Our People

What the Bishops are saying about contemporary Catholic schooling

Catholic Secondary Schools Association Conference, Sydney

By Most Rev. Anthony Fisher OP
Auxiliary Bishop of Sydney
1/8/2007

1. Genesis

Recently, the 17 Bishops of New South Wales and the Australian Catholic Territory issued a pastoral letter entitled Catholic Education at a Crossroads:[1] one you have all doubtless been reading, discussing and sharing with others. It reflects upon the changed context, enrolment patterns and nature of our schools in recent years. To give just one example of that shift: when I was a boy in Catholic primary schools here in Sydney, there were around 60 in my class in Grades 5 and 6 and though the fees were very low some families could not pay at all. The almost slave-labour of religious brothers and their lay assistants kept the school going and I can only look back and marvel at how they managed. Thank God, our staffing levels are better today and our Catholic school system much better resourced – although we wouldn’t complain if someone were to offer us more resources!

In their letter the bishops gratefully acknowledge the achievements of Catholic schools in our region and the quality and commitment of school staff. They invite reflection on the implications of our changing educational and cultural context, of the rising proportion of nominally-Catholic and non-Catholic enrolments, and of the under-participation of students from poorer families. They ask all Catholic educational leaders, staff and parents, as well as the broader Catholic community, to join them in recommitting to Catholic schooling in the new situation of the 21st century. And they challenge all those involved to dedicate themselves to ensuring that our schools are truly Catholic in their identity and life, are centres of ‘the new evangelization’, enable our students to achieve high levels of ‘Catholic religious literacy’ and practice, and are led and staffed by people who will contribute to these goals.

The Pastoral Letter was the result of several years of studies and consultations by the bishops, and I am not aware of any other topic to which the bishops have given such long and focussed attention together in recent years. The result is a document that is very positive its tone and conclusions about our Catholic schools and optimistic about their future; yet it is sufficiently self-critical to avoid being smug and sufficiently provocative, I hope, to incite wide discussion and even some change. While recognising that evangelizing, forming and otherwise educating our next generation is a task for the whole Church that cannot be imposed on the school system alone, the Bishops “look especially to those involved in our schools to make the most of what Pope John Paul II called ‘the sense of adventure’ involved in renewing Catholic education.” I think the Bishops share in that sense of adventure and genuinely look “with confidence” to our schools to produce graduates who will be “prominent amongst the future leaders and disciples of our Church and community”. (p. 3)

The publication of this pastoral recalls another, published in 1879, entitled Catholic Education, in which Archbishop Roger Vaughan and the three other NSW bishops called for the building of a Catholic School system to assist poor Catholic families educate their children in a context often hostile to their heritage. Echoing the misgivings of Pius IX[2] and Cardinal Newman[3] about secular schools, they added more local anxieties that Henry Parkes’ forthcoming Education Act and government schools would impose a mentality that was essentially establishment-Protestant, secularist-indifferentist, even (dare I say in this hall) Free-Masonic. Such schools, the Bishops warned, were “seedbeds of future immorality, infidelity and lawlessness,” exposed children “to proximate danger of perversion and ruin” and jeopardized “the faith, the morality, the eternal happiness of those too young to help themselves”[4]. What’s more, the Bishops observed,

That there is a marked difference between them [those educated in ‘secular’ schools] and the children who have been educated in Catholic schools. Their faith is visibly enfeebled, not to allude to their morality; their manners are rough and irreverent; they have little sense of respect and gentleness; they have no attraction for prayer or for the Sacraments… Our clergy look on the future of such wild, uncurbed children with grave misgivings.[5]

No, said the Bishops, “the only fair chance for Catholic children turning out Catholic men and women in this colony is for them to be most carefully and conscientiously taught their religion”[6] at home and at school. At school they should be “sedulously prepared, by breathing a Catholic atmosphere, by living amidst Catholic teachers and companions, and by an exclusively Catholic training, for encountering the perils of the world”[7]. So the Catholic community must plead for just state aid for schooling or, if needs be, go it alone and build a network of schools to rival the best in the world.

