Editorial

The March 2023 edition constituted a Special Issue on Catholic Education in Europe with Professor Francois Moog, Rector of the l’Institut Catholique de Toulouse, as guest editor. Moog stated that ‘it was in Europe that the first schools and universities were born … .and it is through the history of this practice that Catholic education was born, the same one that was diversified by the investment of many religious orders and that was propagated in the world by the missionaries. This educational project gave birth to modern schools and the Church can be proud of it’.

In this edition, I am once again privileged to report that we are publishing articles from researchers across five continents, Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe and North America. The Editorial Board, therefore, continues to maintain the global reach of the journal.

From Australia, Professor Jim Gleason, currently Adjunct Professor to the Mater Dei Centre for Catholic Education within Dublin City University and formerly Professor of Identity and Curriculum in Catholic Education at Australian Catholic University (ACU), investigates the identity of Catholic schools as seen by teachers in Catholic schools in Queensland, Australia. This article reports on the opinions of teachers in Queensland Catholic schools regarding the identity, purposes and characteristics of Catholic schools. In collaboration with two colleagues from Australian Catholic University, Gleeson draws on survey data from 2287 teachers in Catholic schools as well as semi-structured interviews with twenty teachers, the findings of which are especially significant for all Catholic educators internationally. The fact that more than half the survey respondents gave the ‘environment of Catholic schools’ as their main reason for working in Catholic schools as opposed to ‘commitment to the Catholic faith’ is discussed alongside the finding that ‘caring community’ was by far the most popular characteristic of Catholic schools. In the context of the apparent concentration on generic characteristics, Rymarz’s suggestion that that the move towards generic values ‘may not result in long term stability [since] these values could be well described as human or even Aristotelian values and are, therefore, common to a range of schools’ is especially germane. Gleeson’s concluding remark that ‘one possible response involves the promotion of confessional identity involving high levels of religious practice and Catholic formation and stronger ties with the local parish and clergy’ is certainly aspirational.

Gleeson’s refers to the challenges of a ‘post-secular age’ in the context of maintaining a distinctive Catholic identity. More specifically in the context of Religious Education (RE), Professor Richard Pring, in an article entitled Faith, reason and religious education: an essay for teachers of religions in a sceptical age, focuses on the perceived opposition between the systematic development of religious faith, on the one hand, and, on the other, the central educational aim of developing the rational basis of knowledge, especially within a more secular culture. Pring cites the term ‘secular’ and cognates eighteen times in an engaging discussion of its impact on RE in a climate dominated by the criticism of RE especially within the humanist lobby. Pring brings his encyclopaedic knowledge of philosophy to bear in a series of cogent arguments around the perennial validity of a religious perspective in the formation of young people. Pring concludes by articulating a series of challenges for contemporary teachers of RE, including ‘the doubts and indifferences which arise from life lived within a secular society’ where the ‘horizons of significance’ so easily militate against a religious conception of human flourishing ‘I was particularly drawn to Pring’s notion of a “living faith”, citing the examples of “such practices as making the sign of the cross or genuflecting before the Blessed Sacrament”, practices which embody a living faith’. A future article focusing on the impact on students of modelling a lived commitment to the Catholic faith on the part of teachers of RE would be welcomed.

The notion of ‘witness’ features prominently in the third article from a Canadian perspective entitled The influence of Religious Teaching Orders on Catholic schools in Canada outside of Quebec. Robert Dixon, a former adjunct professor at Niagara University, Lewiston, New York, and St. Augustine’s, University of Toronto, examines the contribution of Religious Orders to the Catholic formation and education of their students by their witness and curriculum. The article is marked by a balance between these central aspects of the life of the school, reflecting Grace’s (2002) insistence that a Catholic school must maintain a balance between school effectiveness and Catholic distinctiveness. It also reflects the seminal significance of the person of the teacher, canonised in documents published by the Congregation for Catholic Education and in the scholarship of Parker J. Palmer (1998) among others. While the article represents a historical retrieval of the contribution of teaching religious orders, there are many contemporary resonances, for example the importance of the relationship between Church, school and parent.

Remaining with the theme of the contribution of Religious Orders to the Catholic Church’s education mission, in Revisiting the aims of Catholic missionary education in Bangladesh: the case of Holy Cross Congregation, Md Shaikh Farid discusses the contribution to Catholic Education in Bangladesh of the Holy Cross Fathers, a Religious Order engaged in the Church’s education mission in that country for 170 years. It is especially pleasing to publish this first article from Bangladesh. The author accesses local historical sources, including archives, which are integrated with international sources, illuminated by research interviews conducted with 18 participants. The references witness to a wide range of scholarly and ecclesial literature, representing an erudite foundation for the article. Farid navigates effectively the changing circumstances following the independence of Bangladesh in 1971, highlighting the changes in demographic in relation to teachers and students. While the term holistic does not feature in the article, it is alluded to in the assertion that since their arrival in Bangladesh, education has been a vital component of evangelisation and one of the main aims of the Holy Cross missionaries in Bangladesh.

