Following weeks of protests, Archbishop Laurent Ulrich of Paris has spoken out in defence of this freedom of expression.

Principal dismissal sparks tensions

The dismissal of Christian Espeso, principal of Immaculate Conception High School in Pau, southern France, has stirred national controversy. On 11 September, the local education authority removed Espeso from office, citing "breaching secularism" after he introduced confessions during school hours and required students to attend a conference led by a bishop.

"Many of us are stunned" stated the Diocese of Bayonne's Directorate of Catholic Education on 13 September, calling the decision "totally disproportionate in light of the facts".

Immaculate Conception High School, under Espeso's leadership, ranked first in its region and fourth nationally.

Archbishop defends religious expression

Archbishop Ulrich addressed the controversy on Radio Notre Dame, emphasising the importance of religious expression within Catholic institutions.

"We must be able to proclaim the Gospel in Catholic schools" he stated. "There are people who want to silence us."

The archbishop's comments come as the debate intensifies over the role of Catholic schools in a secular society. Currently, Catholic schools educate about 17% of French pupils and represent 95% of all private schools in the country.

Balancing secularism and religious identity

French Catholic schools operate under a 1959 agreement that requires them to follow the same curriculum as public institutions while maintaining their Catholic identity. The state pays the salaries of their teachers who are inspected by the Ministry of Education. In return, the schools agree to welcome students of all backgrounds and make catechism classes optional.

However, the balance between state oversight and religious autonomy appears to be shifting. In January, a group of public education representatives called for an end to state funding for Catholic schools, claiming that the current system undermines France's commitment to secularism.

Changing religious landscape

Philippe Gaudin, director of the Public Institute for the Study of Religions and Secularism, attributed the growing tensions to a shifting religious landscape in France.

"There is a huge decline in Christian religious practice" Gaudin told OSV News. "At the same time, there is a growing presence of Muslims who are loudly asserting their identity and their demands. This is something new. So the state is trying to put in place a public policy to manage all this."

The dismissal of Espeso has become a flashpoint in this wider debate over how religious institutions operate within France's secular framework.

Source

• CNA

Yeast, he wrote, is an agent of infusion, of integration and penetration that transforms the flour into which it is introduced. He compared this with the integrating quality of faith.

Father Ong had good authority for the metaphor. Jesus spoke of the kingdom of God as being like leaven.

I would like to contrast this metaphor of yeast with a metaphor of "frosting," as applied to Catholic education.

Rather than infusing a cake the way yeast does, frosting does not permeate the cake, but only layers itself upon it.

These two metaphors capture in a simple, but I believe accurate way, two competing visions of Catholic education, from preschool to university.

Yeast

Father Ong explained that the function of yeast has parallels in the etymology of the word "catholic," which comes from the Greek katholikos, from kath or kata ("throughout") and holos ("whole"): "throughout-the-whole."

Like yeast in a loaf, faith, in a genuinely Catholic education, interacts with all other disciplines, such as the humanities, sciences, social sciences and the professions.

Faith does not replace disciplines or transform them into itself; rather, when faith encounters reason, it reveals and orders reason's deeper realities of truth and goodness.

Like yeast, faith expands throughout the whole educational enterprise because there are no limits to its borders.

Faith, not a mere emotion but a divine illumination, is the theological virtue that expands the mind and soul, enabling us to see more deeply and more broadly.

When faith views a human being, it sees everything the natural eye sees, but it pierces more deeply into the depths of human reality.

It does not fall prey to the reductive sight that sees only a biological organism whose value can be measured in strictly economic terms.

Instead, the eyes of faith perceive a unique and unrepeatable immortal soul, made in the image of God and intended for the kingdom.

Faith sees the invisible in the visible, the spirit in matter, the immeasurable in the measurable. Faith is a habit of mind whereby eternal life begins in us, where we see the end in our beginnings.

Closer to home, it is with vision leavened by faith that I can see the image of God in that student in the back row with the baseball cap, whose bored look signals that I cannot teach him a thing.

Faith and other disciplines

Examples of bringing faith into contact with other disciplines abound in the Catholic educational tradition.

A few examples among many include the early church fathers, who built upon the Greco-Roman philosophical tradition, bringing out the intrinsic complementarity of faith and reason.

Another classic example is that of the scholar/saints like Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas, who performed a similar yeast-like operation when a flood of ancient writings (often filtered through Muslim thinkers), especially of Plato and Aristotle, swept through European societies and were integrated into the work of universities.

More recently, Catholic social teaching has engaged with business theory and practice, exploring the relationship between the social nature of property and capital, applying a Christian view of justice and its implications for wages and prices and wealth distribution, as well as contributing to an understanding of the nobility of the vocation and the work of business leaders.

Another recent example might be found in the current dialogue among scientists, theologians and philosophers on some of the most momentous scientific questions facing us, such as the theory of the Big Bang, the origin of the universe and evolutionary thought.

These conversations and insights of integration enrich both the various disciplines and faith itself.

The disciplines become more nourishing and less reductionist, and faith is purified by seeing more concretely what the legal scholar Helen Alvaré calls the "inbreaking of the Kingdom."

Tension and debate will no doubt arise in the interaction of faith and reason, but this is nothing new in the Catholic educational tradition.

The medieval university's pedagogical approach was structured on such questions and debates. Its pedagogy was dialectical, including both lecture and disputation.

The lecture was not given to evoke mere assent, but as a prologue to disputation.

The Socratic method—the art of the question—was incorporated into Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologiae, proposing questions and articulating both sides of an argument in search of a deeper synthesis.

Yet students are increasingly afraid to disagree with others, often out of fear of being labeled or of simply being wrong. This is a debilitating condition for education.

A Catholic education should hone the art of the question that is "questing" not for slogans or political correctness (whether left or right), but what the Rev. Luigi Giussani called the "religious sense," an ultimate meaning that is discoverable but never exhaustible.

The metaphor of yeast and the meaning of the word catholic point us to two key integrating principles of Catholic education: the unity of knowledge and the complementarity of faith and reason.

The ability to integrate knowledge is the highest activity of the human mind, and it is these two leavening principles that move the mind to wisdom.

If Catholic schools cease engaging such principles, they will no longer operate as yeast. Instead, they are likely to merit the second metaphor mentioned above: Catholic education as frosting. Read more

• Michael J. Naughton is the director of the Center for Catholic Studies at the University of St. Thomas, in Minnesota.

The pupils of nine Dunedin Catholic schools held a social justice day yesterday, taking part in 14 different projects throughout the city including a rubbish cleanup of the Town Belt, baking for residents of Ross Home and connecting with pensioners.

St Joseph's Cathedral School religious studies director Kelly Braithwaite said her classroom had four Domincan sisters and a priest visit.

Pupils aged 5 to 7 put on a concert for them as a way to share love and year 0 to 2 pupils made cards and shared a morning tea with them. Read more

Last month the Herald asked: should you buy a house in the Grammar zone or live somewhere else and send your kids to private schools?

That story was mostly a comparison of private school fees and property prices.

But in my view "Grammar or Kings?" is the last thing anyone should be thinking about when it comes to choosing a school.

