Robyn Horner, Enhancing Catholic School Identity through Religious Education Final 2.docx Sunday, 9 February 2020 1 Enhancing Catholic School Identity through Religious Education Catholic Religious Education in Crisis For confessional schools in a number of Western contexts, the role of teachers in promoting the formation of students in any particular faith tradition is a hotly contested issue. In a Catholic context, there is a clear expectation by the Church that teachers have a faith- formative role, and that teachers of Religious Education, in particular, will witness to a congruence between what they teach and what they believe. 1 In Australia, fulfilling this expectation has reached a crisis point for many Catholic schools, where the distance between Christianity and culture has become such that not only students and their families, but also many teachers question their identities in relation to the Church. It has been apparent for some time that teachers in many schools have a more complicated relationship to Catholic faith than they might once have had. If we examine the available evidence, it is unsurprising to find that Catholic school populations are affected by the same conditions that affect Western populations in general. Sociological research shows that we live in largely secular contexts, which are highly pluralised, individualised and detraditionalised. 2 Anecdotally, it is increasingly difficult to employ teachers who are Catholic, or more than nominally Catholic, and even more difficult to find teachers who will put their hands up to teach Religious Education. If we turn to the empirical evidence, it is clear that a small but significant proportion of teachers in Catholic schools actually favour the secularisation of their schools. According to the most recently available Australian data, a little over 3% of primary school teachers and 13% of secondary school teachers support this position. 3 What is perhaps even 1 Pope Francis, "Speech to the Students of the Jesuit Schools of Italy and Albania," (2013), http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/speeches/2013/june/documents/papa- francesco_20130607_scuole-gesuiti.html. "But above all with your life be witnesses of what you communicate.” 2 See, for example, Peter L. Berger, "The Desecularization of the World: A Global Overview," in The Desecularization of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics, ed. Peter L. Berger (Washington, DC/Grand Rapids. MI: Ethics and Public Policy Center/Eerdmans, 1999); Lieven Boeve, "From Secularisation to Detraditionalisation to Pluralisation: A Challenging Shift for Contemporary Theology," Roczniki Teologiczne 51, no. 7 (2004); José Casanova, "The Secular, Secularizations, Secularisms," in Rethinking Secularism, ed. Craig J Calhoun, Mark Juergensmeyer, and Jonathan Van Antwerpen (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011); Jürgen Habermas, "Notes on Post-Secular Society," New Perspectives Quarterly 25 (2008); Paul Heelas, Scott Lash, and Paul Morris, Detraditionalization: critical reflections on authority and identity (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1996); Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA/London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007). 3 Robyn Horner, Didier Pollefeyt, Teresa Brown, Jan Bouwens, Chris Jacobs-Vandegeer, Maeve Heaney, and Michael Buchanan. “Openness to Faith as a Disposition for Teachers in Catholic Schools.” Under submission to International Journal of Practical Theology.