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Module 2 (Topic 6: Catholic schools their mandate (Doyle, J. Catholic…
Module 2
Topic 6: Catholic schools their mandate
The church and Education: Hamilton, A, Australian Catholics, 2018, Winter, 17-20.
Catholic education has changed significantly since Jesus' followers set out into the world, as it continues to evolve, diversify and respond to the times, its deeper aspects remain.
Education was important for society: people who could read and write and could understand traditions on which their society was built helped to make the empire prosperous to ensure its peace and security.
Catholic Church became involved in schools for three reasons
It was important for you people's personal development as persons they learned to understand themselves and the world.
It was important they ere encouraged to build a good society that was attentive to its poorest members.
It was important for them to be well educated in their faith so that they could look at the world through the eyes of faith.
Doyle, J. Catholic Identity and the Catholic school. Being Catholic, 2014
Principals worry about: falling academic performance, staffing issues, demography change or a crisis or scandal will place the school in a position they cannot recover from.
Catholic schools exist primarily to do 2 things
Evangelise: they exist to be a place, a community of believers where young people are enabled to encounter Christ as a real and living person.
To form the full human person in the image of Christ, body mind and spirit. Including their intellect, creativity, physical abilities, conscience and more.
The various school subjects do not present only knowledge to be attained, but also values to be acquired and truths to be discovered.
Many schools have forgotten the Christ part and head down the path of niceness. This is the path where you reduce Christianity to a 'system of living' or a philosophy ir a way to earn a ticket into heaven by being good.
Christianity is not a system for being good, but rather its about an encounter with Jesus Christ.
Why is this document important?
• Values the work of catholic schools.
• What we do is important.
• Connects catholic schools to the life of the church and belief in christ.
• Outlines the roles of all involved in catholic education.
• Explains that catholic schools and all who work in them are signs of God’s presence and purpose.
The presence of God
• Any discussion about Catholic schools must begin with God.
• The experiences of divine power revealed in Jesus have been handed down to each generation through the church.
• The church exists in order to evangelise - Pope Paul VI.
Evangelise:
The church evangelises by bringing the good news into all the strata of human society, and through its influence, transforming humanity from within and making it new.
How Catholic schools evangelise
• Striving continually to be good schools.
Teaching students to integrate faith, culture and life,
The Catholic school community: "It takes a whole village to raise a child".
Topic 8: Catholic schools- their curriculum
Graham, E. (2007). Catholic Religious Education in Australia: how and why it has changed.
1960's & 70's
Catholics became multi cultured before the rest of Australia. Italians, Dutch, Czechs etc became part of the church.
Fear dissipated as a motive for church practice.
The sacrament of confession died, thus depriving priests of the power to influence people decisions.
Then quite quickly the teachers in Catholic schools became lay people and weren't sufficiently trained,
Catholic education today
Now in line with the Vatican and other Church documents, Catholic education is about evangelisation and when possible catechesis.
Focuses on handing on a tradition that children can take part in. Reading and valuing scripture, know the religions of their fellow Australians.
Cath ed teachers are teaching that Australian society has changed and therefore its needs and desires have changed, where the Catholic population and its needs and desires have changed.
Before The Council is not 'the good old days'. And now is not 'the bad old days'. 'That was then, this is now.' Our task as religious educators in a Catholic setting is to live in the now.
Curriculum: A religious dimension
Life = what you bring, faith = relate through God, Culture = backgrounds of students
Rockpool metaphor: Ecosystems that are involved, ripples with a small pebble still make a big difference
The curriculum of a Catholic school is:
The total life of the school and comprises.
All the experiences and opportunities for learning.
Designed by teachers.
For the full Christian development of students..
The Australian curriculum sets out:
what will be taught
what students need to learn, and
the expected quality of that teaching
Topic 5: The founding story
Evagalisation
Spreading the word.
Spreading good news.
Advocate for converts.
The story of Catholic education.
Beginning:
• 1843: Two Catholic priests arrive in Albany.
• Offered 3 blocks of land ‘in the bush’ for a church, presbytery & school.
• Fr Brady set off to Europe to raise funds and recruit volunteers.
• First Catholic teachers: 3 young Sisters of Mercy & 3 ‘novices’ from Ireland with Sr Ursula Frayne (29 yrs) as their leader.