I used to write about schools a lot.

I've interviewed many principals, teachers and researchers, read the research and sat in classrooms watching teachers work. I know a bit about it.

And here are five questions I think are important.

The standout in all this is McAuley High School, a Catholic school for girls in Otahuhu.

What about all the other "top schools"?

A former principal of Macleans College, spectacularly located on the coast in east Auckland, told me once his aim was to beat the academic performance of Auckland Grammar.

And from time to time, Macleans has done exactly that.

At other schools with high socio-economic catchments, they've done much the same.

Westlake Girls and Boys, Western Springs, Carmel, Baradene, Rangitoto and Takapuna Grammar are all justifiably proud of their academic records.

And like Macleans, St Peters College, right next door to Auckland Grammar, has been outranking its more famous neighbour on some measures.

The Grammar zone and private schools don't have a monopoly on achievement.

There are many schools in Auckland - single sex and co-ed, church and secular, state and private, city fringe and suburban - that are good at the core business of academic success.

What about all the other good schools?

Digging deeper, a high socio-economic catchment doesn't make a school good. The reality is that - in the language of economics - input determines output.

Children from wealthy backgrounds are likely to do better in school than children from poor backgrounds.

Partly, this is because wealthy people are likely to have been well educated themselves: they know the value of it and they instil it in their children.

And partly it's because wealth makes raising children easier, not least because there is money for books and computers, ballet and sport and holidays. And for a warm, dry home you won't be evicted from.

But here's the thing.

If your children are loved, if they are talked to and read to, exposed to stimulating experiences, feel safe and secure,

If they do not spend their time hungry or cold or sick, if they learn the skills to make friends,

If they come to believe they have a worthwhile place in the world, as individuals and as part of a culture,

And if they are encouraged to imagine, to dream,

If they are helped to learn how to take risks … if they are helped to live well,

They are likely to do well at school.

Provided, that is, they go to a decent school. And there are lots of them, at all socio-economic levels.

As the Herald's own analysis shows, many schools perform much better than you might expect from their "inputs".

Avondale, Mt Albert Grammar, Mt Roskill Grammar, St Mary's, Marist, Selwyn, Auckland Girls Grammar and Onehunga are all mid-decile schools with strong academic records. There are others.

That's a key thing to look for: a school whose students do better than those at other schools with similar backgrounds.

A school where output exceeds input.

It doesn't mean an old or traditional school, either.

In Albany and Ormiston, the relatively new junior and senior high schools are doing well and play a vital role in building their local communities.

Schools like One Tree Hill College, formerly with a poor reputation, have worked hard and successfully to turn themselves around.

Shining examples: integrated, church schools and kura kaupapa

Integrated or church schools, whatever their socio-economic position, tend to do extremely well.

So do kura kaupapa, where the students are immersed in te reo Maori and te ao Maori. They consistently outperform most other schools with similar socio-economic backgrounds, by some margin.

In 2022, Te Kura Maori o Nga Tapuwae had the highest NCEA pass rate of any state school in the country and every school leaver attained University Entrance or better.

It's a Mangere school in the mid-range of socio-economic factors.

The standout in all this is McAuley High School, a Catholic school for girls in Otahuhu.

Despite having, by the old reckoning, a decile one catchment, its academic record has for many years been as good as a typical decile seven school.

I know former students of McAuley and the light shines out of them.

The principal there, now retired, once told me it was because of their faith, and you're welcome to believe it.

Me, I think she was a great leader (and I assume her replacement is too), they have many fine teachers and they have become experts at integrating home, school and student in a three-way commitment to great schooling.

Looking for a school to give your child the best start in life?

Look for those things.

Good leadership, good teachers and what Education Hub founder Nina Hood calls "the strong culture, the strong sense of belonging, the creation of an environment that has a clear set of values associated with it".

Church schools, kura, and private schools have a ready framework for this, but state schools can achieve it, too.

In my view, the Ministry of Education should work out what McAuley does and bottle it. The rest of the system has much to learn from that school. Read more

• Simon Wilson is a senior writer for the New Zealand Herald.

The Catholic Education Service (CES) says just under a fifth of all pupils in Catholic statutory education meets the highest national deprivation criteria, compared to a 12.8 percent England average.

Similarly, the CES says a quarter fewer pupils from the more affluent areas attend Catholic schools.

"The number of Catholic school pupils on free school meals is marginally lower than the national average, as many parents are ineligible due to immigration status or low-paid employment, with barriers to take-up including the complexity of applications and financial privacy concerns," the CES says.

Read More

Non-government schools save taxpayers at least $4.59 billion annually in recurrent funding costs.

The research from Catholic Schools NSW, published March 14, reveals that if all schools received their full government funding entitlement, the yearly recurrent savings provided by non-government institutions would skyrocket to $6.31 billion.

Dallas McInerney, CEO of Catholic Schools NSW says that while offering affordable, values-based education and amid soaring enrolments the Catholic system alone in NSW saves over $500 million per year

Further benefiting taxpayers, the study found non-government schools cover over 90% of their capital expenditure privately, amounting to $4.48 billion in savings during 2022.

Source: Catholic Schools NSW

Culturally, this reflects the significant changes in society globally and the impact of religious affiliation locally.

Gone is much of the tribalism, homogeneity and compliance that so identified the Catholic faithful pre-Vatican II and into the late 1970s.

Those days belong to a holy-picture past which no longer fits the times.

Christianity now

Today 39 per cent of Australians now identify themselves as No religion whilst there has been a discernible growth in the other major world religions.

Whilst Christianity, and in particular Catholicism, remains the most common religion in Australia, Christianity has fallen.

Those identifying as Christian went from being 88 per cent of the Australian population in 1966 to just 44 per cent today.

According to the 2021 Census, Catholics now form only 20 per cent of the population.

Whilst the numbers of students attending Catholic schools has grown at a steady rate, the religious composition of school communities has changed significantly.

Just over half of Catholic primary students (58.2 per cent) and Catholic secondary students (56.3 per cent) are nominally Catholic, whilst just under half (48.1 per cent) of Catholic primary and similarly of Catholic secondary students (43.7 per cent) attend either a government secondary school or a private (not Catholic) school (ABS, 2016).

For a Catholic student to attend a school that was not Catholic would have been unheard of in the 1960s era in which we grew up.

With big families and discounts for successive children, the Catholic schools of the 1950s-70s were at their peak affiliation with a large proportion of religious sisters and brothers taking on the teaching load.

The contemporary classroom

Beyond the diversity in composition of the contemporary Catholic classroom are other broader challenges facing Catholic schools in a world context which is variously described as post-Christian and increasingly secular and individualist.

Communal attitudes of shock, anger and shame at a Church that covered up paedophilia in the past decades has stripped the institution of much of its moral authority.

Clericalism, hierarchical intransigence, and the lack of female voice within the Church have accelerated disillusion and disappointment amongst the laity.

What is becoming increasingly apparent in today's society is that the story of Jesus of Nazareth and the claims of Christianity are no longer common knowledge.

The Catholic school

The framework of faith that was so central to Catholic life when we were growing up has been marginalised.

