Perspective on the use of the
construct ‘Catholic identity’ for
Australian Catholic schooling
Some sociological background to the interest in institutional religious identity:What drives the interest in identity?
Examples of factors precipitating institutional identity anxiety. Some comments on
implications for the discourse on Catholic school identity.
Signposting comments on the literature and practice related to Catholic identity of
schools.
Some proposed ideas/themes that could be given more emphasis in the discourse on
the Catholic identity of Catholic schools
The Enhancing Catholic School Identity Project
Summary conclusion
Final theological reflection: Identity issues in the New Testament communities and
with the historical Jesus
Examples of designated religious coordination positions in Australian
Catholic schools
Religious Coordination positions that
predominated into the 1990s
Some examples of new religious coordination
positions that have emerged in the last decade
Director of Catholic identity
Religious Education Coordinator
Assistant Principal Religious Education Assistant principal identity.
Assistant principal religious education,
(Queensland)
Faith Development Coordinator
(Victoria)
Director of Religious Studies (New
Zealand)
Liturgy Coordinator
Retreat Coordinator
identity and mission
Director of mission
Director of mission and Catholic identity
Deputy principal mission
Dean of Mission.
Director or Evangelisation
Director of Religious Education and
Evangelisation
Director of Faith and Outreach
Director of faith and mission
Vice principal faith and mission
Ministry coordinator
Director of spiritual activities
Family liaison coordinator
Some sociological background to the interest in institutional religious identity:What drives the interest in identity?
Examples of factors precipitating institutional identity anxiety. Some comments on
implications for the discourse on the Catholic identity of schools.
1. Times of crisis or institutional failure:
2. A new or reconstituted institution:
3. Change in institutional leadership:
4. Challenging comparisons with other institutions:
5. Image consciousness related to advertising:
6. Confusing personal identity issues with institutional identity, and confusing
expectations for different contexts:
7. Creating executive coordinating positions to address identity related issues:
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Comments on the literature and practice related to
Catholic identity of schools: And a proposal of ideas /
themes that could be given more emphasis in the
discourse on the Catholic identity of schools
* Theological qualities of Catholicism
* Distinctiveness and inclusiveness
* Catholic curriculum and pedagogy
* Key religious leadership roles in schools
* Catholic educational leadership
* Evangelisation (New evangelisation) and mission of the church
* Responding to the challenge of secularisation
* Distinctive religious charism
* Liturgy and prayer
* Student response to institutional Catholic identity
* Measuring and assessing Catholic identity
Some proposed ideas/themes that could be given
more emphasis in the discourse on the Catholic
identity of Catholic schools
• Appraising the various components to the construct ‘Catholic identity’ of
schools
• Different aspects / components of the religious (Catholic) identity of a school;
the various ways in which religion and the spiritual enter into the school’s
operation
• Personal identity development in relation to institutional identity
• Institutional identity as a reference point for personal identity development
• What it means to educate in identity
• Catholic school identity related to the joint church-state partnership and
contribution to the common good
The Enhancing Catholic School Identity Project
* Brief summary of the 3 scales for interpreting the profiles
of thinking about Catholic identity
* General comment
* Lieven Boeve’s theology of interruption and recontextualisation
* Re-contextualisation of Catholic identity: A process going
back to Pope John XXIII.
* Re-contextualisation and the Lombaerts-Pollefeyt theory
for classroom religious education
The re- contextualising agenda for the ECSIP
•Propose the faith to students and teachers who are
unfamiliar with it, but nonetheless receptive for it.
•Promote transcendent belief and a Catholic faith
identity.
•Offer resistance against relativism and
secularisation.
•Take away suspicion, scepticism and fear.
•Give existing values and norms a religious
foundation.
•Provide solidarity and community with their deeper
religious meaning.
•Make a re-contextualised Christian belief meaningful
and redeeming for today’s young generation.
Lieven Boeve’s theology of interruption and recontextualisation
• A radical change and interruption in the way communities hand
on their meanings and identity to the next generations
• De-traditionalisation
• Individualisation
• Pluralisation
• A need for critical, evaluative dialogue with contemporary
culture to forge new relationships with God and the culture.
