 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Purposes of Catholic Secondary Schools TodayBy Most Rev. Anthony Fisher OP 1. Introduction Nearly two decades ago, Bishop Bill Brennan addressed this Association On the nature and purpose of a Catholic Secondary School for the 1990’s. Now that the nineties and half the ’noughties have passed, a sequel might be in order. (1) It is interesting to review the papers of that 1989 meeting and the issues with which the Association was grappling. Some are perennial; some very particular to that time in history. Bishop Brennan sought to identify ‘the Catholic difference’ in these terms:
With the good bishop’s focus on identity in mind, it is understandable that his speech reveals some pique at the scratching of ‘Workshop J’ on Parish-School Relationships. Remarking on the cancellation for lack of interest, he asked whether this was because everything was hunky-dory and there were no problems in parish-school relationships worth talking about. He then answered, “I think not. Perhaps they are not seen as urgent, but I do believe they are important, for the development of the child’s identity as a Catholic.” Today’s keynote address will not be Workshop J, held at last, if seventeen years late. But Bishop Brennan’s concerns are a useful jumping off point for me today as he looked to the future amidst the afterglow of the wisdom and excitement of Vatican II and in the shadow of the moral and catechetical chaos of the 1970s and ’80s. The Second Vatican Council described the Church as a sacrament—a sign and instrument of our union with God (3). In his wonderful recent encyclical, Deus caritas est, Pope Benedict XVI says that “The Church’s deepest nature is expressed in her three-fold responsibility: of proclaiming the word of God (kerygma-martyria), celebrating the sacraments (leitourgia), and exercising the ministry of charity (diakonia). These duties presuppose each other and are inseparable(4).” In this lecture, I will explore what these three ‘sacramental’ aspects of our ministry say about the timeless purposes, present challenges and immediate goals of Catholic secondary schools. 2. The Diakonia [Sacred Service] of the Catholic School First, diakonia or sacred service. What is the service that the Catholic secondary school should provide today? Bishop Brennan’s claim is hard to miss: the Catholic School is there as the educational arm of the parishes in service of the faithful aged five to eighteen. It is the place where parents, godparents and the wider Church community fulfil the promise they made to their children at the time of Baptism to raise them in the Faith. The Catholic school does not take over the rôle of the parents and their local Catholic community who are the primary educators of their children in the ways of faith and other matters, but it does (or should) assist them in that vital task. The Church, and especially the parish, has a particular concern to help parents get this right because the Church shares with the parents stewardship for God’s children. The Church is also charged, independently of the parents, to preach the Gospel to every person and to serve the welfare of all. The Church is a mother who nurtures the new life conceived and brought forth from the womb of Baptism, feeding her children on wisdom and knowledge until they are full-grown in Christ. Whatever the customs of missionaries in the past, contemporary theology suggests that it would not be right for the Church to bestow divine life on a child at Baptism and then not be around to see that through. We are not philanderers on a spiritual one night stand! Anointing the ears to hear the Gospel, the Church really wants to help the child to see and hear all things through the only person who fully reveals not only God but human beings to themselves: Jesus Christ. (6) To some extent that is a timeless duty for the Church: but what it means will be very different in, say, the 1880s when the massive Australian Catholic school system was still being established by religious congregations and their collaborators, to assist poor families educate their children and as bulwarks to protect the young from the wicked secularism of the state system and to pass on the customs and beliefs of Catholicism while helping Irish-Australians get ahead; the 1950s where two-thirds of parents and children attended Sunday Mass and much of the Catholic faith was transmitted outside the schooland the schools were still struggling for lack of state assistance; and the 2000s when Catholic schools attract significant state assistance, Catholics are no longer over-represented amongst the poor, but faith and practice have faded in many families and most children are disconnected from the Church except through their school. If you had said to parents at interview for admission to a school in the 1880s or the 1950s that your goal was to make their children saints, they might have agreed or disagreed, they might have mumbled under their breath “That’s all very well, but I want an education for them too,” but at least that would have known immediately what you were talking about. Would parents today? Would our teachers have “true happiness in this life and eternal life in the next through knowing, loving and serving God” as their primary aspiration for their children? Would our principals? Or is our goal some narrower one of fulfilling enrolment, funding and audit requirements, getting those lesson plans in and assessment results out, and all the rest? Do we confuse means for ends or treat means as if they mattered more or in the same way as ends? If we do, the Church is failing. It is failing the children and the God to whom we swear an oath at every Baptism. It is failing the broader community to whom we publicize our central mission as providing a distinctively Catholic education, even if it is also an education worthy of funding by that broader community. There is a risk, if not of conscious deception, at least of mismatch of expectations. And some of this may be beyond our control.