Our student cohort may be confessed, neutral, resistant, or hostile; they may enjoy another faith tradition, or they may have no tradition or an indifferent inclination to any transcendent belief system.

However, the Catholic school has a place for them all.

At the same time, the Catholic school has become the ecclesial face of the Catholic Church in the 21st Century.

Catholic schools are schools for all. With that invitation comes the reality that students will have various faith experiences and backgrounds and that a one-size-fits-all pedagogy of the 1950s and 1960s is no longer appropriate for learning or spiritual growth.

As we grew up, we mixed with other Catholics, knew our prayers and feast days and shared common understandings that made connections with each other easy.

We did not dare miss Mass or Holy Days of Obligation and the rosary was recited with regularity.

We lived and breathed the Catholic cosmology and did not question it.

We learned the catechism by rote, undertook the sacraments with reverence and respected the liturgy, even when we did not quite understand it.

The inputs and experiences we had were relatively innocent.

We were not seduced by the smorgasbord of distractions that consume today's teenager.

Technology was the family phone in the hallway and the small black and white TV on the back porch.

Things were done en famille and any sort of privacy was a luxury, as most big families had two or three children sharing the same bedroom.

Children did not have rights or opinions and education was delivered without differentiation or much acknowledgement of learning needs, cultural background, or family situation.

It was factory floor functional with teacher as know-it-all and students as empty vessels into which facts and fictions were poured.

By contrast

Fortunately, today's students have an education system that recognises the individual in the learning equation much more readily and responsively.

We understand that the growth of personal agency is one of the positive outcomes of education, as is an increasing realisation of the soft skills of interpersonal transactions - especially in a world where technology can mitigate the face-to-face encounters needed for good socialisation and communal cohesion.

What we have today is a growing continuum of tolerance for various beliefs and practices.

Differentiation is now the key to many scenarios.

Personal agency and initiative from the individual are accepted and often expected.

Rather than being passive recipients of knowledge, the student is now in the centre of their own learning world.

However, the situation regarding religious education and the passing on of the faith tradition has changed unrecognisably.

Greg Sheridan has noted that Christianity is almost in existential crisis in the West, and Australia is about to become, if it has not already, a majority atheist nation.

Gerard Windsor has contended that the progress of the West from general belief to general unbelief has been inexorable.

As long ago as 1993, Marcellin Flynn in researching the culture of Catholic schools between 1972-1993 noted the influence of the secular materialist culture of Australian society as impacting on student interest in religious education.

Imagine then, thirty years on, the layers of complexity, disaffiliation and competing worldviews that are now apparent in the average Catholic school classroom.

We are reminded starkly of Pope Francis' observation that we live in not only an era of change, but a change of era.

The challenge for the RE teacher today is that many of the children do not have a familiarisation with Catholic beliefs emanating from their own homes.

We speak often of the parents as first educators in faith, but the reality is that this is true in only a small percentage of cases.

The religious socialisation of the past has been greatly diminished by increasing secularisation and new patterns of socialisation are emerging in the digital age where new tribes and affiliations and niche groups are the current homes for identity and belonging.

Cultural shifts have now prioritised personal ascendancy over the communal contract.

A pluralising, detraditionalising and individualising cultural context is now taken as normal by the majority of people.

As such, the school is now the place for evangelisation of the next generation of Catholics.

We have a big job ahead of us as we fulfil our mission of educating those one in five children in Australia who attend our schools (NCEC, 2017).

This is the challenge for Catholic school leadership who need to prioritise and honour the nature and purpose of the RE classroom as the school maintains its raison d'etre.

If it is on the timetable with Maths and English and Science it needs a revitalised respect.

How do we 'do' our mission in schools?

The question for us is how do we maintain this unique and irreplaceable aspect of our schools, while we compete for numbers and results in a marketplace that commodifies almost everything?

How do we maintain the integrity of the subject at senior secondary levels when the students see it as an intrusion in the timetable, rather than an opportunity for reflection, increased religious and life knowledge, discussion, and some necessary soul-building?

How do we strengthen our distinctive Catholic identity in a world where schools can suffer from a diminution of vision and mission when this is not enacted routinely by those in the school community as a part of the daily fabric of school life?

How do we assist the RE teachers who have twenty-five or more students in these core classes, whilst their peers have smaller class sizes and more overt investment in their subject because students feel these relate more directly to academic achievement and their future pathway?

Our responsibility and privilege in the Catholic classroom is to nurture the human being in front of us, welcoming them, and fostering in them the knowledge and growth that gives their unique and precious life meaning.

Ideally, that is done within the Catholic context as host tradition, but we no longer indoctrinate or believe that other Christian denominations have a less guaranteed way to God. Thank God, those divisive partisan days are over and we Christians, of different stripes, are so much more collegial in our faith.

Ecumenism has opened many doors to understanding.

We know that much enrichment can come from learning about other faith traditions, recognising in them other paths to the transcendent and the common care for others.

Beyond the Christian belief system, we also know that we have much to learn and appreciate in the multicultural, multifaith world that is Australia today.

We also know that there is a great invitation for us to become conversant with Indigenous spirituality which honours country as mother as we immerse ourselves in stories of ancient Dreaming.

This openness to dialogue and understanding is practical and pragmatic in shaping the future egalitarianism and inclusion that will build a thriving sense of national identity and social cohesion.

The Uluru Statement from the Heart offers a way forward as we look to the First Nations people as original custodians who can share the secrets of stewardship and kinship across this wide brown land, we all call home.

As teachers, we are in a front-line position to see exactly what comes from the home via faith knowledge and practice.

We can see the confessed and the cultural Catholic who return to the gospel values as foundational to the growth of character and its implications for the common good.

We also invite enrolments from those who want the values and standards offered by a good education offered in a school which is faith-based.

There is a general acknowledgement that Catholic primary schools are good with discipline and standards and offer a warm sense of inclusion.

They get the building blocks right for later development in this sector or others.

At both primary and secondary levels, Catholic schools offer hospitality and the opportunity for evangelisation, as well as an openness to dialogue reflecting the context of the times.

The expectation is that students who enrol in the Catholic school understand and accept that religious education and their participation in this curriculum and the school's liturgical celebrations is a given, even if they have no religious inclination or adherence elsewhere.

There is an expectation that respectful reciprocity will be the attitude of those other students (and staff) who attend a Catholic school.

Most students today see themselves as spiritual beings who have their own ways of making meaning.

This spirituality is personalised and idiosyncratic and picks and mixes from a variety of sources, traditional, new age, emerging or other. Some have called this the supermarket approach, where the student takes what they want and rejects those ideas or practices that do not fit in with their lifestyle or aspirations.

It would seem that religion is seen as institutional and occasionally oppressive, whilst spirituality is very much a personal confection of ideas, attitudes and practices.

There is a movement away from all sorts of traditional structures as new configurations and blendings take root and the past is viewed with suspicion and/or irrelevance.

With so much activism, some well-intentioned, others less so, at work geo-politically and with mood swings orchestrated by 24/7 social media, we must be mindful of finding that equilibrium that can bring about the common good.

We must be truth-tellers in our own spheres, building up the Kingdom, whilst acknowledging that the institution has been severely damaged, and its former influence dissipated.

