Catholic schools must be places where the Catholic world view is not confined to the Religious Education classes but permeates the entire school, Archbishop Timothy Costelloe recently told an audience at John XXIII College in Mt Claremont.
The Archbishop was a guest speaker at the school’s “Inigo Spirituality” presentations, which provide parents and the general public with a series of talks designed to educate and inspire.
In his address, entitled, Catholic Schools Today – What is the Point?, the Archbishop began by sharing his own educational journey before emphasising the importance of understanding exactly what Catholic education is and why its implementation is a key to providing students with a complete education.
“There would be no Archbishop more passionate than me when it comes to Catholic education,” he announced, and then, putting his own teaching skills on display, led the audience through a systematic journey of what defines such an education.
“A Catholic school cannot be a good Catholic school if it is not a good school,” he began.
“A focus on Religious Education shouldn’t be an excuse for a school being second rate and vice versa.”
The Archbishop provided a brief history of education in Australia, beginning with the 1872 Victorian Education Act which aimed to provide “free, compulsory and secular” education to all.
This definition did not gel well with bishops at the time who wanted to include a spiritual/religious dimension to this interpretation, he said, which led to the establishment of a Catholic school network.
This development inevitably attracted numerous religious orders who were focused on education and these became the bedrock of Catholic schools until the latter part of the 20th century, when a growing number of lay teachers entered the system.
However, despite this recent development, the Archbishop emphasised, Catholic schools continue to be the work of the Church and would not exist without the agreement of the bishops.
One of the approaches the Archbishop said he adopted when speaking at Catholic schools was to ask the rhetorical question, “What makes your school Catholic?”
He revealed that, generally, the first response was “pastoral care”, usually followed by “Gospel values” such as tolerance, understanding, inclusiveness, acceptance and forgiveness.
He acknowledged the importance of such attributes but said that people became uncomfortable when he explained that government schools would also promote such values.
“If Catholic schools can only find their identity in the pastoral care or Gospel-values basket,” he would respond, “these won’t make the school Catholic.”
It is at this point that the Archbishop said he liked to introduce the “God-thing”, a phrase he likes to use to distinguish between a Catholic school and a government school.
The “God-thing”, however, does not in itself distinguish a Catholic school from other faiths, such as Muslim or Jewish, the Archbishop’s line of thinking would progress.
He would then propose that perhaps it was the “Jesus-thing” which defined Catholic schools from other faiths, but would then point out that other Christian denominations would also promote such an identity.
Finally, he would refine his definition of a Catholic school to being a place where, “the ‘Jesus-thing’ is lived and understood in the Catholic tradition”.
But this understanding incorporates more than students attending Mass or saying prayers, going on retreats or receiving the Sacraments, the Archbishop said.
“These are important, but does the atmosphere, environment and ethos envelop your children when they come to school?” he would ask. “Does the Catholic world view permeate the school?”
During his presentation, the Archbishop went on to speak of the growing attitude of self-focus and independence prevailing within secular society, which he described as the antithesis of the Catholic world view.
“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 was adamant that an education without a spiritual element was not a complete education and said that parents who chose Catholic schools for their children were seeking to provide the best education they could.
“And that must include the spiritual and religious dimension as an integral, integrated part of the educational experience and not a separate little thing that’s boxed in the corner called ‘Religious Education,” he said.
It is a part of the whole understanding of what it means to be a human being – of living life to the full.”