Such ideas might sound alien to us today in our much less sectarian times. Yet it is not all that long ago that the nuns put all boys out of their primary schools at the end of Grade 4 and a young boy found that no Catholic school within cooey of his home had a vacancy for him until Year 7. On being told he would have to leave his beloved Catholic primary school and go to the local state school for Grades 5 and 6, images erupted in his mind of children of that other religion – the dreaded “publics” – menacing him in various ways while the school systematically brainwashed him into apostasy. He cried and cried and told his parents he would play truant from school or run away from home or deliberately fail all his subjects if he were sent to such a place. Finally, after much searching by his parents a Catholic school agreed to take him in for the rest of his primary years: it was three buses away from home, one-and-a-half hours each way, a long way for a ten-year-old. But I will be eternally grateful to the school that saved me from becoming a public in a seedbed of immorality, infidelity and lawlessness by their decision to take me – and my brother – for those two years!

Lest we congratulate ourselves too soon on the end of sectarianism, let me remind you that one colourful party in the state and federal parliaments is still mortally opposed to government funding of Catholic schools and that there are those who oppose not only the little optional religious education available in state schools but even that available in faith-based schools. In the most recent “Sydney Ideas” series, London University philosopher Stephen Law was invited to rehearse the argument in his book The War for Children’s Minds.[8] He claimed that the rise of religious schools is “deeply socially divisive” and that many such schools “indoctrinate” rather than “educate” their children. A fan of “Enlightenment values”, “moral autonomy” and “liberal schools”, Dr Law said that “inertia” and “familiarity” have blunted the outrage we should feel about “authoritarian religious schools”. While he gave Islamic and Communist schools as his examples, it would seem that he would also be troubled by any Catholic school that ascribed to the teaching of the Second Vatican Council on the assent required by faith. Dogmatic secularism did not die with Henry Parkes. And nor did the concern of parents and pastors that children grow up “breathing a Catholic atmosphere… living amidst Catholic teachers and companions” and receiving in full that faith passed on to us from the apostles.

2. Achievements and challenges

The Catholic school is the principal educational arm of Catholic families, parishes and the wider Church for those generally aged under eighteen. It is there to assist parents and parishes in their educational, evangelical and catechetical mission, as well as to help the wider community in its educational and civic service. (p. 10)

And in Australia, at least, it is there in abundance. The extraordinary network of Catholic schools in Australia – described by the Bishops in the recent Pastoral as “one of the jewels in the crown of the Catholic community in our region with few parallels overseas” (p. 6) – would never have happened had priests, religious and laity not taken seriously the 1879 clarion call. As a result, we can now celebrate that for more than a century our school system “has provided high quality education to generations of young Australians and has been a major arm of the Church’s engagement with youth. Through our schools many others have also been positively affected.” (p. 6) Many other-than-Catholic families now seek to have their children educated in our schools. (p. 8) Today “our school leaders and staff are highly professional and pastoral, and better resourced than ever before… the resources, good will and experience in our schools present tremendous opportunities”. (p. 6)

But “while we are proud of our educational achievements, we must not be complacent”. While our schools may have been a major factor in achieving the predominantly Christian culture and the high rates of religious practice evident by the mid twentieth-century, we are now in some respects closer to the situation in Vaughan’s time. As the Bishops observe, “Many of our young people now have little or no connection with the Church outside their school” and the specifically religious mission of the school once again finds itself little supported by the surrounding culture and its powerful agents and ideologies (pp. 6 and 8). “The schools often have to pick up the pieces” from “society-wide trends such as secularisation, consumerism, family dysfunction and values disorientation” (p. 8).

As I observed at this Conference last year, in enrolment terms we have opened the equivalent of one Catholic secondary school in New South Wales every year for the past two decades; yet there has been a decrease in Catholic students attending our schools during this period of growth.[9] Half the students of Catholic families are enrolled in state schools and a growing proportion go to non-Catholic independent schools.[10]

Another enrolment trend of particular concern to the Bishops “has been the decline in representation in our schools our students from both poorer and wealthier families. Put plainly: poorer Catholic children are increasingly attending State schools and wealthier Catholic children non-Catholic non-government schools.” (p. 8) Though this pattern is not uniform across urban, rural and regional communities or across systemic and congregational schools, our children increasingly come from what politicians now call ‘middle Australia’. While that might be a sign that “Catholics have made it” it presents a particular challenge for those schools and school systems initially intended to provide principally for the poor.