We have our challenges ahead and one of those is to ensure that our students have the capacity to think for themselves and to not be swayed by the loudest voice, the virality of social media, the issue de jour or the fear of having a dissenting opinion.

We need to renegotiate a way to open up the Good News for them so that its universal story of love and redemption becomes meaningful for the reality of their lives.

The God question

As we look to the future of the Catholic school, we are reminded that its duty is to constantly raise the God question.

This can be done through respectful dialogue as the teacher speaks to the assorted class members about meaning, belief and values, some of which may well be counter cultural.

This teacher will be in tune with the times and have entry points that will enrich and enliven class discussion and action.

There will be room for robust debate, but no room for indoctrination.

Columnist for National Catholic Reporter and Franciscan priest Daniel P. Horan gave a thoughtful consideration to the world inhabited by the young people we teach. He poses the question:

What if our starting point in thinking about what it means to be a person in communion with God, oneself and the world was not reduced to external expressions of institutional belonging, but instead began with attention to humans' inherent capacity for God?

He refers to Ronald Rolheiser's description of spirituality from The Holy Longing: The Search for a Christian Spirituality: ‘Long before we do anything religious at all, we have to do something about the fire that burns within us.

What we do with that fire, how we channel it, is our spirituality'.

We are in a privileged and responsible position in the RE classroom and at the Catholic school to help with that channelling, with that formative and purposeful finding for the student that they have a spiritual dimension, individually sparked and motivated, sometimes with a religious language and framework, sometimes without it, sometimes borrowing and reshaping it for today's lived reality.

We recognise how vastly the world has changed in the last six decades and that we need new tellings and appropriations of our long-held narratives.

We cannot continue as we were and must adapt, spiritually and strategically, to continue to tell the salvation story of Jesus of Nazareth; to make it known and meaningful for a contemporary audience.

We know that the Christ story is front and centre and that we are contemporary disciples sent forth on a distinctive mission.

Teachers

We need the next generation of committed Catholic teachers who can dialogue gently and respectfully with a changing world, holding onto the deep anchor of faith in sometimes turbulent waters.

We know that these teachers will often be the most influential religious educators for the child, as parents have been outsourcing this aspect of their upbringing for almost as long as we have been teaching!

We may be in the last few years of our RE teaching mission in schools, but we care that our work goes forward; better, brighter, realisable, and influential for a new generation.

So, it is important that we plan for the project of Catholic education, imagining possibilities, charting new territory, being provoked, and challenged by the world around us and finding our place, perhaps as that bold minority to which Greg Sheridan referred.

We must be motivated to do what we can, where we can.

We also know that serious conversations need to be had within the local and national leadership, both clerical and educational, to recognise the gravity of the situation and the urgent need to invite, train, professionalise and support the next generation of RE teachers.

Our next generation of RE teachers can be thought-leaders and influencers, way beyond the ephemerality of the TikTok meme or being Insta-famous.

They can influence, form, and transform the child in front of them by holding onto our foundational convictions and responding with hope and discernment in the light of the secular pluralist world we now live in.

We hope that the joys and mystery of the Catholic imagination and what it stands for is rekindled for the next generation of the faithful.

We learned in our long-ago Catholic education the primacy of loving God and loving neighbour.

That lesson remains absolute and inviolate.

However, it may well be delivered very differently today in response to a world that has changed irrevocably.

Contested space

Our young people today have different inputs and outputs, and we must respond to those authentically.

We need new ways to assist in their best becoming if we are to balance change and tradition in a world whose certainties are less sure than they once were.

Our hope and prayer is that this mediated lesson of an integrated living between faith and culture takes seed and blossoms in the hearts and minds, actions and behaviours of the generations who come after us.

We finish writing this just as Pope Francis celebrates the 60th anniversary of the opening of Vatican II on 11 October 1962.

As we have noted, the world is in a different place and the role of institutional religion in the public square is contested.

There is increasing pressure for groups and corporations to adopt mission and vision statements prioritising secular or citizen values.

For some, this may well create a tension between their private faith stance and their public role. Christopher Middleton SJ notes that there is a widespread perception that Christian viewpoints are being excluded from the public square.

In The Weekend Australian, Frank Brennan SJ argues that we need to ‘advocate without accusation, disagree without disrespect and see differences as places of encounter, rather than exclusion'.

Catholic identity

So, as we forge ahead, it may well be that secularisation has impacted to such an extent that to publicly avow faith is seen as oppositional to a more secular worldview.

This may yet have implications for Catholic schools, their selection of employees in the light of equality and/or discrimination and how to energise the faith creatively and committedly for the betterment of all in a time when faith is disparaged or seen as irrelevant and anachronistic.

These elements go to the heart of Catholic identity.

We need to find places of reconciliation when irreconcilable differences threaten to divide us.

We need to find those mutual meeting places as we mould and form the next generation of Catholics and those young people of goodwill, of no faith or other faith traditions, who companion us in different ways.

We have challenging times ahead in our Catholic education sector.

However, we live in hope that a new generation of teachers, and most especially the Religious Education teacher, will be able to exercise their own authentic witness, specialist, moderator experience for the flourishing of all in the contemporary Catholic classroom.

We have great faith in this educational enterprise.

It is vital to the mission of the Church and to the holistic, humanising and spiritual growth of all the young people we are privileged to teach in this Great South Land of the Holy Spirit.

• Dr Bernadette Mercieca is currently teaching at Our Lady of Mercy College, Heidelberg. She has previously worked as a sessional at ACU and is a research assistant at Victoria University.
• Ann Rennie teaches at Genazzano FCJ College, Kew. She has a regular column in Australian Catholics and contributes to a variety of media outlets.
• First published in Eureka Street. Republished with permission

The contrast between ageing congregations and young students is stark. Equally striking is the contrast between relatively youthful school staff and ageing church leaders.

Twelve months ago, with the Plenary Council final assembly still fresh in my mind, I reflected in Eureka Street that if church renewal is to take place, then Catholic schools must embrace and actively support church reform.

My own recent engagement with Victorian Catholic school principals convinced me then that their status, credentials, and ties to young people gave them a pre-eminent place in any such reform.

Twelve months later, in July 2023, as the Synod on Synodality first assembly came closer, another wider speaking engagement with almost 2,000 staff of a dozen Victorian Catholic secondary schools over three weeks, confirmed my belief.

These staff, including but not restricted to leaders and team members in Catholic identity and religious education, have crucial responsibilities and unparalleled opportunities in their daily contacts with teenagers, whether Catholic or from many other backgrounds.

My presentations covered topics like Pope Francis and the Universal Church and the Church in Australia.

If the outcomes of Pope Francis' 2023-2024 Synod on Synodality, based on the themes of its Working Document, are to penetrate more than skin deep into the Catholic community, schools must be at the forefront.

If not, the Synod will be a wasted effort and a missed opportunity. It will be wasted because it will not catch the attention, much less the enthusiasm, of the next generation.

The task is challenging. Students in Catholic schools represent the face of the present and the future. They are extraordinarily diverse in terms of ethnic and faith backgrounds.

