THE BISHOPS SAY NO
Cooney, John
THE BISHOPS SAY NO JOHN COONEY Official response to an Irish proposal for shared schooling After four months of uneasy existence in the face of said, adding that he hoped to...
...But none of the films done after those first five at Paramount was equal to them...
...Children remaining at this school have been rights to the picture were renegotiated...
...Mclvor present circumstances in Belfast where the pressures of unity and uniformity are strong on the Catholic populaJOHN GOONEY, Commonweal's regular correspondent in Ireland, tion, dissent in the ranks over the schools amounts to is on the staff of the Irish Times...
...This concerns a primary school, Tul- the brothers were in their prime...
...In the final analysis there may be more malevo14 June1974: 332...
...But the Roman Cathing...
...tions of Irish inter-religious bitterness...
...When this five pictures for Paramount in rapid succession-The school opened in 1969 it was the only school in the Coconuts (1929), Animal Crackers (1930), Monkey new city where Catholic pupils could attend-along with Business (1931), Horse Feathers (1932) and Duck Soup their Protestant contemporaries...
...Commonweal: 331 The parents, on the other hand, tend to take the MARXISM view that separate Catholic schools are no longer a necessity, especially since Vatican II, and that in fact the acceptance of Catholic schools is acceptance of clerical control...
...And of Ireland would be set up and that the Executive would in the work of both the latter, from the very beginning, survive, The Executive died with the resignation of the comedy is acerbic, is even genuinely misanthropic Brian Faulkner as Chief Minister on May 28...
...The tension is different in kind from that resulting olic reaction was, in the words of one observer, disfrom the random violence common to Northern Ireland tinctly frosty: the Vicar General of the Diocese of and felt more recently in Dublin, but its roots are in Down and Connor, which includes Belfast, said he did similar religious and political suspicions...
...In presenting the proposal, Mr...
...THE BISHOPS SAY NO JOHN COONEY Official response to an Irish proposal for shared schooling After four months of uneasy existence in the face of said, adding that he hoped to start the experiment this the opposition of the I1 anti-Sunningdale Ulster Loyal- autumn at nursery school level...
...He said that he hoped to experiment with a new State School...
...In fact, the mood of agreement of the Churches for its implementation there films generally changed from sentimentalism to cynicism, was a certain pessimism from SDLP ministers who in the and comedy fit the trend...
...In places like Northern Ireland and freedom over the appointment of staff, and receives pay- Scotland, acceptance of the Catholic school system has ment of most of the capital and all of the running costs become more than an item in canon law-it has become by the State...
...Sacrament of Confirmation to at least six children who Mr...
...a Belfast parish priest destrike in Ulster and the latest deployment of British scribed the proposal as "naive and ill-informed," Cartroops to man petrol stations and power depots...
...The result was some sort of was followed by the withdrawal by church authorities byzantine legal struggle that has now kept Animal Crackof the nuns and by a policy of pressuring the parents to ers out of circulation altogether for fifteen years while segregate...
...Consequently, when parents invoke their rights, THE SCREEN usually with reference to the decrees of the Second Vatican Council on Christian Education, Religious Freedom, It's hard to realize that the current revival in the popuEcumenism and the Apostolate of the Laity, they face larity of the Marx Brothers truly is a revival...
...After making their first lygally County, in Craigavon, Co...
...Philbin, who has refused to administer the community tension in Northern Ireland...
...gated education in Northern Ireland cannot be held reMclvor had stated that he realized that the churches sponsible for the troubles of the past five years...
...Far from vided for at religious education classes...
...At present there gaining any response from the bishop, the parents have are two types of schools in Northern Ireland: the Pro- had to file a complaint against him to the Vatican...
...of the Executive was not only Ian Paisley and the Prot- The Marx Brothers are in a class apart from Fields, estant extremists, but perhaps also the Catholic hierarchy.though...
...letting the side down...
...Surely, an immobile church response that proffers them a diet one assumes, their films have never lost favor with audiof canon law...
...Now ana- at times, as if it were created to be an antidote for all lysts must grapple with the thought that the grave-digger that sweetness exuded by earlier movie comedy...
...It is different not see how the enormous inherent difficulties in the in kind, also, from the tension resulting from the work- scheme could be overcome...
