REFERRING to the professed aims and achievements of St Joseph’s, the Catholic School in Milngavie which is threatened with closure, Robert Canning writes that he can’t see “how any of it requires the school to be Catholic in character” (Letters, November 2). But those aims and achievements do not represented the whole purpose of Catholic education, according to a remark by the Archbishop of Dublin.

In the wake of the Irish referendum vote in favour of same-sex marriage, despite the opposition of the Catholic Church, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin said: “I ask myself, most of these young people who voted yes are products of our Catholic school system for 12 years. I’m saying there’s a big challenge there to see how we get across the message of the church.”

The implication seems to be that part of the point of Catholic schools – at least, in the minds of some of the Irish hierarchy, though not, I think, in the minds of many Catholic laypeople – is to train up people who will go out and vote to have Catholic teaching clamped by law on the whole population, whatever their consciences.

Paul Brownsey,

19 Larchfield Road, Bearsden.