Abstract
Ireland’s demographic landscape has changed enormously in recent years. Primary schools however have remained predominantly denominational. The Catholic Church in Ireland owns and manages the majority of primary schools. By taking the example of the First Holy Communion ritual, this chapter examines how the sacrament is regarded not only as a “rite of initiation” into the Catholic Church but also as an initiation into an idealized notion of a white, Catholic, homogeneous Irish identity. It discusses the various educational, religious and consumerist factors that influence the children’s understanding of religion and religious practice not only by examining these social spaces but also by analyzing the children’s own views and participation in the discussion. In addition, it examines how the Catholic school’s communities of teachers, priests and parents deal with religious difference as it becomes apparent in the preparations for the sacrament and during its celebration and how the children perceive and respond to this difference. Based on extensive research with 7- to 8-year-olds, this chapter demonstrates the complexity of children’s learning (about) and making sense of religions across urban, suburban, town and rural contexts. This complexity is revealed by examining the situatedness of children’s religious beliefs and knowledge within Catholic primary schools. This chapter is part of a research project conducted in 2013 and funded by the Irish Research Council, entitled Making Communion: Disappearing and Emerging Forms of Childhood in Ireland. The ethnographic material is based on children’s participatory activities, children and adult-level interviews and focus groups.
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Notes
- 1.
In our interviews with various priests in Ireland and a number of African Catholic parents, Karl Kitching and I observed issues around the acceptance of black Catholic children in the First Holy Communion preparation. Very often, African parents need to prove their allegiance towards the Catholic Church and their long membership therein. According to the priests and parents we interviewed, black Catholic children usually have a longer preparation time (around 2 years) before they are admitted to do the sacrament. I argue elsewhere that due to the recent demographic, socio-cultural and economic transformations in Ireland , the priests feel that the cohesion and homogeneity of local Catholic subjects are threatened. Catholic priests in Ireland have therefore become custodians of the Church and of the nation and use the sacrament of the First Holy Communion to decide to whom to give entrance to the Church (and the nation) and to whom not.
- 2.
In the Irish system every school has a patron who in effect ‘owns’ the school, hires its staff, sets the curriculum, etc. In 90 % of Irish schools the patron is the local Catholic Bishop.
- 3.
There was a concern that few Traveller students were part of the profile of these schools. Efforts were made to access Traveller children and families through services and NGOs in the Cork region, but came to no avail due to pressures on these services. In order to make up for this shortfall in representation, six Traveller children, young people and adults were accessed through a personal contact in a Traveller-led community organization in another small city in Ireland .
- 4.
However, there has been a shift toward greater parish involvement in preparing children in Catholic schools for Communion outside school time in Dublin since the Archdiocese of Dublin launched a policy document in 2012. Retrieved from http://www.catholicbishops.ie/2012/10/01/archbishop-launches-guidelines-communion-reconciliation/ [accessed 1 March 2015].
- 5.
- 6.
- 7.
Research conducted in 2013 by the Irish National Teachers Organisation (INTO, the main trade union body in Ireland for primary schoolteachers) reported that preparation for sacraments takes more time than the allocated 30-min religious education class per day. See INTO (2013).
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Shanneik, Y. (2016). “They Aren’t Holy”: Dealing with Religious Differences in Irish Primary Schools. In: Berglund, J., Shanneik, Y., Bocking, B. (eds) Religious Education in a Global-Local World. Boundaries of Religious Freedom: Regulating Religion in Diverse Societies, vol 4. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-32289-6_11
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