The Catholic population of New South Wales as a whole and the Catholic school-aged population in particular have grown considerably over the past two decades; so have the number of students in Catholic schools. Yet there has been a decrease in Catholic students enrolling in NSW Catholic schools (7). Half the students of Catholic families are enrolled in state schools and a growing proportion go to non-Catholic private schools (8). Demand for Catholic education keeps rising, though much faster in secondary schools than primary schools. In enrolment terms we are opening the equivalent of one Catholic secondary school in New South Wales every year: since Bishop Brennan’s talk the number of enrolments in NSW Catholic secondary schools has gone up by 24,000.
But those additional Catholic secondary school students are not Catholics (9). In the two decades since Bishop Brennan’s speech the proportion of non-Catholic enrolments in NSW Catholic schools has doubled from 9% to 19%. Last year alone non-Catholic enrolments increased by 1,600, while Catholic enrolments decreased by 500. In 2005 there were 26,000 more non-Catholic students in Catholic schools than in 1988, but there were 1,600 fewer Catholic students (10). These are important figures for us to ponder. There are other figures that are harder to get, such as what proportion of our ‘Catholic’ students are Catholic in any deeper sense than the tick-a-box of the national census or inclusion in the Baptism register which is not to denigrate Baptism or tribal Catholics If a growing proportion of our students are non-Catholics and a growing proportion of the Catholics are only nominally so, then the challenge is all the greater and more complex than it would be if only one of these trends was observed.
There are other enrolment trends of concern. If an option for the poor is a crucial purpose of the Catholic school – and certainly that was the mind of most of the founder religious, priests and parishioners who built up our schools – then our under-representation amongst the poor is a real problem. (11) Put baldly (and somewhat simplistically): poorer Catholic children are increasingly attending state schools; wealthier Catholic children are increasingly attending non-Catholic private schools; and middle income non-Catholic children are increasingly attending Catholic schools. So while we are opening the equivalent of one Catholic secondary school worth of places every year, we are effectively closing one secondary school worth of rich and poor Catholic students and opening two secondary schools worth of middle class non-Catholic students each year.
Catholic schools also have lower than average enrolments of disabled and Aboriginal children, though happily, this is improving (12). Again, if as a Church we have a fundamental option for the most needy, we must surely aspire to be over-represented amongst such groups. Nor are students from larger families – another group we should be concerned to offer particular diakonia – especially well-represented in our schools (13). Culture and society affect our schools in more ways than just enrolments. There are many gifts here, such as Australia’s extraordinary natural beauty and resources, our affluent, ever-growing economy, our peaceful, democratic polity, our young yet well-established Catholic Church, our missionary history and spirit, our culture of vibrant hope and youthful energy, and the many people active in parish life and works of evangelisation, catechesis, education, healthcare and welfare. Australia is blessed with one of the largest Catholic school systems in the world, built by religious congregations, parishes and many collaborators, now largely led and staffed by lay people. The scale, resources and good will of so many in our Catholic school system is a tremendous opportunity. Studies suggest that Catholic schools today continue to embrace their traditional responsibility for the religious development of their students; that the transition of their leadership from religious to lay has been remarkably smooth; that their staffs are highly professional and pastoral; that they are better resourced with smaller class-sizes than ever before; and that they are well-supported by their educational bureaucracy (14). This confirms my experience that there are some wonderful, generous and committed teachers, parents and pastors in and around Catholic schools. But if there are gifts and opportunities, there are challenges and threats too. The Synod of Oceania (1998) and the post-synodal exhortation Ecclesia in Oceania (2001) noticed amongst these:
Recently a study of enrolment trends in the Archdiocese of Melbourne noted that:
