Father Marcus Stock of the Archdiocese of Birmingham (“Non-Catholics very welcome”, TES, November 25) says that there is no preferential treatment for Catholics when handing out teaching jobs in his schools.
He then goes on to say that preference for practising Catholics will be given when there are two applicants of equal merit for the job. So no blatant religious discrimination there, then!
We are then told in another article elsewhere last week how the Catholic Church pursues its teachers into their homes to dictate how they live: pushing women teachers to get married, and then demanding they have children.
I can hardly believe that we, as a society, still tolerate this 1950s-style control freakery - and allow clerics to use public money to do it. The time is surely coming when these kinds of abuses in admissions and employment practices must be vigorously challenged.
Terry Sanderson
Vice-president
The National Secular Society
25 Red Lion Square
London WC1