Continuing with the theme of the impact of Religious Orders on the Catholic Church’s education but moving from schools to institutes of Higher Education, Jose Eos Trinidad explores the creative tensions within Jesuit institutions as a result of the pressures of marketisation, particularly in relation to the increasing emphasis on University rankings. In Dialogue, discernment, and creative tensions in Jesuit higher education Trinidad acknowledges from the outset that tensions between ‘the University and Catholic’ are not restricted to Catholic University but constitute a perennial reality for many if not all Catholic education institutions internationally. Reflecting the reference to maintaining a holistic approach referenced earlier in this editorial, Trinidad applies this to students, faculty and the wider institution, recognising the imperative to main a distinctive Jesuit identity. This applies specially to promoting an awareness of social justice issues among students and faculty alongside a balance between teaching and research. Trinidad concludes by suggesting that the Jesuit experience provides important lessons on how dialogue and discernment can lead to tensions being creatively addressed, particularly in relation to the balancing of academic rigour and character formation, a primary concern for every Catholic education institution.

Turning to Catholic education in Africa, the founding Editor, Professor Gerald Grace, speaks in an editorial preface of this Journal’s attempt to provide more research reports on Catholic education in Africa. Three Religious sisters from Kenya, speak of the significance of their religious charisms and their perennial impact. The commitment of all schools to their distinctive mission is signposted, alongside the adoption of a holistic approach to education by all three religious orders, recognising that the imperative to maintain a balance between academic standards and spiritual formation. Several challenges were articulated, several of which resonating with challenges being experienced by Catholic schools across the globe. I found it especially interesting that one of the Orders is engaged actively in the transference from religious to lay leadership with the concomitant challenges relating to the ‘transmission of the charism’, challenges known widely in religious trustee schools across Europe.

Moving more specially to issues around the curriculum in a Catholic University, in Can there be a Catholic approach to the teaching of physics to students in Catholic universities? Some ideas for teachers and students to consider, Elisabetta Canetta, a Senior Lecturer at St Mary’s University, Twickenham, argues that physics is a study that God has put in the hands of humanity to be used in conjunction with philosophy and theology. Canetta engages a critical retrieval of literature relating to the origins of modern Physics, exploring the work of Joannes Kepler and Isaac Newton among others. This retrieval represents a secure foundation for her discussion of ideas about a scientific-philosophical-theological approach to teaching physics at the undergraduate level within a Catholic institution. Canetta concludes by suggesting that ‘curiosity is that fire within us which is not quenched by the mere knowledge of the world as we observe it and experience it. That fire is sacred and is the beacon which guides our steps on the long, perilous and uncertain journey which leads to God (see Exodus 13:21)’.

The final article in this edition of International Studies in Catholic Education is in fact tripartite. In the first place Professor Grace, the Founding Editor, outlines his rationale for the inclusion in the journal of an article by Professor Mary McAleese entitled The time is now for change in the Catholic Church. Grace makes it clear to the readers of this journal that this is not the first time that ISCE has engaged with the important issue of ‘Why Women Matter’ in the Catholic religious and educational culture. In March 2015 (Vol. 7, No. 1) we published two articles on the ‘Ordination of Women in the Catholic Church: arguments for teachers and students in Catholic schools to consider’. A detailed case against this proposal was written by Sister Professor Catherine Droste, OP of the Theology Department of the Angelicum in Rome and a detailed case for the proposal was written by a former Member of a Religious Congregation, Roy Bourgeois, now a member of the Women’s Ordination Conference in the USA.

Professor McAleese, a former President of Ireland, has written this article, derived from a keynote address which she had presented to the International Women’s Day Conference in Rome in March 2018. The article goes beyond the issue of the ordination to the ministerial priesthood of women to a wider discussion centred on the exclusion of women from key areas of decision-making across the Universal Church. It could be argued that her key statement in a cogent presentation calls on Pope Francis to Today we challenge Pope Francis to ‘develop a credible strategy for the inclusion of women as equals throughout the Church’s root and branch infrastructure, including its decision-making. Failure to include women as equals has deprived the Church of fresh and innovative discernment … ’. In his commentary on Professor McAleese’s article, Dr Sean Whittle, a Senior Lecturer at St Mary’s University Twickenham, focuses on the role of the Catholic Church in the realm of social justice and transformation social change. Citing McAleese’s reference to ‘the inclusion of women as equals … ’, Whittle concludes by insisting that ‘making the world a more socially just place’ is now built into the character of Catholic education. Given this, the issue of gender equality which Professor McAleese’s analysis so passionately calls attention to, is one that advocates of Catholic education needs to embrace.