The cultural challenges pay out in all sorts of ways in the presence – or absence – of youth in the life of the Church. If weekly Sunday Mass attendance amongst Australian Catholics has declined from 60%+ in the 1950s to 13% today, and continues to decline by about 20,000 p.a., Mass attendance amongst Catholics in their 20’s is half this rate and declining twice as fast. The number of school-aged children attending weekly Mass is also declining rapidly (17). A number of studies have confirmed common experience that younger people are considerably less involved in parish life than older people and that Australian Catholic youth do not currently display a strong religious identity; the same is often true of their parents (18). All of us, no doubt, are now wrestling with how we can draw young people (students, teachers and parents) into the sacramental life of the Church, especially regular Eucharist and Confession. At the time Bishop Brennan wrote there were still many consecrated religious in schools, though religious vocations were in decline and so it could already be predicted that their involvement would diminish in the future. Sadly, many young people grow up today having never seen a religious except on some TV comedy. And the crisis in vocations to priesthood and religious life is mirrored in the even worse crisis in contemporary married and family life. Many young people are the victims of family breakdown and its attendant social alienation. As a result of this and other pressures, they may engage in substance abuse, promiscuity and abortion, behavioural disorders, depression, and self-harm. The schools often have to pick up the pieces. Meanwhile they juggle with the competing pressures – from Church, parents, government, unions, principals, staff and of course students themselves – each with diverse aspirations and calling for complex responses. In such a context the shifting patterns of Church involvement and school enrolment might suggest that Catholic schools today are all too rarely sought for their Catholicity – though there will be some who value the religious education and ethos of the school and others who out of a fairly unreflective tribalism still automatically choose a Catholic school whatever the place of faith in the rest of their lives. Many clearly value the education word rather than the Catholic word in the phrase “Catholic education”. Of course we are proud that we offer a good all-round education to children of whatever faith background and future; that we offer them good pastoral care; and that we get them into universities, professions, trades. All this is part of our diakonia. The issue that must worry us is whether some who should be there are excluded by barriers such as cost and culture, and others are included at a cost to our own internal culture and so to what we have to offer all the children. 2.3 Possible responses In such circumstances there are several possible responses. The first, and most radical is: close the schools, send the children to good agnostic or Protestant establishments, and put our resources into Sunday schools and other evangelising and catechetical activities. This should I think be seriously considered. If the reality is that we simply cannot find the staff or the will to run schools that unashamedly and effectively evangelize and catechise our young people, it might be best to try something else. Already some serious Catholic parents home-school or send their children to non-Catholic schools for the sake of their children’s faith. There are too many reports of schools paying lip-service to Catholic identity and then giving a nudge-nudge-wink-wink to those parents and teachers who don’t want “too much of that sort of thing”. Could it be that the increasingly common and high-sounding rhetoric about Catholicity and evangelisation is symptomatic that that particular battle is lost or as good as lost? And just because we have always run schools does not mean we always have to. Or not the same sorts of schools anyway. Few countries have as comprehensive a Catholic school network as we do. If we do not close it down, a second approach would be to downsize the Catholic school system, concentrating on having fewer, religiously better schools, with a clearer focus on the needs of the Catholic community and on cultivating Catholic faith and practice amongst the students, their families and teachers. It is hard to offer any coherent rationale for ‘Catholic lite’ schools. Better to cut ourselves back to a number of schools that we can really manage to keep focussed on and effective in their mission. This would require much more than simple caps on admission numbers for non-Catholics – caps which in any case have been honoured more in the breach than the observance in many places in recent times (19). Though people will argue about what the ‘critical mass’ of Catholic students and staff is, no-one doubts that very significantly to reduce the proportions of each will make the school a different kind of school. Catholic schools clearly can, and on this view should, seek to maximise enrolment of Catholic students. They can, and on this view should, seek give preference to the children of parishioners, then to other Catholic children, then to children of faiths close to Catholicism, before offering any additional available places to children