn Don , them sex abuse and physical abuse cases , not quite that simple .
Many occured in cases with people under the care of the state , orhans , poor people , bastards , minor criminals , unmarried mothers , disabled ......the State it providing its services to "care" for those people sub-contracted to private business , in this case the church . So there was dual responsibilty .
Now the church did pay some money for settlements , then in exchange for indemnity from any and all further costs did a land deal with the politicians .
Now since this is Ireland and it has a big history of dodgy land deals and politicians thats a whole new can of worms opened up .

Anyhow that divorce thing you mention , add in the abortion thing and you see that Ireland is just a deeply good conservative country that supports tradition and family values
Add in that it likes private enterprise and has a hands off approach with small government and it resembles paradise from some American right wing perspectives .
Welcome to paradise

[econ21]

...if the country is legally a 'Catholic country', it has every right to discriminate in favor of Catholics.

Such a hypothetical country might have a legal right, but morally, I think would still be wrong. For me, no discrimination on grounds of race, sex, creed etc is right up there with no torturing innocent kittens as a no-brainer. It seems a surprisingly relativist approach for you, Don, to imply that constitutions trump morals.

India which discriminates in favor of Hindus,

No officially, it doesn't. With 16% muslims, it was founded as a secular state and has had Muslim Presidents etc. According to Wikipedia, a recent report to the government found evidence of discrimination against Muslims in state employment etc. But the ruling and secular Congress Party is the one pushing for action on this. Unsurprisingly the opposition Hindu fundamentalist BJP is not.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_in_India

As long as the Church is taking State funds, they shouldn't be allowed to discriminate on a religious basis.

I think this is the bottom line. When effectively contracting out its services, the state should still insist on such fundamental principles as non-discrimination being upheld. Sadly, my own government (UK) apparently does not agree.

[gaelic cowboy]

The real question is are we allowed to raise our children as we see fit the Irish goverment has enshrined this in law called the equal status act which allows a school to protect its ethos this could be Jewish Hindu Muslim probaly even atheist if some group of people wished for one and applied and recieved funding. Since parents are the ultimate gaurdian of any child the state should keep well out of it and only intevene in the case of abuse or neglect. The solutionis a comprimise state funding for your religons school. Naturally schools have in the past accomadated people of other religons in there schools but I believe that schools should be allowed to preferentially choose co religionists if others see it as discrimation thats there right as it is mine to raise my child Jedi if I so wish. People suffered greatly to obtain these rights and sweeping them away because we either do not share these values or are even hostile to them will cause just as many problems. If I remember the US had lots of debate on a no prayer policy in school a few years ago. I cant pretend I know anything about it but I guess these schools were more state run than religous in nature which meant of course that it was correct to ban prayer however this will only drive people out of state schools and into the murky water of completely religously controlled schools. The state would then have the horrible job of clamping down on peoples chosen education in a bid to stamp out say a kind of Hardline Madrassa type school. By funding religous schools we preempt extremist type schools by allowing people their choice education. No principal could ignore a ruling from his paymaster if he was preaching hatred in school which is exactly what happened a while ago in a muslim school here the department was concerned at some of the content by certain teachers and took steps to warn and remedy the situation. Probably the easiest way out of this is to encourage schools to set aside say 5 to ten percent admisions for immigrants and other religons this would ease it in the short term till more permanent things could be done like building a bigger school.

[Don Corleone]

Such a hypothetical country might have a legal right, but morally, I think would still be wrong. For me, no discrimination on grounds of race, sex, creed etc is right up there with no torturing innocent kittens as a no-brainer. It seems a surprisingly relativist approach for you, Don, to imply that constitutions trump morals.

Oh dear. I apparently left myself open to misinterpretation. I suppose I should have clearly stated that there is a difference between what a being is entitled to do by virtue of their sovereign rights and what a moral course of action in a given situation would be.

In this particular case, I was linking the right or the ability to pursue a course of action as being legally valid to the Constitution that defines said sovereign state. I did not mean to imply that I thought it was a good thing, just that it was a legally permissable thing.