...It never would have opposition of the Northern Irish Catholic Church to in- occurred to anyone forty years ago, for that matter, when tegrated education...
...If the essential screen comics past few months had remained optimistic that the Sun- of the silent era were Keaton and Chaplin, those of the ningdale Agreement would be ratified, that the Council 1930s were W. C. Fields and the Marx Brothers...
...The administration to end the system of segregated education Irish bishops have maintained that the system of segrein Northern Ireland...
...Motion Picture Academy, as it did this year, that There is also another cause celebre that shows the Groucho should be given an award...
...In the out in consultation with the interested parties, Mr...
...Though...
...What seeing Animal Crackers anew reconthe SDLP, the main Catholic party in the Province...
...Armagh...
...It was his belief that the mixing port to integrated schools...
...Thalberg only went after the Marx Brothers because he felt his own career as a producer to be weak where comedy was concerned, the two films made for MGM then did rejuvenate the brothers' career and lead to a half dozen more films in the next ten years or so...
...Mclvor confined himself to a brief outline of his had been sent by their Roman Catholic parents to the plan...
...Mclvor had said that the plan will need the comedy changed in the sound era...
...The following year Irving Thalberg picked them up for a couple of films more-A Night at the Opera (1935) and A Day at the Races (1937)-done in the elite production unit he had earned for MGM's quality work...
...In order to ensure reli- (1933)-the brothers found themselves without either gious education for the Catholic pupils-who numbered a picture or a studio in 1934, Paramount having let their several hundred-two nuns visited the school regularly...
...But the fact is perpetuating the ghetto mentality that has led to so much twenty years ago it never would have occurred to the of the present community problems...
...It is an interesting and revealing conflict: For the most Roman Catholic primary and intermediate schools churchmen any opposition to the traditional pattern of are "maintained"-that is, the church is allowed two- education is anathema and a signal for the whips to imthirds membership of the management committees, has pose party union...
...There is little likelihood that the hierarchy will give The "shared school" proposal, which came into the As- its blessing to the desegregation plan...
...The consequent drop in the Catholic school roll film's owners noticed it...
...Since an agreement has evidently been reached at last Against this background there is little prospect of and the film is about to be released again, the occasion hierarchy support for the Mclvor plan-despite the fact might call for a reviewing of the complete set of Parathat the desegregation of education has the support of mount films...
...The Northern Irish Church, they feel, is ences since the time they were made...
...It has been the sembly from the Education Minister, Basil Mclvor, is the policy, as in Scotland, that Catholic children should be first attempt by the power-sharing interdenominational taught in the atmosphere of the Catholic school...
...But dinal Conway evaded comment by stating that he had it is the type of problem that underlies many manifesta- not yet had time to study the proposal...
...and by the late fifties even they were so neglected, despite Groucho's popuyear when a Catholic primary school opened nearby and larity on television, that the copyright on Animal Crackparents were asked to send their children to the new ers had been expired for three years before any of the school...
...contract run out because the public seemed to be tiring The arrangement seemed satisfactory until the following of their films...
...firms is the abruptness with which the mood of film As Mr...
...The details of the plan would be worked an article of faith and the touchstone of loyalty...
...testant Churches control 50 percent of the State schools...
...would have some reservation about mixed schooling, but In recent months an internal church dispute in the he asked them earnestly to consider the very special diocese of Down and Connor has shown the determinaneeds of Northern Ireland and to join with the Executive tion of church authorities to oppose any form of supin meeting these needs...
...ists, the Northern Ireland Executive now faces the pros- Immediate reaction to the proposal from the leaders of pect of a clash with the Roman Catholic hierarchy the three main Protestant Churches was in principle faover a proposal to introduce a system of "shared school- vorable to the Minister's proposal...
...refused confirmation by Dr...
...The dispute involves the local of school children would contribute to the reduction of bishop, Dr...
...Philbin...
...type of school in Northern Ireland-the shared schools The parents have formed a group called All Children in which Roman Catholic and Protestant Churches would Together and have petitioned the bishop to confirm the be equally involved in the school management and in children and to provide new forms of religious instrucwhich the respective faiths of the pupils would be pro- tion for those children attending State school...
Vol. 100 • June 1974 • No. 14