Furthermore

our most experienced staff, many of whom were originally members of or were trained by religious orders, are now retiring and need to be replaced... Not all of our students have been as well served catechetically or pastorally as they might have been. Nor have our schools always been as well supported by families and parishes as they would have wished. As a result the tremendous potential of Catholic education has not always been fully realized. In order to make the most of our opportunities, it will be important for the whole Catholic community, especially for those most intimately involved in Catholic education, to re-examine our situation, central goals and means to those goals. (p. 6)

3. Schools with a ‘Catholic soul’

There has been a long debate about what makes a Catholic school Catholic and while the recent Pastoral Letter reflects and contributes to that debate it by no means settles it for good. Rather, I would suggest, if offers some minimum distinguishing characteristics of Catholic education, without exhausting them or exploring all their complexities.

Thus the much discussed question of student ‘mix’ is confronted directly without being answered in any simplistic way. The Bishops say that there must be “a ‘critical mass’ of Catholic students in our schools, even if we also readily welcome students from other religious backgrounds.” (p. 10) They exhort school leaders “to re-examine how they might maximize enrolment of Catholic students, including those from socio-economic bands and ethnic and special needs groups currently under-represented in their school.” (p. 10) They direct that “parish schools should continue to seek out and give preference to the children of their own parishioners, then to other Catholic children especially from the surrounding district, then to other Christian children, before offering any additional available places to children of other religious backgrounds. Regional secondary schools and congregational schools should apply similar principles.” (p. 10) And Bishops ask for regular monitoring of “progress towards an increase in the proportion of students in our schools who are Catholic” (p. 18).

Those are all, you will appreciate, carefully chosen words – not necessarily accurately reported or understood in the recent public coverage of the Pastoral Letter. The Bishops do not propose some ideal or ‘right’ proportion of ‘practising Catholic’ versus ‘non-practising Catholic’ versus ‘non-Catholic’ students for all NSW schools – though individual dioceses or schools may have caps or targets of one kind of another in this area. We know that in some places this is a matter of survival: without significant non-Catholic enrolments the school might not be viable. In other places it is a matter of choice: the document itself points to ways in which this can be seen as an opportunity rather than a threat.

But the Bishops are rightly wary of an unconscious or semi-conscious ‘slide’ from a student body of entirely or predominantly Catholic students to a very different mix which has occurred and may continue to occur without appropriate reflection and adaptation of mission and methods. My guess is that because this change has been gradual and little discussed in public many people are unaware of it or only a bit aware. They might be surprised to hear that while our Catholic school system keeps growing, our Catholic student numbers keep falling, or that there are Catholic schools in which a large proportion of the students are not Catholic. Catholic parents and parishes may well be operating under a misapprehension or an outmoded understanding of the rôle of the contemporary Catholic school. It can only be healthy to engage in some public education and discussion on this.

Of course, we all appreciate that there are schools with a high proportion of Catholic students which nonetheless lack what I we might call a ‘Catholic soul’ and others with a significant proportion of other-than-Catholic students which nonetheless have, in the language of the 1879 Pastoral, a strong ‘Catholic atmosphere’. Likewise some seem to have more success than others at passing on Catholic faith and practice. So what else is required? The Bishops suggest the following are essential:

• a school-wide goal of forming Christian disciples, with appropriate world view, character and behaviour
• an attractive RE curriculum, methodologies, texts and other resources, professionally taught by teachers with appropriate RE qualifications
• priority given to RE classes in the school curriculum, time and space allocation, the choice and recognition of staff, while other disciplines also consider their Catholic dimension
• schools be places of Catholic imagination and spirituality, centres of prayer, Eucharist and Reconciliation, supported by a Catholic visual culture
• schools also seek to involve families, parish and diocese in the process of evangelizing and catechizing the pupils. (pp. 10 & 14)

