There is certainly an irony in the fact that one issue on which both secular humanists and a certain cohort of Catholics can find common cause is the desire to close Catholic schools. From one direction, they are bastions of privilege and brainwashing, working to indoctrinate children into the murky rituals and dogma of the Catholic faith; from the other direction, our schools do not do this anywhere near enough, and pass on barely a semblance of the Faith.
Both are wrong, of course, and while I would not wish to dwell too deeply on the illiberal instincts of humanist pressure groups, I do think those Catholics sceptical of the value of our schools are more pessimistic than they need be.