of other backgrounds (20). But more is required than efforts to keep up Catholic student numbers on this model. It would require a conscious effort to distil rather than dilute the average level of Catholic diaknonia, martyria and leitourgia within our (remaining) schools while closing the others or, if we are unwilling to close any, in some particular ‘model’ schools. A third approach is to accept that the enrolment patterns and the broader social context are not easily resisted and do in any case present us with a new opportunity: not only to continue to make a contribution to the education of our Catholic children but also to make a Catholic contribution to the education of a sizeable proportion of the children of various other faiths in a multi-religious and somewhat-secular society. This means that the Catholic school in Australia will increasingly be, culturally speaking, where the Catholic school is in, say, Pakistan, rather than where it is in Malta. Our diakonia will be offered to all, even if some preference is given to Catholic children (21). But what will be the implications for our martyria of embracing (rather than merely acquiescing in) a more religiously mixed group of students than in the past? In the next section I will consider two possible directions this could take us. What are the implications for our martyria – our witness and teaching – if we keep the Catholic school system open and growing, but if the student population is made up of a diminishing proportion of practising Catholic students, and an ever-growing proportion of nominal Catholics, Catholics with no previous Catholic education, and non-Catholics with or without Christian or other religious faith? Again, there are two possibilities here. One is that we are an alternative educational provider but offer little or no real alternative when it comes to the education offered – only a different packaging, as it were. The Catholic school will be too expensive for the children of the poor (including the Catholic poor), not posh enough for the children of the rich (including wealthy Catholics) but just right for those who want a cheap private school education without little tat is distinctively Catholic about it. Returning to Bishop Brennan’s 1989 address, we might recall his reminder that:
Today, we are perhaps in a better position than Bishop Brennan’s audience were to differentiate fact and opinion about Catholic faith. He was writing in the shadow of what I called “the catechetical chaos of the 1970s and ’80s” and anticipating the publication of the post-Vatican II Catechism of the Catholic Church. We now have it (22). He foresaw the consequences of its publication:
More recently we have seen the publication of the Compendium of the Catechism, new RE syllabuses and some excellent RE texts, and much else to take into account this great Catechism and the decades – indeed millennia – of thought that went into it (23). RE today is a long way from where it was in the 1970s when I recall myself sitting in circles at school during some RE classes exchanging feelings about the bomb and the pill. I think we are more sophisticated catechetically, more professional, more content-oriented. I also think there is less ‘agro’ to Church teaching. But there is also a lot more ignorance and growing indifference. Its hard to know sometimes whether it is better for staff and students to be passionately hostile to Humanæ vitæ or to have never heard of it! How many people today, for instance, get their principal impressions of Catholicism from such elevated sources as the Da Vinci Code – either the film, soon to be watched by thousands of our students, or the book, already read by thousands of our teachers and parents? For those few of you who haven’t read it: the book is a clever blend of historical anecdote and conspiracy theory, racy detective story, low-grade theological speculation and high-grade popular titillation. Though he sometimes calls it fiction, the author publicly states that the main thesis of the book is true: that Jesus had a child with Mary Magdalene and that the Church covered this up so as to oppress women ever since. Two weeks ago the Ontario English [-speaking] Catholic Teachers’ Association opened their Annual Conference with a keynote address entitled “Cracking the Da Vinci Code: Women in the Church then and now”. The author Joanna Manning explained that “fictional as much of its content may be” the Da Vinci Code awakens “a subversive memory buried within Christian tradition” and exposes its readers to the facts about Mary Magdalene’s central rôle in the early Church as Jesus’ chosen companion and intended successor (the first pope), the rejection of women such as her by the imperial patriarchy of the Church, and the subsequent suppression of ‘the sacred feminine’ and ‘the healing power of sex’. Are our teachers and students capable of telling fact from fiction when even the author and in-service lecturers can’t? If most Americans’ knowledge of the assassination