Too many young people emerge from our schools with insufficient knowledge of our Faith or interest in practising it. The Bishops recognize that “seeds of faith may have been planted that will only show forth fruit later in their lives. Nor is this solely the responsibility of the school: society, parishes, families and the young themselves also bear the burden of this trend.” (p. 14) But they look to the Catholic school to support young people, teachers and families to grow in their knowledge and love for the Catholic tradition. In particular the Pastoral Letter proposes the idea of ‘Catholic religious literacy’ and establishes the goal that by the end of their schooling students know core Catholic teachings, Scriptures, history and tradition, and how these are to be lived in the world.[11]

4. Re-visioning and re-missioning our schools as centres of ‘the new evangelization’

A story is told of a teacher who was telling some children the Christmas story when a boy put up his hand to ask, “Miss, why did Mary and Joseph name their child after a swear word?” This is not just a problem for kindergarteners. Some years ago I was showing two American youths around the Uffizi Gallery in Florence when one blank-facedly asked me who the woman with the baby was in so many of the pictures. It was not a wise-crack; nor was he hostile to religion: just completely innocent of it. And he had grown up in a culture which is probably more religious than ours. Clearly the highest standards of catechesis and religious instruction will not be enough if our students have not first received the gift of faith or the most basic faith formation.

John Paul II was surely right to say that the time has come to commit all the Church’s energies to a new evangelization in previously Christian communities which were now falling away from the Gospel in the face of secularisation and other cultural change.[12] And he insisted that it is to the adventure of a new evangelisation that the Church in our region is now called.[13]

In their Pastoral Letter the Bishops explain that:

Evangelization means proclaiming the Good News of salvation in Jesus Christ. Its goal is bringing people to faith through a personal encounter with Him. It is to be distinguished from catechesis, which involves deepening and instructing that faith already received. (p. 12)

It is also to be distinguished from proselytising or “forcing beliefs down students’ throats”.

Genuine faith cannot be imposed: it is freely received or rejected. If we are “up front” about our educational and catechetical goals with any prospective student, teacher or parent, while encouraging students to engage with open hearts and reasoning minds, then we are fully justified in engaging in activities of witness, formation and service. (p. 12)

The Bishops argue that for Catholic schools to be centres of the new evangelization:

• the life and activity in the school must be the context for a personal encounter with Christ and would promote and never contradict the teachings of the Church
• all those involved must appreciate their roles in receiving and proclaiming the Good News by word, deed and example
• students must participate in RE classes, liturgies, retreats and prayers tailored to their place in the journey of faith, addressing the core of our faith and inviting a response
• there should be special programmes for students who enter a Catholic school later than Kindergarten, for children and young adults seeking initiation into the Church, and possibly Catholic pre-schools
• families and parishes must back-up their schools in these activities, and
• new opportunities must be found for engaging and forming our students: World Youth Day represents a once-in-a-lifetime range of evangelisation opportunities. (p. 13)

Of course Vatican dicasteries, Bishops, Congregational Leaders and Catholic Education Offices can make as many fine statements as they please, issue excellent catechisms and beautiful texts, erect mission statements and decorate school walls with crucifixes – but in the end success depends upon the people on the ground. The Bishops express their gratitude to yourselves – the present leaders and teachers in our schools – “for their professionalism and generous commitment to Catholic education and to our young people.” (p. 16) They “also look with great confidence to the next generation of staff” but recognize that “the challenge is how best to form them.”

The Bishops believe it is essential that:

• Principals, Assistant Principals and RECs be faithful Catholics ready to embrace the mission of the Catholic school today and to lead and inspire their staff and parents accordingly
• as far as possible RE teachers be practising and knowledgeable Catholics and all other teachers be committed to the mission of the school and teach and live in accordance with the teachings of the Church
• particular support and professional development be provided to those staff who have received only limited faith formation, and a new generation of leaders and teachers be identified and formed apprpriately
• Catholic tertiary institutions and in-service providers must understand the mission of the Catholic school and provide school staff with the knowledge and skills they need
• once again, events such as World Youth Day provide significant faith formation opportunities for our young teachers. (pp. 14 & 16)