The vast majority, reflecting official surveys of the wider Catholic community, are 'unchurched' in the sense of not being regular churchgoers outside of school.

Teachers are confronted, but not really surprised, by the dismal official figures (6 percent) of church attendance for their former students, Catholics aged 20-34.

They themselves represent the equally dismal official figures for church attendance of those aged 35-60. That applies to the Catholic teachers.

The anecdotal evidence offered to me by the school communities and by various priests was that 10 per cent church attendance may be generous.

The universal Church's 'experiment with synodality'

Yet the Catholic identity of the schools, often expressed though different charisms, remains profound, even if the challenges posed by student and staff diversity are enormous. These staff development days were couched in beautiful liturgies and inspiring messages from school leaders.

Notably our schools are more open and inclusive than our parish and diocesan churches are. They are a sign of where the church should be on matters like inclusion and there is no going back.

These schools occupy a world in which value statements such as 'all faiths, genders, sexualities and cultures are respected, accepted and welcome' are predominant.

Outdated church teaching about sexuality and gender is implicitly and explicitly rejected. Most students and staff would have it no other way.

The challenges that I threw out were often tossed back at me through tough but respectful table-talk and public questioning.

Occasionally my openly pro-renewal stance was thought disrespectful to church tradition and teaching.

For some panellists and respondents my message of dramatic church decline in Australia was too dark and hopeless; for others my own hope in what I called the universal church's 'experiment with synodality' was too optimistic because they thought change was impossible.

They could see little sign of reform happening around them; and made clear that even when there were signs of progress it was happening much too slowly.

Frequently I was asked when the church would accept equal rights for women. The general tone of voice was that the church should just get on with it because the status quo was indefensible.

Often, I was specifically asked when the church would allow women priests.

My response that the best we could hope for in the short to intermediate term was the introduction of the female diaconate was hardly satisfactory.

When I presented as a breakthrough by Pope Francis the fact that there would be 54 women among the 363 voting members of the Synod in Rome in October my audiences still wanted much quicker progress on gender equality.

Catholic secondary schools are a parallel universe as far as the diocesan and parish churches are concerned.

Their staff take no pleasure in the decline of the latter and recognise the implications for their schools; but, even in the middle of World Youth Day (which some current students were attending as had some staff on previous occasions) they could see no obvious ways of halting the decline.

Some staff could see a future in which the school rather than the parish was the heart of the church. But one teacher told me to my face that my suggestion that schools were the future of the church was not just unlikely but 'vacuous'.

Most staff, teaching and non-teaching, welcomed an opportunity to enhance their own learning by discussing present developments and future aspirations for the church.

They are at the coalface where church and society meet, and they taught me a great deal about the real world of schools and church.

• John Warhurst is an Emeritus Professor of Political Science at the Australian National University and former member of the Plenary Council. His visits to Catholic secondary schools were hosted by the Principals Association of Victorian Catholic Secondary Schools.
• First published in La Croix. Republished with permission.

Called RE Search, the podcast explores key areas in the primary and secondary curriculum in ways that are readily accessible to all students - whatever their faith background.

Sydney's Archdiocese in partnership with Sydney Catholic Schools is behind the new approach.

The weekly 20-minute podcast's presenter is Andrew Martin, a senior RE teacher with over 20 years' experience.

Interviews with special guests explore RE curriculum topics. These include everything from saints' personal stories to interfaith dialogue.

"We're addressing the same questions that students raise in religious education classrooms," Martin says.

Students want to know who wrote the Gospels, Martin says. They ask "How did they know Jesus? Were they eyewitnesses and if they weren't, how can we trust what they're saying?

"They're hard questions and it's not every day that the students benefit from being able to ask those questions of a bishop".

Bishop Daniel Meagher thinks the new delivery method will complement the RE syllabus.

"Teaching isn't a matter of just having an excellent syllabus. It's also about the delivery which needs to be interesting and engaging."

Many RE teachers have great demands placed upon their time, Meagher says. He hopes the podcast helps ease these.

"It will help teachers who are, for example, teaching geography, economics, history and English and also religion and it gives them an extra complement in their suite of classroom tools.

"We need to think creatively and be responsive to the way our students are learning in contemporary society," he says.

This will "more effectively respond to their hungering for knowledge and hungering for God."

The podcast adapts the RE curriculum "to deliver it in a way young people are used to receiving it, so the Gospel can be ever fresh in our times", Meagher says.

Martin hopes to explore wide-ranging topics in upcoming episodes.

"I'm very interested in exploring the whole nature of Church in the modern world and what Church means to young people and how, through the Church, they can engage in the world and do good works," he says.

"Young people have a lot of questions about how to serve marginalised and vulnerable people well, ethically and morally, in keeping with the wonderful teachings that we have in Catholicism, but they've got lots of questions about those teachings and what that looks like in practice. So I'd very much like to explore that further in the near future."

Source

• Catholic Weekly

The latest comes from David Palmieri of Outreach, a US LGBTQ Catholic resource.

"Aroha and Diversity in Catholic Schools, manifests the love of Jesus Christ in its courage to seek "respect, compassion, and sensitivity" for LGBTQ children in Catholic schools and colleges" he says.

For this unique effort among Catholic leaders, "Aroha" deserves global recognition and accolades, he says.

The National Centre for Religious Studies (NCRS), a branch of the official teaching arm of the NZ Catholic bishops' Te Kupenga-Catholic Leadership Institute, talked to Palmieri about their role in helping draft the new document.

The NCRS is responsible for Religious Education curricula and resources at primary and secondary school levels, and provides an early childhood curriculum.

The NCRS "is led by Colin MacLeod, and is blessed by the wisdom and experience of full-time or part-time curriculum and resource developers: Laurel Lanner, Sam Steele, Kate McHeyzer, Stephen Woodnutt (seconded for 2022) and Lyn Smith".

"The bishops genuinely care for the young people in their schools and want to support them," the NCRS told Palmieri.

"Throughout the process, the New Zealand bishops have been compassionately aware of the need to support vulnerable young people."

In September 2020, the New Zealand Ministry of Education released new guidelines for education on relationships and sexuality.

They included gender considerations for all grade levels.

The bishops' new document acknowledges that in the culture, there are some "ideological stances which run counter to Catholic teaching on human sexuality."

As an example, the NCRS says 2018 census data shows 48.2 percent of the New Zealand population is religiously unaffiliated.

Additionally, the Catholic Church is navigating cultural divergences among its members from official doctrines. These include prostitution, same-sex marriage, abortion and euthanasia.

The NCRS says the bishops are also concerned about the over-sexualisation of society, which targets young people and influences their principles and choices.

The bishops' process for drafting the document "highlights the reality that being followers of Jesus today is just as complex as it was in Jesus' time, and the Church needs to be just as creative, compassionate and strong in its message of love and faith as modelled by Jesus."

According to the NCRS, the document's preparation was an exercise in synodality and co-responsibility.

The bishops listened to school principals, guidance counsellors, directors of religious studies and diocesan religious education advisors. Principals involved in the drafting process were very clear that this document was needed urgently in schools.

They also "spoke to some groups of high school seniors and school leavers to see what they had to say about positive and negative experiences in New Zealand Catholic schools, and what advice they had to offer."