of JFK comes from the fictional film of that name, how many Da Vinci Code Catholics will there be a decade from now, convinced that they know ‘on good authority’ (though they can’t remember exactly from where) that the man beside Jesus in Da Vinci’s Last Supper in the Dominican Refectory in Milan is not John the Divine but Mary Mag in drag? How do we evangelize and re-evangelize, catechize and re-catechize our own so that we can keep alive the authentic memory of Jesus Christ and the saving message of his Gospel and his Church in the face of influential alternative worldviews? My thought here, then, is that at the very time when we might contemplate ‘re-visioning’ the Catholic School system as a principal organ of the Church’s evangelical activity we may instead be swamped by eclectic mixes of ‘religion lite’, ‘Da Vinci Code Catholicism’, fundamentalist secularism and/or what Pope Benedict has so aptly called ‘the tyranny of relativism’. We risk being converted by the culture around us and the staff and students and parents within, rather than converting them both. If young people continue to emerge from our schools as innocent of Catholic doctrine as many demonstrably have been in recent decades, we will have to ask again: why not close the schools, send the children to good non-Catholic establishments, and put our resources into Sunday schools and other evangelising and catechetical activities? Or else, why not downsize our Catholic school system and concentrate on being more Catholic? 3.2 Full-cream: the Catholic school as a centres of the new evangelization, not old-style proselytism There is an alternative future that we can imagine for Catholic schools: one where an excellent all-round education continues to be offered as in the past, where those who are faithful Catholics continue to be given appropriate catechesis, but where the school is now ‘re-visioned’ as one of the principal organs of ‘the new evangelisation’. In this alternative future Jesus’ divinity and humanity, his goodness and truth, his warm compassion and fiery preaching, his wonderful healings and terrible sufferings, his Cross and Resurrection, his unique rôle as the Revelation of God and the Saviour of humanity, and even his masculinity and celibacy, will be celebrated rather than talked down or played down. In this alternative future, the failings of the Church’s past and present will be openly confessed, but the beauty of her saints, the truth of her Scriptures and Tradition, the gift of her pastors and the goodness of her moral code will be offered with humility and pride. In this alternative future we will proclaim the Jesus of history who is the Christ of faith and the Church which is his continuing body on earth, as our testimony to a hungry world. To offer this martyria at this juncture in history is a tremendous privilege. But it raises immediate and obvious questions about how we recruit, form and inform, nurture and retain appropriate parents, teachers, principals and bureaucrats for the task. (24) My proposal that we ‘re-vision’ the Catholic school as one of the principal organs of evangelisation will raise hackles in some quarters: amongst fundamentalist-secularists who oppose the promotion of any religion other than their own; amongst others, for whom ‘evangelisation’ sounds like Biblical-fundamentalist proselytising; and for others again, for whom the word sounds like Catholic-inquisitional intolerance (25). For a Dominican like me to talk of teaching the truth and evangelising the culture might make some dread that the thumbscrews are back: fear not! The challenge for us is to show that our call to evangelize and catechize our students, staff, families, priests and bishops is not incompatible with their freedom. We must address the difference between evangelization and proselytism in the context of authentic martyria. In 1999 the World Council of Churches published a document entitled The Challenge of Proselytism and the Calling to Common Witness (26). It defined proselytizing activity in terms of a pragmatic determination to get people to change their religious or denominational affiliation whatever it takes. This includes:
No Catholic Secondary School in New South Wales – including, indeed especially, those most concerned to be real centres of evangelisation – would be guilty of these things. I think that fear of doing such things should give us cause for caution and humility, but certainly not for paralysis or inactivity. If the primary purpose of the Catholic School is the continuation of the work of the family, parish and diocese in nurturing the new life begun in Baptism, and if we are up-front about that with any would-be teacher, student or parent, then we can happily engage in activities of witness, formation and service without fairly being accused of abusing our power. Catholic teaching itself, about truthfulness, justice, respectfulness and other virtues, forbids us to make historical misrepresentations of other religions or to ridicule other beliefs