5. How will we know we’ve made progress?

Some years ago I suggested to a group of astonished administrators that efficiency and effectiveness are not good in themselves; that, indeed, they can be very bad things if we are being efficient and effective at achieving bad goals. Would that the Nazis and the Communists had been less efficient and effective than they were! Before we can congratulate ourselves on our success, therefore, we must have a clear sense of why we have Catholic schools at all, what their goals properly are today, and how we would know we were achieving them. In the recent Pastoral Letter the Bishops have sought to articulate such a vision or goals, as they have been doing since 1879,[14] and as the Vatican has been doing in a series of documents since the Second Vatican Council.[15]

But Church documents – like government reports – have a dangerous tendency to gather dust on shelves. Fine-sounding words capturing romantic aspirations are all very well, but the question is: will anything actually change? The Bishops therefore undertake, with the help of their respective Catholic Education Offices, as well as our congregational school leaders and other interested parties, to measure progress in achieving the goals articulated in the Pastoral Letter against some objective markers. This part of the Pastoral Letter may prove the most controversial but for results-oriented people such as yourselves it may also be the most crucial. I need not rehearse those critical indicators here,[16] as I understand you will be discussing them in your table groups; nor is the list given in the Pastoral Letter prescriptive or exhaustive.

The Bishops repeatedly recognize that “evangelizing, forming and otherwise educating our next generation is not the task of our schools alone: it requires a common effort from all our families, parishes and agencies.” (p. 20) But they look with confidence to our schools to invest themselves as far as possible in producing “young men and women of character and faith whose individual gifts are nurtured to their highest potential so that they can contribute effectively to Church, society and culture.” (p. 20)

In fewer than 300 days from now, the eyes of the world will be on the “young men and women of character and faith” of this country. As many as 150,000 young people from around the world will join a similar number of young Australians here in Sydney for a week of catechesis and culture, liturgy and festival, before half a million or so celebrate the central World Youth Day events with Pope Benedict. Our Catholic school system will be showcased to the world in all sorts of ways. Our schools are already centres of much of the pastoral preparations and will be centres of hospitality and activity during WYD week. Our students, young teachers and ex-students will, I trust, be prominent amongst the pilgrims and, after WYD, amongst the returnees. In 300 days from now the new evangelisation will have begun in earnest in Australia. And the schools – the Bishops hope – will be leading the way.

