NOVANEWS
A little over one week after President Obama’s controversial rebuke of “segregated schools”, Catholics and evangelical Protestants alike continue to criticize what they see as the president’s meddling in religious affairs. Obama’s speech during the G8 summit in Northern Ireland implied that private religious education was one of the chief factors in perpetuating the long-running unrest of the nation.
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In front of an audience of about 2,000 young people that included many Catholics, the president contended that Catholic education divides people and blocks peace. “If towns remain divided—if Catholics have their schools and buildings and Protestants have theirs, if we can’t see ourselves in one another and fear or resentment are allowed to harden—that too encourages division and discourages cooperation,” Obama said.
Catholics in Ireland were quick to respond to the assertions, making what one Catholic paper called “an alarming call for an end to Catholic education,” which is “a critical component of the Church.” Criticism in the U.S. has proven much sharper in its assessment of the president’s view of the impact of religious education on civic life. Consider this statement from American Catholics for Religious Freedom:
President Obama’s anti-faith, secular agenda was shamefully on full display yesterday when he told the young people of Northern Ireland that Catholic education and other faith-based schools were divisive and an obstacle to peace. All Americans of faith should be outraged by these comments which clearly telegraph the president’s belief system and are in fact at their core, even anti-American.
While the use of the term “segregated” may appear to be mere semantics, astute commentators note that term is more than problematic when speaking of private religious education. Obama’s direct implication is that religious schools foster division and are incubators of “fear or resentment.” Use of the term “segregated” paints a picture of forced inferior education for one group and superior education for another. The word is intentionally charged and intended to inflame.