or to use half-truths or deceptive rhetoric or empty promises or in any other way to abuse our position of trust. If we really believe in the persuasive power and contagious effects of a well-loved, well-lived and well-taught Catholic faith, we need no such tricks. Furthermore, I suspect that the proselytiser often wants numbers rather than deep conversion of heart. Ours is not a numbers game. We only want Catholics who are freely so and so authentic evangelisation will only ever offer a truth that liberates. As Our Lord said: “if you continue in my word…you will know the truth and the truth will make you free.” (Jn 8:31-32) Freedom exists so that we can be authentic lovers and make real gifts of ourselves in love – gifts to each other and ultimately back to God himself. On this account to downplay Catholic doctrine and its struggle to preserve the authentic revelation given in Christ is to risk freedom for the world and to compromise people’s ability to love. We are, as St Paul put it so beautifully, “God’s artwork made through Jesus Christ for the good life” (Eph 2:10). So teaching science and ‘values’ is not enough: we must offer our young people the opportunity to know and love and live in the God whose artwork they are. We must teach them nothing less than the Catholic faith in all its richness (27). The martyria of the Catholic School, then, is to lead students into knowledge of Christ, to invite them into full participation in his Church, and thereby to draw them ultimately into the very heart of the Trinity. Which, you might say, is easy for bishops to say but then we nimbly hand-pass the ball to you, the principals, and your teaching staffs, and sometimes with precious little help! Which is why World Youth Day is such a tremendous gift. (28) 3.3 World Youth Day as a martyria moment The recent announcement of the Holy Father that World Youth Day will be held in Sydney in July 2008 is an offer of a new pastoral strategy to engage the youth of Australia and the world, and in the process renew the Church and its agencies including its schools. It is built on the premise that young people need Christ and his Church in their searching (29), and that the Church, in turn, needs young people for her renewal (30). The gift of World Youth Day is the offer of a new future with and for and through our young people. The theme chosen by the Pope for Sydney’s WYD will focus on the gifts of the Holy Spirit for martyria, witness: “you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses” (Acts 1:8). WYD is no magic wand for all our problems. But it is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for our Church and country to offer our young people a positive encounter with Jesus Christ, an experience of his Holy Spirit, and a demonstration of a missionary Church not just a maintenance Church. Our twenty-plus year pastoral strategy has begun. Phase One, to June 2008, is about preparing our young people and our country through evangelization, catechesis and prayer. Phase Two, in July 2008, is a pilgrimage of faith, with catechesis, prayer and worship. It will be the biggest gathering of human beings, and far and away the biggest gathering of youth in our nation’s history. Sydney will be alive with youthful energy and the power of the Holy Spirit. Phase Three runs from August 2008 to 2028 and beyond, reaping the fruits in our mission to the future. Already the promise of World Youth Day offers us a unique opportunity for evangelisation and catechesis, as our young people get more and more excited about what is ahead and so more open to our martyria now. It means the adults will have to keep focussed on the pastoral goals of WYD – especially what evangelisation actually means – lest we miss this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity not just for our kids but for our young teachers and our whole local church. We will see rolling out in the coming months a whole series of initiatives aimed at preparing our young people well. These are very exciting times for those working with the young of our Church and outside the Church: a time that will call for hard work, no doubt, but work that I am convinced will yield many wonderful fruits in the renewal of our Church in Australia. 4. The Leitourgia [Worship, Prayer] of the Catholic School Which brings me naturally to the Leitourgia [Worship, Prayer] of the Catholic School. We must never be satisfied with Sunday Mass attendance rates of 5% or less in some of our Catholic schools: this is, frankly, disastrous. If we are faithful to diakonoia and martyria in our schools, there will be a real renewal in the leitourgia – the prayer and worship life – of our children and our schools. As the student begins to understand the love God has for her, her origin and destiny in God, and God’s desire to give her an even greater gift of life, she will begin to put God first in her life. To offer God praise and thanksgiving in the Sacred Liturgy, in Eucharistic adoration and other personal prayer and devotion, will