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1. Bishops of New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory, Catholic Education at a Crossroads: Pastoral Letter of the Bishops of NSW and the ACT (Sydney, Feast of Mary MacKillop, 8 August 2007). Available at http://www.cecnsw. catholic.edu.au/ Unless otherwise indicated, all page numbers refer to this text.
2. In Pius IX, Cum non sine: Letter to the Archbishop of Freiburg, 14 July 1864 (reprinted in the Syllabus of Errors, 48) Pius condemned any “system of educating youth unconnected with Catholic faith.”
3. Especially in Newman, On Receiving Notice of His Elevation to the Sacred College (1879). This then freshly published letter and various other works of Newman were much quoted by Archbishop Roger Vaughan e.g. in his Pastoral Letter on Catholic Education No. 1 (Sydney, 1879), republished in Vaughan, Pastorals and Speeches on Education (Sydney, 1880).
4. Catholic Education: A Pastoral Letter of the Archbishop and Bishops Exercising Jurisdiction in New South Wales (Sydney, 1979), also republished in Pastorals and Speeches on Education (Sydney, 1880), p. 11.
5. Ibid., p. 13.
6. Ibid., p. 14.
7. Ibid., p. 15.
8. Katrina O’Brien, “Do religious schools raise good children? Stephen Law at Sydney Ideas,” University of Sydney News 16 August 2007; Stephen Law, The War for Children’s Minds (London: Routledge, 2006). See also Stephen Law, “Schools’ religious bent should never be a given,” Sydney Morning Herald 20 August 2007 and an interview with Law by Barney Porter, “British philosopher questions religious schools teaching styles,” PM, ABC Radio National, 22 August 2007.
9. Anthony Fisher OP, “Purposes of Catholic Secondary Schools Today,” Address to the Conference of the Catholic Secondary Schools Association, Sydney, 31 March 2006, http://www.sydney.catholic.org.au/People/Bishops/Fisher/ 200668_1034.shtml, citing Catholic Education Commission of New South Wales (CEC), Catholic and Non-Catholic Students in NSW Catholic Schools 1988-2004: Report to the Bishops of NSW and ACT (Sydney: CEC, 2005), 7-8 and National Catholic Education Commission of Australia (NCEC), Catholic School Enrolment Trends 2005 with NSW Supplement (NCEC Working Group on Catholic Schools Data, 2006), 21-27.
10. CEC, Catholic and Non-Catholic Students, 8-9 reported that 51% of students from Catholic families (defined as families with one or both parents identified on the census as Catholic) are in government schools, 44% in Catholic schools and 5% in other non-government schools. The proportion of students from Catholic families in government schools has been fairly steady in recent decades, but the proportion in non-Catholic, non-government schools has been rising.
11. “No student should leave our Catholic schools without knowing the essentials of Catholic teaching as found in the Catechism of the Catholic Church and its Compendium, and all catechetical programmes and religious education texts should build upon these.” (p. 14)
12. John Paul II, Redemptoris Missio: Encyclical on the Church’s Mission (1990), 3; John Paul II, Novo Millennio Ineunte:Apostolic Letter at the Close of the Great Jubilee Year 2000 (2000), 40-41. On the meaning of ‘the new evangelisation’ some good sources are: Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, “The New Evangelisation: Building a Civilisation of Love,” Address to Catechists 12 December 2000 http://www.ewtn.com/new_evangelization/Ratzinger.htm; Dave Nodar, “What are the Characteristics of the New Evangelization?” http://www.christlife.org/evangelization/ articles/C_newevan.html
13. John Paul II, Ecclesia in Oceania: Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation on Jesus Christ and the Peoples of Oceania (2001), 8 & 13.
14. See also: Michael Putney, “The Catholic School of the Future,” Australasian Catholic Record, 28(4) (2005), 387-398.
15. Vatican Council II, Gravissimum educationis: Declaration on Christian Education (1965); John Paul II, Catechesi tradendæ: Apostolic Exhortation on Catechesis in Our Time (1979); John Paul II, “Catholic schools offer education based on Gospel values: address to Villa Flaminia Institute,” L’Osservatore Romano, 5 March 1997; John Paul II, “Home and school must work together: address to the Italian Association of Parents of Catholic Schools,” L’Osservatore Romano 1 July 1998, 10; Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education (SCCE), The Catholic School (1977); SCCE, Lay Catholics in Schools: Witnesses to Faith (1982); Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education, The Religious Dimension of Education in a Catholic School (1988), http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/ congregations/ccatheduc/documents/; Congregation for Catholic Education (CCE), The Catholic School on the Threshold of the Third Millennium (1998); Congregation for the Clergy, General Directory for Catechesis (1997). Official Church documents are available at http://www.vatican.va/
16. They are:
    • the Catholic purpose of the school is clearly stated in each school’s Mission Statement
    • all Principals, Assistant Principals and RECs are practising Catholics who understand and profess the Catholic faith, model it in their own lives, and can teach it effectively
    • progress towards an increase in the proportion of school staff – and especially of RE teachers – who are practising and knowledgeable Catholics
    • at application and appointment to a new position, and on other appropriate occasions, leaders and staff are reminded of the Catholic identity and mission of the school and of the expectation that they will commit themselves to that mission
    • progress towards an increase in the proportion of students in our schools who are Catholic
    • at application for enrolment, at admission, and on other appropriate occasions, parents and students are reminded of the Catholic identity and mission of the school and of the expectation that they will assist in that mission
    • the presence of distinctively Catholic symbols and practices as part of the daily life of the school
    • efforts to connect with Catholic families and to maximize their participation in Catholic schools
    • the provision, in conjunction with local parish(es) and diocese, of programmes for students wishing to join the Catholic Church
    • continued development and deployment of curriculum, methodologies and resources such as texts which promote high levels of Catholic religious literacy
    • co-curricular activities aimed at further evangelizing and catechizing students and otherwise nourishing their spiritual life (e.g. retreats, Project Compassion, St Vincent de Paul groups)
    • systematic external assessment of Catholic religious literacy
    • maximum involvement by students and younger staff in religious events such as World Youth Days
    • progress toward significantly increased attendance at Sunday Mass and deeper involvement in the life of the local Church by students and ex-students
    • progress towards an increase in the proportion of students in our schools who are from poorer families.