• 1865: 61% of colony’s children were being educated in Catholic schools.
Expansion
• All schools were funded depending on the number of students, but at two levels:
Government schools, 100%.
‘Assisted’ schools, 50%.
1890’s:
More lay teachers recruited.
Gold rush Brough wealth and immigrants to WA (Particularly Catholic Irish miners).
Rapid expansion of Catholic schools to country areas.
• “Education must be free, compulsory and secular!” - Sir Henry Parkes. The bishops didn’t agree with this and tried to compromise with bible studies once a week. They then determined that a school was to be wholly religious by the nature of its habits and surroundings.
Struggle
1895: WA became an independent state.
• Government education in WA was to be ‘free, compulsory and secular.
• Catholic schools were unable to pay the lay teachers and therefore they left.
• Parents were instructed to send their children to Catholic schools ‘under pain of mortal sin’.
• All Catholics to contribute to the upkeep of Catholic schools, every parish obliged to establish and maintain a Catholic school.
Crisis
• Classes of 100 students.
• Standards of schools declined: physically and educationally.
• Harsh, rigid teaching conditions.
• Strong political antagonism.
• Catholics only.
• Not qualified to teach.
•1950s - Catholic political campaigns begin.
• 1969 – First step towards funding for libraries and science blocks.
• 1975 – Massive federal aid to non-government schools with low resources/high needs (mostly, Catholic schools).
• 1980s – States start to provide funding for recurrent costs for non-government schools on the basis of need.
New Directions
• In WA, Commonwealth and State governments now provide 75% of running costs.
• Mix of single-sex & co-ed schools.
• Schools better resourced than at any other time.
• Teachers better qualified than at any other time.
Sister Bernadine Daly
"A woman of action and deep prayer, a free spirit, a wonderful teacher and a good friend".
"She liked going around and being the teacher. She used to love to help us" - Sr Teresa.
Joined the local West Perth Sisters of Mercy.
After studying at UWA she went on to teach at St Brigid's West Perth, St Mary's Leederville and St Bridgid's Lesmurdie.
Sr Bernadine left the vocation of teaching when she was in her fifties, she told her friends and family that she had received a call from God to begin a shelter for alcoholic and homeless Aboriginal people, which became St Norbert's in East Perth.
Nearly 80 years of living out the Sisters of Mercy charism.
She was arrested during the Swan Brewery protests of 1989. They were arresting the Aboriginal people but they didn't want to arrest her, she said "if you're arresting them , you're arresting me".
Received a Medal of the Order of Australia for her tireless work.
Topic 7: The mandate & mandate letter
Mandate:
‘What we do is important’.
Connects Catholic schools to the life of the Church and belief in Christ.
Outlines the roles of all involved in Catholic education.
Explains that Catholic schools and all who work in them are ‘signs of God’s presence and purpose.
Values the work of Catholic schools.
To evangelise (spread the word of God).
The Mandate letter
Implementing the vision: LEAD
Learning.
Engagement.
Accountability.
Decipleship.
Main ideas of the letter
• Signs of God’s Self-Revelation.
• Signs of the Times in the Christian Witness of the Catholic School.
• Signs of the Times in the Catholic School Curriculum.
• Signs of the Times in the Catholic School Community.
Helpful quotes from the letter:
• Many of the challenges Catholic schools face today in helping students develop a Gospel
vision of themselves come from the division rather than the integration of faith and life.
• The church evangelisers by bringing the good news into all the strata of human society and through its influence, transforming humanity from within and making it new.
• Because they were in harmony with God, they experienced harmony within themselves, harmony with each other, and harmony with the rest of creation.
• To integrate faith and life, students need to learn to discover the influence of God in all
that is good in the events, work and human relationships of daily life
• Among other factors, the declining number of people involved today in voluntary organisations, suggest a decline in respect in many for the God-given dignity of every human person, especially of the disadvantaged and those in need,
Catholic education is a complete education: Archbishop Costelloe.
"Catholic schools continue to be the work of the Church and would not exist without the agreement of the bishops.
Defines a Catholic school to being a place where, "the Jesus-thing" is lived and understood in the Catholic tradition.
"The spirit of the Gospel is that we belong to each other and are responsible to each other, where the welfare of one is the welfare of all" he shared.
The Archbishop is armament that an education without a spiritual element was not a complete education.
