According to a report summarizing the reports of 214 religious teachers in Ireland, those who practice their faith, especially Catholic students, have become victims of harassment more and more often in Ireland recently.
Religious education is compulsory in Ireland , despite the country's strong liberal bias, we are still talking about a Catholic nation at its roots.
"Believing students are exposed to bullying. Faith and the negative perception of religious schools contribute to this effect, and this makes religious students a vulnerable group," the report says.
The August report on bullying of Catholic students examined the age group over 12 years old.
Bullying is a complex phenomenon, for which we do not have a Hungarian word that completely exhausts the concept. Systematic, intentional and conscious bullying committed over a long period of time, and according to statistics, the phenomenon affects two-thirds of children.
"It turned out that practicing Catholics are the most endangered group in the high school age group ; and the least endangered are those who are not religious or have an atheistic worldview."
However, several teachers stated that they are not worried about religious-based bullying in their school, but those who have encountered the phenomenon unanimously stated that non-religious students primarily target their religious peers.
The respondents explained that the intellectual "laziness" along which anti-religious behavior ends up in framing Muslims as terrorists and Catholics as pedophiles is quite worrying.
They stated: "it has become socially acceptable in Ireland to insult and belittle Catholics and Catholicism".
Source and title image: vasarnap.hu