Proactive rather than defensive protection.
• Re-contextualisation may require some courageous decisions
about structures and approaches to understanding and living out
Christianity
• Given that the school is a civic educational institution for children
and not an adult social justice agency, its structural response to
re-contextualisation need to be appropriate to its natural,
limited potentialities.
Re-contextualisation has a long history
“Today’s world, the needs made plain in the last fifty years, and a deeper
understanding of doctrine have brought us to a new situation ... It is not that
the Gospel has changed, it is that we have begun to understand it better. Those
who have lived as long as I have ...were enabled to compare different cultures
and traditions, and know that the moment has come to discern the signs of the
times, to seize the opportunity and to look far ahead.” (Pope John XXIII, 1963).
“. . develop your culture with wisdom and prudence, retaining the freedom to
criticise what may be called the ‘cultural industry’ remaining all the while
deeply concerned with truth … faith will ask culture what values it promotes,
what destiny it offers to life, what place it makes for the poor and the
disinherited with whom the Son of Man is identified, how it conceives of
sharing, forgiveness and love. “(Pope John Paul II, 1984 )
Responding to the signs of the times; Making Catholicism more relevant to the
contemporary world; Critical dialogue between faith and culture (inculturaltion);
Questing for social justice; Christian humanism and humanistic psychology;
Addressing the real personal and spiritual needs of people;
Christian praxis;
Raising critical consciousness; Critical interpretation and evaluation of culture
etc.
The Lombaerts – Pollefeyt theory for classroom religious
education
Hermeneutics (Interpretation) and Religious Education
“The art of interpreting the traces of communication is a specifically
human quality. It is the alphabet of the human search for understanding
the self, the interaction among people, the meaning of life and for
establishing the truth. “
The hermeneutical communicative competence approach
• An intimate, small group, psychological method;
• Reviewing ‘hermeneutical knots’ or issues in the interpretation of
meaning and purpose in life;
• Applicability to public forum classrooms when studying religion with
25 or more students? Appropriate for small commitment groups.
• Academic study or religion and spiritual/moral issues can be both
personal and relevant with appropriate content and pedagogy.
• Does the hermeneutic communicative approach lean a little too far in
the direction of a psycho-therapeutic process.
Summary conclusion
1. Acknowledge the complexity of ‘Catholic identity’ by avoiding
generic use of the term by itself and by specifying the component subidentities that can more meaningfully be addressed.
2. Focusing on the relationships between personal identity
development and institutional identity – cultural meanings as identity
resources.
3. Focusing on what it means to educate in identity. Catholic school as
an educational centre of Catholic culture that resources the spirituality
and identity development of young people, both through and beyond
Catholic religious heritage.
4. More attention to the basis for Catholic school identity in the joint
partnership between Church, state and parents as semi-state schools
with religious sponsorship. Giving attention to the contribution that
Catholic schools make to the common good and to the education of
Australian citizens.
Final theological reflection: Identity issues in the New Testament
communities and with the historical Jesus
* Religious identity concerns for the early believers in Jesus as Christians
gradually differentiated themselves from being a sect within Judaism.
The question: “Who is the true Israel?” was an institutional identity issue
ever since. What constitutes authentic Catholic identity has to be reworked
again and again in different times and different cultures in ways that are
faithful to the New Testament vision.
* The historical Jesus studies and reconstruction what the historical Jesus
was like, by contrast with the post-Easter Christ of faith.
Jesus was vitally concerned with the religious identity issues that
marginalised the ‘little people’ of his time; and his provocative words and
actions on these issues heightened the opposition to him that eventually led
to his assassination .
What would he have thought about enhancing institutional religious identity.
Probably “very little”.
He was more focused on mission than on institutional religious identity –
more on what we do rather than what we look like.
Website where the paper and the powerpoint
can be downloaded
http://e-learn.acu.edu.au/~grrossiter/CatholicID/index.html