Drawing upon the Crossways Foundation Document, this section of Crossways articulates the purpose of Classroom Religious Education (RE) as part of the broader religious life and mission of a Catholic school. 

Introduction

Situating classroom Religious Education as part of the broader religious life and mission of the school

The mission of Catholic education essentially is to seek that

  • each student knows they are loved by God
  • each student flourishes in their learning and formation
  • each student realises potential for agency and leadership.

This is an expression of the broader evangelising mission of the Church founded in the person of Jesus Christ and the Good News he proclaimed and lived.

The person of each individual human being is at the heart of Christ’s teaching and the promotion of the human person is the goal of the Catholic school. It is committed to the integral formation of the whole person. Its task is fundamentally a synthesis of culture and faith, and a synthesis of faith and life.  [i]

The totality of school life gives witness to and supports students on the path towards a personal integration of faith and life. This is manifest in the various interrelated components of the Catholic school’s work of evangelisation: its Catholic identity and culture, the religious life of the school, classroom learning and teaching of religion, and an overall curriculum imbued with a Catholic worldview.

Religious Education is part of this and has a particular educational role to play that is distinct and complementary to that of catechesis (faith formation of Christians into the life and mission of the Church). [ii]

These complementary roles interplay in the Religious Education Classroom.

Purpose of RE

Religious Education is the classroom learning and teaching of religion. It is a distinct learning area, ‘a scholastic discipline with the same systematic demands and the same rigour as other disciplines’. [iii]    

Religious Education is responsive to the variations in the life and religious experiences of students and their degrees of connection with the Catholic Church. Irrespective of their situations, all students have an entitlement to learning in Religious Education that seeks to develop deep knowledge, understanding and skills. Its Achievement Standards describe what students are typically able to understand and do.

Religious Education interacts with and is reinforced by the other aspects of the religious life of the Catholic school that aim to nurture and enrich the religious and spiritual development of students through prayer, celebration of the liturgy and sacraments, faith formation and social justice activities. Religious Education and the religious life of the Catholic school are expressions of a wider partnership with parents, the primary educators of their children, and with the parish, the pre-eminent place of catechesis.

The Purpose of Classroom Religious Education is:

  • to educate, inspire and support students in their religious self-understanding and spiritual awareness,
  • to deepen their knowledge and understanding of, and ability to dialogue with,
    • the Catholic Tradition and its foundation in God who is Love and revealed in Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit
    • the broader Christian tradition and its relationship with other religious and philosophical worldviews,
  • to enable students to seek truth and meaning through their learning and develop their ability to interpret experience and perspectives,
  • to inspire and challenge students to engage more fully in life, the Church and society with growing wisdom, religious identity, prayer life and moral purpose to promote a just and nonviolent world.

Student learning in Religious Education interacts appropriately and regularly with the complementary aspects of the religious life of the school, including personal and communal prayer, liturgy, social outreach, youth ministry and church life and mission.[iv]

Differentiated Faith Formation Outcomes

Complementary Faith Formation Outcomes for the diverse range of students in the RE Classroom

It is important that all participants in the RE Classroom see their place in a dialogue, between their experience and the Catholic worldview, about faith, religion and spirituality.  The diverse nature of our classrooms provides an enriching and challenging opportunity for teachers of Religious Education who can anticipate different outcomes for learners who are at different stages of faith, are of different faiths, or who have no religious affiliation. These faith formational outcomes are complementary to the universal learning outcomes for all students that are intended by the Purpose Statement.

These differentiated faith formational outcomes include:[ii]

  • Students become more deeply connected in their Christian faith
    • There are Catholic and other Christian learners for whom Religious Education in the classroom can be catechesis complementing their experiences of Christianity through their family and parish.
  • Students discover or rediscover their place in the Christian community
    • There are Catholic and other Christian learners for whom Religious Education can be a new evangelisation since the school is their only regular connection with the Christian faith community. If it is their first connection, the learning area can be the primary or first proclamation and/or initial catechesis.
  • Students of other religions become more authentically connected with their own religion
    • for those learners of other religious affiliation, the interreligious dialogue can provide possible enrichment of their own faith.
  • Students of no religious affiliation, it can be an experience of hearing the call of the Gospel alongside developing an understanding of the Christian tradition as an important cultural and moral component in Australian and western society.
    • for those learners of no religion, it may be primary or first proclamation.

This is not to advocate separating students by faith or culture, but for the teacher to be aware of offering multiple entry points into conversations about God and culture in Religious Education and to highlight the different possible outcomes these conversations may generate.

References

[i] Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education (1977), The Catholic School, n.37.

[ii] Congregation for Catholic Education (1988), Religious Dimension of Education in the Catholic School, nn.68-69

[iii] Congregation for the Clergy (1997), General Directory for Catechesis, n.73

[iv]  NCEC (2018) Religious Education in Australian Catholic Schools Framing Paper, pp. 6 & 18

[v] Heavily influenced by the NCEC Framing Paper: Religious Education in Australian Catholic Schools (2018, p.12) and by CEM’s Religious Education Curriculum Framework (draft) (2018, p.6).   See also Madden, R “Curriculum Overview: Religious education Curriculum in Melbourne” in Religious Education in Australian Catholic Schools: exploring the landscape (1987) R Rymarz and A Belmonte (eds), p.228.

[vi] The General Directory for Catechesis and Gerard J. Holohan, Australian Religious Education – Facing the Challenges (NCEC, 1999) expand on terms such as catechesis, primary proclamation, initial catechesis and new evangelisation, and their relationship with religious education. The current Crossways (2008) also does this. Please note that the new 2020 Directory of Catechesis states that “It is however true that, if it is still useful to make conceptual distinctions between pre-evangelisation, first proclamation, catechesis, ongoing formation, in the present context it is no longer possible to stress such differences” (n.56).