Another positive aspect is the bishops' choice to use "LGBTQ language".

"We used LGBTQIA+ because we wanted to show inclusivity. This is also the terminology used in the Ministry of Education documentation on relationship and sexuality education, and it is the language used by young people in general," NCRS says.

"Aroha" takes a far different approach from the US with LGBTQI+ issues. It advises "each situation must be judged on its merits.

The document is unique in at least three ways, NCRS told Outreach.

As it's a pastoral guide, it shows a preferential option for the principles of Catholic social teaching.

It features a pastoral approach to catechesis on human sexuality.

The NZCBC prioritise the affirming and buffering of young people.

Source

• NCRS
• Outreach

Last week, educator Alwyn Poole discussed his research with Peter Williams on Taxpayer Talk, a podcast for the New Zealand Taxpayers Union.

Poole is a well-known figure in the New Zealand education system.

New Zealand's most successful schools academically are private and Catholic schools, he told Williams.

"I have spent the last month acquiring and processing significant data on the leavers of every high school in New Zealand.

"This is far more important than the cohort data (by year level) that comes out in February."

Poole told Williams he found Catholic schools have made tremendous strides, are far more personable than they used to be and have kept their standards extremely high.

"They set really high goals and standards for the kids and the children come up to them.

Catholic school pupils face "very high expectations with attendance and attention," he said.

Qualifying his comment, Poole also said the Catholic schools were not perfect and not all were absolutely amazing. At the same time, he highlighted McAuley High School, a decile one school.

McAuley High School had 87.1 of their students achieving NCEA Level Three and nearly 66 percent of its students getting university entrance.

Poole says this compares favourably with some decile ten schools.

"Just because someone comes from a decile one background or goes to a decile one school, that's not by any means 100 percent correlated with education failure, not even close," he told Williams.

Poole also told Williams that some of the Catholic school success is a result of their being part of a counter culture, the challenge they put on each other and a culture of belonging.

They "talk about the culture of belonging and that when they enrol as students, they actually consider that they enrol a family," Poole explained.

The following shows Poole's comparison for schools in each decile by University Entrance achievement (schools with 75 or more students) and retention. All measure are for leavers across year levels.

• Top: Decile 10: Diocesan School for Girls - UE at 96.6% for leavers. Leaving before 17yo - 2.7%.
• Top Decile 9: Woodford House - UE at 96.2% for leavers. Leaving before 17yo - 3.8%.
• Top Decile 8. St Peter's College (Epsom) - UE at 89.8% for leavers. Leaving before 17yo - 3.3%.
• Top Decile 7: Marist College (Auckland) - UE at 89.4% for leavers. Leaving before 17yo - 0.9%.
• Top Decile 6: St Catherine's (Kilbirnie) - UE at 73.7% for leavers. Leaving before 17yo - 0.0%.
• Top Decile 5: Manukura (Palmerston North) - UE at 76.5% for leavers. Leaving before 17yo - 17.3%.
• Top Decile 4: Selwyn College (Auckland) - UE at 70.5% for leavers. Leaving before 17yo - 9.6%.
• Top Decile 3: Zayed College for Girls (very closely followed by Auckland Girls Grammar) -UE at 70% for leavers. Leaving before 17yo - 0.0%.
• Top Decile 2: St Paul's College (Ponsonby) - UE at 84.1% for leavers. Leaving before 17yo - 4.5%.
• Top Decile 1: McAuley High School (Otahuhu) - UE at 65.8% for leavers. Leaving before 17yo - 3.9%.

Source

• Kiwiblog
• Kiwiblog
• Taxpayer Talk
• Innovative Education Consultants

​

The instruction comes in a new document about Catholic schools from the Vatican Congregation for Catholic Education.

"The Identity of the Catholic School for a Culture of Dialogue" focuses on the schools' obligations to students and the wider community.

Catholic schools are obliged to protect and promote the Catholic identity. They are also expected to reach out to a broader community of students and teachers. This requires a commitment to dialogue, the document says.

Cardinal Giuseppe Versaldi, the prefect for the Congregation for Catholic Education, says the congregation was asked to write the document.

He says the request followed conflicts and appeals resulting from different interpretations of the traditional concept of Catholic identity by educational institutions.

Many of these concerned rapid social change including globalisation and growing interreligious and intercultural dialogue.

The document offers an in-depth, up-to-date reflection and guidelines on the value of the Catholic identity of educational institutions in the Church, Versaldi says. It provides criteria responding to today's challenges in continuity with the criteria that always apply.

Recruitment and school culture

Job applicants must be informed of the school's Catholic identity, its implications and their responsibility to promote that identity.

Schools should "formulate clear criteria for discernment" when considering candidates for positions in Catholic schools.

Schools are responsible for recruits who don't comply with its Catholic and church community requirements.

"A narrow Catholic school model" is not acceptable - it conflicts with the model of a ‘church which goes forth' in dialogue with everyone.

Everyone involved in conflicts over "disciplinary and/or doctrinal" matters must be told how "these situations can bring discredit to the Catholic institution and scandal in the community."

Catholic identity and mission

Catholic education is an essential part of the church's identity and mission. It is not strictly catechetical. Nor is it a "mere philanthropic work aimed at responding to a social need."

Catholic schools are open. They do not limit enrolment or employment to Catholics alone. Part of their mission is to promote "the complete perfection of the human person, the good of earthly society and the building of a world that is more human." (Second Vatican Council.)

To be open, Catholic schools must "practise the ‘grammar of dialogue". This is a profound way of relating to others. "Dialogue combines attention to one's own identity with the understanding of others and respect for diversity."

Everyone — administrators, teachers, parents and students — has "the obligation to recognise, respect and bear witness to the Catholic identity of the school," the Vatican's new Catholic schools' document says.

This identity should be clearly stated in each school's mission statement and presented to prospective employees and parents of prospective students.

"In the formation of the younger generation, teachers must be outstanding in correct doctrine and integrity of life," it says.

The entire school community is responsible for the school's Catholic identity. It cannot be "attributed only to certain spheres or to certain persons" like liturgical, spiritual or social occasions, or the school chaplain, religion teachers or principal.

Source

• CN
• Crux
• Image: The Journal

This can bring a certain clarity and resolve as more people grasp what is happening.

The stories of woke toxicity coming out of elite secular prep schools follow similar patterns: a top-down implementation of extreme "antiracism" and gender ideology in the curriculum, progressive parents speaking out in anonymity due to fear of reprisal, and students feeling pressured to affirm and parrot the new creed.

It's not just happening at secular schools.

In the fall of 2020, at Loyola Academy, a tony Catholic prep school outside of Chicago, parents began whispering to one another about the loud and swiftly-escalating political ideology pressing into all corners of their kids' education.

The high-paid diversity consultants brought in for the sake of training faculty and students were an early warning sign.

Teachers including their gender pronouns in Zoom meetings was another.

Students were racially segregated for school assignments on privilege.

A working-class student was bewildered to learn that because of his skin colour he is an oppressor to his peers, some of whom live in multi-million-dollar homes.

