Simon Lewis

speaker

395 appearances 6 recordings 4 series first heard Apr 2026 last heard 23 Jun

Simon Lewis’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 6 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 4.

Appearances

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Today with David McCullagh · Why do parents go along with their child’s First Communion if they don’t believe in it? · 28 May 2026 podcast

Yeah, it's the same story, really, except for teachers it's a little bit more sinister.

There's a law, the Employment Equality Act, and one of the sections essentially says of schools with a religious ethos that if a teacher is seen to be undermining the ethos in any particular way, the teacher can be removed from their position or disciplined.

So a lot of teachers who may not believe essentially have to hide that.

I was one of those teachers back in the day

Well, look, if you have a threat of your employment being removed because you're perceived to undermine the ethos, I suppose maybe it's an emotive word, but I certainly didn't want to come out as not being a believer when I had the job, just in case.

Maybe so.

But again, back when I was looking for jobs, the nearest school that would have, you know, where I could have had my identity not hidden was over an hour's drive from where I lived and so on.

Like you don't have much choice.

95% of schools would enforce this on you.

And I mean, I think.

I mean, much like any job, like yourself, if you had to sort of pray during your radio show and so on, you might not be too happy about it.

But if you wanted the job, you'd have to go with it, you know.

We look essentially, this goes back to the analogy of the American army, the don't ask, don't tell situation for a gay army.

Basically, the threat is there, so just say nothing.

We know of one person, but again, it's one of those don't ask, don't tell situations.

Absolutely.

I'd say that in my particular school, about 50% of the children in our school make their first Holy Communion and all of their preparation is done after school in the parish that they're in.

And it works very seamlessly.

I mean, we help out the local Catholic church to identify, you know, any children who want to make their sacraments and we pass messages on to families and so on.

Very, very straightforward, to be perfectly honest, and works really well.

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