An Irish bishop charged that “various groups, supported by funding from ideological philanthropical entities, many from outside the State, continue to lobby politicians and media with a rather narrow, nuanced and distorted narrative” against Catholic schools.
Bishop Tom Deenihan of Meath, chairman of the Irish bishops’ Council on Education, decried “negative, ideologically driven and adversarial depiction of Catholic schools” as “grim places of indoctrination that children are forced to attend by Church and State.”
“Yes, there were atrocities,” he said. “We share that shame. But Catholic orders and congregations were providing education long before free education in Ireland.”