In a video recording of one of the diversity training sessions, a student asks a consultant what he thinks of the phrase "ACAB" (All Cops Are Bastards).

After seeming to not know what the acronym stood for (despite it being commonly written on signs and chanted at Black Lives Matter rallies) he went on to authoritatively misinterpret the plain meaning of the words.

"When you hear something like ‘ACAB,' it's a reflection of anger," he instructed.

"A lot of times I think the mistake that people make, people take it personally. But we're actually asking structural questions."

I wonder — if students were chanting, "All Diversity Consultants Are Idiots" would that be taken personally or structurally by the diversity consultant?

This exchange between student and consultant introduces to the students' minds one key woke tactic and a central woke dogma.

The tactic is to make people doubt their ability to interpret reality and plain language without a woke expert shepherding them to the approved interpretation.

The dogma is that there is no such thing as a universal principle.

What all reasonable people know to be grotesque — collectivized personal vilification — is deemed to be acceptable when deployed by some people, but not by others.

Most kids have an innate sense of fairness and intuit that a principle must be applied universally if it is to be a principle at all.

Undoing that moral understanding is done by design, and is an essential step in re-educating them into the ideology.

Marxism Syndrome By Proxy

Upon watching this school diversity video, one mother described it as "chilling," especially seeing the effects of these ideas as they took hold of the students and reverberated into the larger school community.

Once unified, many families report the school now is fractured and marked by suspicion.

"People did not feel the school was ripped apart by racism, but now they do. It is heartbreaking," the mother relayed.

"There are a handful of people who are driving this and not allowing moderating voices. This doesn't represent the community or many of the teachers, or the coaches. This is not a racist institution. Our families have always stepped in and stepped up to make sure everyone feels included and is looked after."

In the movie The Sixth Sense, Haley Joel Osment plays a child who can see dead people. A young girl who had been chronically sick during her short life reaches out to Osment's character from beyond the grave to give him a videotape, instructing him to show it to her father.

At the girl's wake, Osment's character presents the video to the dad, who is shocked to find that it contains footage of his wife intentionally spiking her daughter's meals with some sort of poison that causes and maintains the sickness that eventually kills her.

Through this scene, many people were introduced to Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy, a mental disorder whereby a caretaker invents, exaggerates and often causes an illness in a child.

People with MSBP seem attentive and motivated by care and compassion. They can recite a litany of alleged poor symptoms, and demand tests and procedures to "cure" the child. All the while they skirt data and evidence that run afoul of the illness narrative.

In reality, though the child thinks she is sick, it is the caretaker, not the child, who really is sick (though the child might truly become sick as a direct result of the actions of the "compassionate" caretaker).

Usually, the only way this stops is if people who sense that something is amiss have the care and the courage to challenge the caretaker's narrative.

Many parents at Catholic schools, from high schools to even some grammar schools, have been rightly sensing that there is something very unjust in this justice movement.

Injustice can and should be fought, but why, they wonder, do the schools need to go beyond the canon of Catholic social teaching to address this?

The Church has a sophisticated, thorough and historically radical body of teaching — theological and philosophical — upholding the universal dignity of all persons and condemning racism as an intrinsic evil.

What do woke consultants and critical theory add that the Church has not covered?

This question remains unanswered because it cannot be answered in an honest way.

As I write in my book, Awake, Not Woke (TAN Books), the truth is that critical theory does not add to the Church's teaching. It assaults it in three fundamental ways. Continue reading

State-Integrated schools were left out when the government announced at the end of last year it was giving state schools $400 million to spend on their buildings as part of a wider package of infrastructure spending.

The Association of Proprietors of Integrated Schools says the government should have included them in the handout because State-Integrated schools are entitled to the money as much as any other state school.

The State-Integrated schools are funded on the same basis as state schools but are entitled to charge attendance dues which can be used to cover the cost of loans used in building construction e.g. classrooms, maintenance and insurance which are not provided by the state.

Association spokesperson Paul Ferris says it had been negotiating with the government for a share of the money for most of the year.

"This is not a matter of discretion, this is a legal entitlement that we have under the agreements we have with the government on integration," he says.

"In the Catholic space, we give the government the use of $2.6 billion dollars worth of property to use rent-free every year and the government agree to maintain it to a similar standard to a similar state school and if they spend it on a state school, they should be spending it on a state-integrated school."

In September the government told him it could not afford to extend the payment to state-integrated schools.

This week the Association filed papers in the High Court in Wellington seeking a judicial review of the government's decision.

Ferris says state-integrated schools were part of the state network and the government was obliged to maintain the schools' property to the same standard as other state schools.

The building payments state schools will be getting are worth between $50,000 and $400,000 per school.

Ferris says extending the money to state-integrated schools would cost about $50 million.

Education Minister Chris Hipkins (pictured) won't comment on matters before the court or the government's legal strategy.

"State-integrated school representatives, however, have contacted the government and I look forward to discussing this topic, and others, with them early in the New Year. I remain hopeful we can find a satisfactory solution," he says.

"I remain supportive, in principle, of finding a solution in this area, however, our challenge is being able to fund a solution given the impact of Covid-19 on our country.

"The government has decided to set aside the remainder of the Covid Response and Recovery Fund in the event, for example, that New Zealand experiences a further wave of Covid-19. Therefore, any initiative to accelerate upgrades of the state-integrated school portfolio will now need to be considered as part of decision-making for Budget 2021."

Source

• RNZ
• Image: Newstalk ZB

The online-only St. Isidore of Seville Virtual School - named after the patron saint of the internet - aims to be fully operational on 8 September.

It will teach the regular curriculum to students in kindergarten through to grade (year) eight, and class sizes will be capped at 23 people.

Students will attend an online Mass every week and like their peers will have daily prayer and preparation for the reception of sacraments.

"We hope this new virtual school provides parents concerned about their children returning to the classroom an option they are confident will meet the high standard of excellence they have come to expect throughout our schools," Bishop Michael F. Burbidge of Arlington says.

Burbidge praised the "great creativity and flexibility" among the Catholic school community in the diocese "that has made this new endeavor a reality."

Dr. Joseph Vorbach, the Superintendent for Catholic Schools in the Diocese of Arlignton, says all of the diocese's schools will have in-person instruction this coming school year, although some will do a hybrid model of in-person and e-learning.

While St. Isidore of Seville Virtual School is set to go for the coming school year, Vorbach says he is not sure if the school will continue on for years to come.

"We want to evaluate the service - the niche, if you will- that this school provides."

If things go smoothly, and it makes financial sense to continue the school in the future, "we can really seriously look at it as a component of a thorough, flourishing Catholic education going forward in the future," he says.

Source

• Catholic News Agency
• Image: Catholic News Agency

The Court found in favor of two Catholic schools in California, ruling that a "ministerial exception" to government interference applies to teachers in religious schools.

The justices ruled in a 7-2 decision that teachers at Catholic grade schools qualified for the "ministers exception" established by the court in the 2012 Hosana Tabor case.

"The religious education and formation of students is the very reason for the existence of most private religious schools, and therefore the selection and supervision of the teachers upon whom the schools rely to do this work lie at the core of their mission," wrote Justice Samuel Alito for the majority.