Honestly, I agree with you that discrimination is one of those areas that Christian and secular principles coincide. Jesus didn't rant on ad nauseum, adding up his collected teachings makes for a rather short read. Each of His teaching parables was chosen as a pearl of wisdom and the one about the good Samaritan, groundbreaking for its day, makes it quite clear how He thinks we should treat 'the other'.

From a purely self-interested point of view, I think the Church has got this bass-ackwards. They should give preferential treatment to non-Catholics. Why? Their ultimate goal is to spread the gospel, especially to those who haven't heard it, right? How are they going to spread it to these 100 kids they kept out of class? Who's most likely to have not heard the gospel, the Catholic kids or the 100 children of African refugees (most likely muslim)?

[Tribesman]

Don , what makes you think that the africans are most likely muslim ?

[Don Corleone]

Don , what makes you think that the africans are most likely muslim ?

The article said they were predominately muslim and some evangelical protestant.

Edit: Need to read more closely. The line I was thinking of actually read "Some were muslim, evangelical protestant or of no spiritual background".

The radio bit had also made mention of it being more a matter of religious, rather than racial discrimination as well. Even if we're talking about evangelical protestants or no spiritual basis, if the Church views the schools as a means to an end, bringing more into the fold, they're not going about it the right way.

[Tribesman]

No it didn't....from the article........Some of the African applicants were Muslim, members of evangelical Protestant denominations or of no religious creed.

[Don Corleone]

Beat you to it. :-p

It doesn't change my point, though. Or is it your point that it really is a nativist stance?

[Tribesman]

forget the last post

[Tribesman]

Beat me to it again

If it was a natavist stance then would the head "exective" of the two schools in question and of 3 others in the area be suggesting that they sell one of the five schools to another group so they could then run it as a non-denominational school ?

[Patricius]

My mistake. I would have sworn that the Catholic Church wrote your Constitution, which was why divorce & remarriage was constitutionally prohibited until 10 years ago and why the Republic paid the settlements on the sexual abuse cases over there. Oh well, live and learn.

If you are a secular republic, by Constitution, than you're out of luck. You shouldn't be giving state funds to the Catholic church to run your schools, any schools the church sets up should be self-funded. Some would argue they shouldn't be allowed period, that all children should be forced to go to state schools (though I wouldn't). As long as the Church is taking State funds, they shouldn't be allowed to discriminate on a religious basis.

Eamonn De Valera wrote it, and rejected a few rather pushy clerical suggestions. Apart from the special position provision which was deleted later, the remainder that had a religious bearing was slight enough for the time, and can be re-interpreted fairly smoothly in a less sectarian, more secular way - i.e, the meaning of marriage might be de-gendered in the future or not. I would note that Ireland remained democratic throughout its existence and managed with no more than two constitutions, and no fascist movement of any size. A good others failed in that regard.

This story is a sham. Admisions in Ireland are needlessly complicated, or more correctly highly arbritrary. Some children failed to gain admission through a failure to grasp the system. That paper used a complicated situation to attack both church and state.

The church role in so many schools is so slight as to be barely noticeable.

Delegating certain educational functions to a given body, whether a church or semi-private vocation body, might be something of a relic, but a state system would be a headache no one wants. If a certain organisation is utilised, its ethos has to be taken on board - note that this never really involves barring children on the basis of religion as in the UK. Remember too that a good deal of resources comes from the Church through property (personnel in the past) and some level of donations. The government would sooner want a hole in the head than sustain the full cost of education.

Nearly all the abusive facilities were in the charge of autonomous religious orders. A bishop has limited enough authority over his own priests, and effectively none over an order. I don't think the state took up the tab out of the goodness of its heart. There are probably legalities not disclosed that make the state pay. Who knows?

Some thoughts... that's all...

[Tribesman]

Oh well , just to update .
The non denominational school that was to be opened has had to postpone . Apparently it has too many people on its admissions list .
So now it has to sort out how many it can actualy take depending on if it can get more buildings , more teachers , more money .......
Then since the numbers on the list are way beyond its expected maximum enlarged capabilty it then has to decide which customers it can take and which it must exclude .