be the most natural thing in the world! There are many ways we can create and sustain a liturgical culture of praise and thanksgiving. We are sensual and sacramental beings and so ideas are not enough here. Our schools should look, sound, feel, smell Catholic. We need good Catholic art and symbol and sound around us. Prayer at the beginning of classes or during classes, and not only in the RE class. The chapel in the centre of the school, not in the old demountable or the broom closet. Mass and confession and paraliturgies as part of everyday life, not just to celebrate some big event. We need to do all we can to draw our local priests and parishes into the liturgical life of the school – no easy task in some places – and to contribute the liturgical life of the school to those priests and parishes (31). The ‘disconnect’ between beautifully orchestrated school Masses and mundane parish affairs must be corrected. So must any unrealistic expectations of a constant series of novelties, noises or emotional highs. A few years ago an American bishop told me of a school Mass where the young people made a human pyramid during the Mass: four lads down on all fours, with three standing atop their backs, two in turn standingon their shoulders, and a girl on top who held up the host for the “Through him, with him, in him”. Now before you all go back to school with that recipe, let me assure you it is a recipe for disaster! Not just because the kids will tumble down. Not just because it is so irreverent and patronising. Not even primarily because the liturgical norms forbid it. But above all because it makes a school Mass so completely different to any other Mass as to make school no preparation for life. With such an understanding we begin to see what must inform every aspect of our Catholic Schools. Everything is done for the greater glory of God. We do not treat religion or worship as an extra. It gets primacy. Sunday Mass attendance should be regarded as normal and any pressure amongst students against Mass going (or other aspects of Catholic life) should be countered. Catholic moral life should likewise be regarded as normal and proposed to the students as true, attractive and liveable. Again this will require some passion from our teachers, for it will be somewhat counter-cultural. Likewise with respect to RE classes. It sends very much the wrong message to treat Religion as a class that can be scheduled for fewer hours than other courses or at a less favoured time. It sends a very mixed message if it is cancelled when something ‘more important’ comes along. Or if it gets teachers with less subject-specific training than English or sport. Or if it is only mentioned or enacted in RE class. It is an empty message if we talk evangelisation but don’t really expect that anyone will ever want to become Catholic, and so have no RCIA process for teenagers available through school and parish. We do not give only left-over time and energy to that and those who are most important to us: we give them pride of place! 5. A conclusion and a new beginning How will we know we are achieving our purposes in diakonia, martyria and leitourgia? Throughout this paper I have tried to offer some pointers. In 2003 Sydney’s Catholic school principals committed themselves
Last year 145 principals met with Cardinal Pell to review progress on those nine commitments. I will not rehearse their findings here. Suffice it to say that there was some satisfaction that schools have given real attention to these purposes and can demonstrate some improvement. There is a growing consciousness that if the Catholic school system is to survive and thrive, with a genuinely Catholic mission, it must be an organ of the new evangelisation. There is no doubt much more to be done. But as we build up to World Youth Day there is some real cause for hope that we are making progress in identifying what Catholic schools are for at this new juncture in history, asking ourselves honestly whether we are achieving those ends, and trying to do something about it. It will require the courage to re-conceive even re-found, our Catholic school system as a principal organ of the new evangelisation. Bishop Brennan and his brother bishops, all of you our collaborators, and the rest of Church, have no cause to be smug, but there is cause to be proud of our past and hopeful about our future. (33) BIBLIOGRAPHY AD2000 (2005). “Notes from a theology unit at Australian Catholic University,” AD2000 18(2) (March), 8. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- * Revised version of a keynote address given to a conference of the Catholic Secondary Schools Association, Sydney, 31 March 2006. My thanks to all those who assisted with my research, especially the staff of the Catholic Education Commission of New South Wales and the Catholic Education Office of the Archdiocese of Sydney.
|
||||
 :: Home | Go
back | Top of Page | Site
Map |
Copyright © 1999-2008 Catholic Archdiocese
of Sydney. Contact
us. Privacy.
|
|||||
