Our ten Catholic Secondary Schools are remarkable places – no two entirely the same. I give what help and encouragement I can as well as contributing to the national dimension at National Catholic RE Advisers’ meetings.
Of course our schools belong to the state although they are Catholic. They are catholic, in fact, also in the sense of embracing people of quite different backgrounds and races, and of different religious affiliations and views of life. Together the community searches for the so close yet ever elusive presence and activity of God.
There are many difficulties associated with being for many individuals the only locus of obvious Christian presence and activity, but it is by no means all bad as it can sometimes seem (The Catholic School on the Threshold of the Third Millennium, §6, Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education 1997).
There are those in our schools, teachers and pupils, who glimpse the goodness of God in all. The requirements of the Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education are met in the whole school and in the teaching of Religious Education.
“The entire effort of the Catholic teacher is oriented toward an integral formation of each student. New horizons will be opened to students through the responses that Christian revelation brings to questions about the ultimate meaning of the human person, of human life, of history, and of the world. These must be offered to the students as responses which flow out of the profound faith of the educator, but at the same time with the greatest sensitive respect for the conscience of each student. Students will surely have many different levels of faith response; the Christian vision of existence must be presented in such a way that it meets all of these levels, ranging from the most elementary evangelization all the way to communion in the same faith. And whatever the situation, the presentation must always be in the nature of a gift: though offered insistently and urgently, it cannot be imposed.” (Lay Catholics in School – Witnesses to Faith §28, Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education 1982)
Our Diocese recognises the difficulties and the sensitive successes of our schools. We celebrate and support their efforts, while always having an ideal beyond mere human reach. Like our knowledge of God, the ideal is known as much for what it is not as for what it is. We are all called by the Father to follow the Way and to respond with Love - to live with a life, literally, out of this world! |
