YOUR correspondent, David Cuddihy (Have Your Say, CL 29/1/06), is to be congratulated for raising the state aid question that has been sidelined for far too long.
Your own commendable treatment of this matter, citing on two recent occasions news items about a funding forum and a review of state aid to Catholic schools currently being conducted by the National Catholic Education Commission (NCEC), has evoked no comment from that body.
Requests for terms of reference as well as information sought about the research activities conducted by the NCEC as part of its funding policy review have yet to be met, while access to the reviewer is available only to a select few.
Meanwhile, my own doctoral research (University of Queensland, 2001) as well as several other research data show a steady drop on socio-economic grounds in numbers of Catholics seeking a Catholic schooling, with spare places being increasingly filled by better-off non-Catholics.
There are worrying implications here for those responsible for evangelisation when large numbers of
Catholics are seen to be denied a school based formation in their Catholic faith.
Surely the key to effective evangelisation is to ensure that as many Catholics as possible have access to a Catholic school.
In my own instance the cost of sending my children to a Catholic secondary college has this year burgeoned to $6267, placing such formation well out of the reach of low income families with at least two children.
Surely the Church, which teaches that the primary mission of the Catholic school is to serve those who are poor and far from the faith (cf The Roman Document, “The Catholic School”, 1968) is not prepared to tolerate the continued imposition of prohibitively high fees.
Such a situation gravely offends against the close links between evangelisation and the Gospel proclamation of a preferential option for the poor.
The key to repairing such an injustice is for the Church to distance itself from those bodies whose loyalities are too divided between Catholic and non-Catholic schools to serve any practical purpose in protecting and enhancing the unique educational mission of the Catholic Church and its corresponding funding policy.
I join with Mr Cuddihy in hoping that our bishops intervene to ensure more effective evangelisation through greater Catholic access, especially for the poor, to Catholic schools.
DR MICHAEL FURTADO
Toowoomba, Qld
