John Smeaton reports that the National Association of Catholic Families in the UK has penned an open letter to the Catholic Education Service, accusing the CES of "arrogantly and undemocratically [attempting] to usurp our rights (as parents) and challenge our moral authority as primary educators and protectors of our children".
The letter follows Oona Stannard, Director of CES, publicly welcoming Government plans to make Sex and Relationship Education (SRE) compulsory in all primary and secondary schools. However, it is also a visible sign of the growing dissatisfaction and anger among ordinary Catholic parents, who feel betrayed by a service that is supposed to support them in the education of their children but instead appears to be selling out to the demands of an aggressively anti-life government.
The Catholic Education Services needs to start taking the views of Catholic parents seriously or risk losing any credibility among the increasingly embattled Catholic minority of England and Wales. Might I suggest that Oona Stannard takes another look at the excellent Fit for Mission? Schools document by Bishop Patrick O'Donoghue on the subject of Catholic education?
