Catherine Pepinster (Catholics still face prejudice, 400 years on, 2 November) is often right, but is wrong in asserting that tackling discrimination in the admission policies of faith school is rooted in anti-Catholic prejudice.

The fight against discriminatory schools applies to all faiths, not just Catholics, nor is it anti-faith, but based on the belief that if we want to have a tolerant, inclusive society, we need to have a tolerant, inclusive education system that produces it. That means not segregating children into different faith schools, which limits their horizons and ensures the next generation grows up as strangers to each other. Why are we creating educational ghettoes in 2017?

Parents in Northern Ireland appreciate this more than most others, which explains the recent growth in the number of integrated schools there. We should learn from their example. The Catholic church also seems to have no problem elsewhere in the developed world, where its schools are not permitted to religiously select pupils. This is why the Catholic International Education Office describes a Catholic school as “a non-discriminatory school, open to all”.

It is ironic that here in the UK we say we want children to learn to be good citizens and share the same values, but then divide them at the school gate into faith groups, immediately instilling an “us and them” culture. If we love our neighbours as ourselves, then a faith ethos can coexist alongside social cohesion.

Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain

Chair, Accord Coalition for inclusive education

• Catherine Pepinster claims that policies which promote integration in and equal access to state-funded schools are somehow evidence of “antipathy to Catholic schools”. This is patently false. The 50% cap on religious selection in school admissions to which she refers has nothing to say about the merits or otherwise of Catholic schools, nor of religious schools more generally. In fact, all it proffers is that the people whose taxes pay for their local schools should have at least some access to them, and that it might not be the best idea to continue allowing entirely segregated religious schools to become a feature of our increasingly diverse society. This sounds perfectly reasonable to me, and indeed a recent poll revealed that 67% of Catholics, and 71% of Christians as a whole, thought so too.

In sum, policies designed to promote integration and equal access in all schools are no more motivated by prejudice towards Catholics than were anti-apartheid policies motivated by prejudice towards whites.

Jessica Perera

Fair Admissions Campaign

• Catherine Pepinster complains that any prejudice left against Catholics comes from “those who are avowedly secular”, and cites the “antipathy to Catholic schools” as evidence of this. As a past governor of Catholic schools and colleges my objections to state-funded faith schools have nothing to do with theology but rather the damage done to our society by educating children of different faiths separately. We would not tolerate educating children of different races apart – why is religion different? Additionally all faith schools pursue discriminatory employment policies that would not be tolerated elsewhere in society. I find these as objectionable as the constitutional requirement that all future monarchs must be Protestant. Now that is evidence that “Britain’s Catholics still face prejudice”.

Declan O’Neill

Oldham

• Giles Fraser (Loose canon, 3 November) implies that the Catholic church tried to prevent people translating the Bible into their own languages. That is not true. The Catholic church compiled the Bible (something acknowledged by Luther) and the first person to translate any part of it into (Old) English was a Catholic priest, Bede, in the eighth century. Johannes Gutenberg, the printer, was a Catholic and the Gutenberg Bible was an edition of the Catholic Vulgate version. It was written in Latin but the Church’s role in the mass production of the Bible in any language does not sit with a policy of keeping it out of the hands of ordinary people. Not long after the Gutenberg Bible was printed, and years before Luther’s 95 theses, the Bible had been translated into German.

I would like to add, and I am sure Giles Fraser would agree, that while these debates may became heated, those of us who believe the Bible are commanded to love one another, and 90% or more of the statement of belief, the Credo, of the Catholic Church today is in complete agreement with the core beliefs of fundamentalist Protestantism.

Brendan O’Brien

London

• It is ironic to see the English so loudly celebrating “the 500th anniversary of the Reformation”. Yes, Martin Luther was a great (if flawed) man whose influence was, and continues to be, immense. But how on earth can your report (Catholic and Protestant leaders unite to mark start of Reformation, theguardian.com, 31 October) so completely ignore the Englishman John Wycliffe (1330-84), the man sometimes referred to as “the Morning Star of the Reformation”?

As we know from the New Testament, which Wycliffe and his followers worked to make available in plain English, “a prophet is not without honour, but in his own country, and among his kin”.

Neil Hickman

Hardingham, Norfolk

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