The Church risks the loss of state-funded religious schools unless it vigorously upholds the right to teach the Catholic faith even when it clashes with the ideology of the state, a former top-ranking diplomat has told educators.
Francis Campbell, Britain's former ambassador to the Holy See, warned staff and students of the School of the Annunciation that there was no guarantee that governments would continue to support Catholic education.
Rising levels religious illiteracy combined with the “absolutist” claims of militant secularism to hold the single neutral and objective belief system might tempt policy-makers to roll back religion from public life, he said.