"Judicial review of the way in which religious schools discharge those responsibilities would undermine the independence of religious institutions in a way that the First Amendment does not tolerate."

The argument behind the court case arose when two California Catholic schools did not renew the contracts of two teachers in 2014 and 2015.

In separate cases combined into one by the Supreme Court, the teachers alleged their dismissals were based on disability and age, not poor performance.

Lawyers for the schools argued teachers in Catholic schools were the "primary agents" by which the faith was taught to students.

The argument - and questions from the bench - focused on how broadly the ministerial exception could be applied to the employees of religious schools.

The schools claimed they were exempt from employment discrimination laws because the government cannot interfere in churches' and religious institutions' employment decisions regarding hiring and firing ministers.

The teachers' suits were both dismissed by federal courts, and then reinstated by the US 9th Circuit Court of Appeal.

"There is abundant record evidence that [both teachers] performed vital religious duties," the Supreme Court ruled.

"Educating and forming students in the Catholic faith lay at the core of the mission of the schools where they taught, and their employment agreements and faculty handbooks specified in no uncertain terms that they were expected to help the schools carry out this mission and that their work would be evaluated to ensure that they were fulfilling that responsibility."

The decision about the religious schools' right to hire and fire their staff comes just weeks after the Court's ruling that employers cannot fire employees because of their sexual orientation or "gender identity." At that time, Justice Neil Gorsuch acknowledged that religious freedom cases related to the decision would probably come before the Court in the future.

Source

• Catholic News Agency
• Image: eSchool News

To date, more than 100 US elementary and high schools have announced they are closing down.

The Catholic schools' closures are affecting parish schools and those run by religious orders.

"It's not a pretty picture right now," said Sr Dale McDonald, public policy director of the National Catholic Educational Association.

She is predicting the number of closures could double by the beginning of the next US school year, which starts in in September.

"Schools are not just buildings. They represent communities that provide important faith formation for our children," said Bishop David Zubik of Pittsbrugh, when he announced two schools in his diocese were closing.

"I pray that we will be able to come together in the midst of these changes to be grateful for what we have, and to continue to be good stewards of what we are able to utilize to provide Catholic education to our communities.

"Sadly, with funding sources critically reduced due to the impact of the global pandemic, we do not have the ability to financially sustain every one of our school buildings."

Some of the schools closing for good are are among the country's oldest Catholic establishments. They include Baltimore's Institute of Notre Dame, which was started in 1847. Another school that won't be reopening in September is the Immaculate Conception Cathedral School in Memphis, Tennessee, which has served that city for 98 years.

In northern New Jersey, 10 Catholic schools are closing, including one that only opened in the inner city in 2007 and has placed every graduate in college.

"This is a crucial time for the sustainability and success of our Catholic schools," Cardinal Joseph W Tobin says.

"However, the Archdiocese [of Newark] could not ignore the dual threats of declining enrolment and rapidly increased subsidies that were necessary to sustain every school."

Catholic schools have been feeling financial pressure amidst rising costs and shifting demographics for some time.

Now, with millions unemployed and great uncertainty about the future, parents are reluctant to pay tuition which averages US$5,000 for an elementary education and US$11,000 for a Catholic high school.

Furthermore, many Catholic inner-city schools have not only provided a ticket out of poverty for poor children (many of whom are non-Catholic) but they create enormous social capital in the neighbourhoods they serve.

Source

• The Tablet
• Image: Pinterest

That has actually been a good thing in an era of "distance learning."

It was obvious from the start of the coronavirus pandemic that the students could not be expected to attend a battery of Zoom classes or watch online lectures for hours.

Some families probably have more students than internet devices in their homes, so our school kept things simple.

• Materials have been provided, but deadlines have been few and lenient.
• Teachers have been available but not nagging.
• Parents have been trusted to make decisions about what their children most need.

The new routine is stressful for me, but my kids seem fine.

They miss their friends, but they are not despondent or wracked with anxiety.

I am especially grateful at this time to have five sons who can keep one another company as they fish, build models and play backyard baseball.

Things could be so much worse and for many, they are.

Having said that, I will be thrilled when the school reopens.

It's not that the boys' education is running aground.

We are keeping up, more or less, with the curricula. What we miss are the people.

There is an energy, optimism and sense of purpose to our school community that seems to keep life moving forward.

In the mid-afternoon, I glance at the clock and feel sad that it is not necessary to drive over and pick up the boys.

The school is our village, and we are incomplete without it.

Distance learning is kind of a drag for me, especially because it forces me to push important tasks to evenings and weekends, when I would like to be enjoying my kids.

Our time together goes to grammar and spelling instead of hikes and board games. That's a bad trade, but at least I can teach them to diagram sentences.

I cannot single-handedly create a Christian community where my sons receive personal attention from many different adults, each with their own strengths and insights.

I cannot supply dozens of playmates from a range of different backgrounds.

I can tell them that they are members of the body of Christ, but I can't help them to experience this in the way that they do in Catholic school. Continue reading

After Morrison's discussions with both sectors on Wednesday, the Association of Independent Schools New South Wales has written to its members backing his position to keep schools open and noting the prime minister had warned "there were certain expectations attached to the recurrent funding provided by the Australian Government to Catholic and independent schools".

It comes as the shadow education minister, Tanya Plibersek, has written to her counterpart, Dan Tehan, suggesting that while the opposition has been "responsible and constructive" in its comments on school closures it wants assurances the government is "properly preparing for … when they do occur" including ensuring essential services workers can continue to go to work. Read more

The Suzanne Aubert Catholic School is expected to open at the beginning of Term 1, 2021.

The news was confirmed by the Ministry of Education last Thursday.

The school, owned by the Catholic Diocese of Hamilton, is expected to start with a maximum roll of 100.

Depending on demand, it is expected to eventually expand to a maximum roll of 250 students.

Papamoa is one of the fastest-growing areas in New Zealand. Between 2006 and 2013 the population increased by 26.5 per cent.

Graeme Roil, the Catholic Integrated Schools Office property and finance manager, said the Government go-ahead was "a significant milestone".

Roil first began scouting locations for the school 10 years ago, eventually buying the land at Papamoa five years ago.

He said the church had been working on plans for the school while waiting for the Government's agreement.

It would now work with builders and the project management team to establish the different stages of construction.

Until these plans were finalised, Roil could not say how much the school would cost other than "it will be a multi-million dollar project".

Last December the New Zealand Herald reported that the Papamoa community was welcoming the idea of having another school.

Papamoa ward councillor Steve Morris said there was a "significant need" for another primary school in the area.

Morris said there was no doubt the new school would have community support, particularly given the amount of travel involved each week by students and parents.

Papamoa Primary School principal Phil Friar said: "We have seen enormous property development in Papamoa and I see having another school as a positive to help manage the extraordinary roll growth in this area,"

Golden Sands School principal Melanie Taylor said a new school would give parents another option which was "a good thing".

Aquinas College principal Matt Dillon said the college's community welcomed the move.

Source

• nzherald.co.nz
• nzherald.co.nz
• tauranga.govt.nz
• Image: nzherald.co.nz