Bachelor of Education Graduation

Friday morning 26 October 2007

I am very glad to congratulate today’s graduates and to welcome your families and friends. The degrees and diplomas that you receive today are not just pieces of paper. They show that the University of Limerick and Mary Immaculate College recognise your work and your achievement. These awards testify not just to your efforts but the expertise and dedication of the staff who shared their knowledge and enthusiasm with you in the academic life of the College and the support and friendship you received from all who work here and from your fellow students. They also recognise the support and love of your families and the friends who accompanied you through your life here and in many cases long before you came here.

The world of education is changing in Ireland, not least at primary level. Today, you will find in front of you in your classrooms children from other countries, children of other faiths and children who do not appear to have an allegiance to any religious community. This creates for you challenges which those who taught in this country in the past never faced. It is clear that the pattern of school patronage and school provision will change to meet this new situation. But whatever provisions are made, it is clear that there will be children of different ethnic origins and different religious traditions in most Irish schools in the future.

This is a challenge to us not just in schools but in the whole country. It is important to reflect on what respecting difference means. I am often struck by the writings of the Chief Rabbi of Great Britain, Jonathan Sacks. He speaks out of the history of persecution and marginalisation that his people suffered down the centuries. He says this about respect:

Consider the problem of religious education. For liberals, the answer seemed to lie in teaching all children all faiths. The problem is that giving many religions equal weight is not supportive of each but instead tends rapidly to relativise them all. It produces a strange hybrid in which the primary value is personal choice, and we feel free to choose bits of one tradition and place them alongside pieces of another, disregarding the different ways of life that gave them meaning in the first place… The simultaneous presence of voices talking about everything in every possible way, degenerates rapidly into mere noise

It is vital that we do not try to settle on the one hand for an idea of tolerance which amounts to saying, “Believe what you like, it is of no concern to anyone else” or on the other hand for an idea of tolerance which would say “It does not much matter what you believe because all beliefs are equally true”. The suggestions that on the one hand faith has nothing to do with ‘the real world’ and on the other that it makes no difference whether it is true or not would be destructive of tolerance. Neither attitude recognises what these beliefs mean to the people who hold them. Nor can real tolerance be achieved by any party to the dialogue playing down, or being ignorant of, his or her own beliefs. That is one of the great challenges that you will face in the coming years, and that some of you are facing already. It is one of the great challenges that is facing Ireland as the make up of the population changes.

The College’s Mission Statement says that we respect cultural diversity. Difference can be a great source of enrichment, but only if we understand the real demands of respect. The teachers of Ireland, as they have often been in the past, will be at the cutting edge of changes in our culture and society. I hope and believe that your time in the College will have given you the tools and the understanding to rise to that challenge, understanding what the faith in Christ means to us who believe in him and respecting what the search for the truth has yielded in different cultures.

May the Word of God be a light for your path as you move into a new stage of your lives, with our prayers and good wishes and our confidence and pride in you. Comhgáirdeas libh uile is go gcuire Dia rath ar bhúr saothar.

SACKS, J., The Persistence of Faith, London 1991, p. 65.

+Donal Murray