CATHOLIC EDUCATION AT THE CROSSROADS

 

By Msgr. Dennis J. Murphy

CATHOLIC REGISTER SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT

August 20-27, 2001 (reprinted with permission)

 

(Msgr. Murphy is a priest of the diocese of Sault Ste. Marie. He was the founder and first director of the Institute of Catholic Education, a member of the Royal Commission on Learning and latterly the director of Catholic education for OCSTA. This article was adapted from a presentation to the principals of the Hamilton­-Wentworth District Catholic School Board.)

 

The Catholic Church in the province of Ontario is being undermined by a severe case of religious amnesia. Too many of our children, their parents and the younger gener­ation of trustees, educators and prospective educators have little sense of who we are, what our identity is and what the teaching, the stories and myths are which sustain our faith.

 

Although there is still great and wonderful goodness among many of these young people, the living out of their faith in intentional fashion is very peripheral to their daily existence. They have only a vague and unassimilated notion of the Christian and Catholic story as lived in ancient and modern times.

Of many young educated Catholic adults and students it has been said that they, “lack any sense of the historical perspective of Western culture in general and the part Catholicism played in the formation of that culture in particular. They have no sense of the kind of church which existed before the Second Vatican Council. Students have this strong conviction that what is important happens now and the `now' has little or no link with the past” (Lawrence S. Cunningham, The Catholic Heritage, Crossroad, 1986).

 

They have not grasped the visceral imperative, "remember," so emphasized by our spiritual forebears, the Jewish people. This is a condition not unlike the case of national amnesia regarding our Canadian story. In commenting some months ago on this case of national amnesia the Globe and Mail on its editorial page concluded by saying, "A nation incapable of telling its own stories to successive generations will be incapable of sustaining the national conversation on which democracy depends." The Catholic community too might ask whether a religious community incapable of telling its own story to successive generations will be capable of sustaining the faith commitment on which the life of the church depends. For a Christian history at its deepest level reveals in the human experience the presence of the creating and saving activity of God. Through this medium of history as salvation history God is revealed in the life of both the individual and the community. This historical perspective of the Christian believer occurs amidst all of the ambiguity of determining the exact mean­ing and message of God acting in our human story. Not surprisingly, therefore, in examining this history one discovers that saints, sinners, rogues, heroes and schemers have always peopled the narrative. Mainly, however, it is the story of ordinary folk who are finally a mixture of all of these. They, and the events which shaped and affected them reveal the presence, the work and the Word of God.

 

RECENT CHAPTERS IN SALVATION HISTORY

To examine a few of the salient dimensions or features of Ontario's Catholic educa­tion history from this perspective is in itself revealing. It suggests that in many ways the story of Catholic schools in Ontario might profitably be examined as recent chap­ters in the history of salvation. To follow this suggestion is to read our own education history in terms of a meaning that goes beyond the political, social and economic con­text. It is to search our history from a faith perspective to discover a meaning that indi­cates to us God acting not only in our past, but in our present as well. To begin, there­fore, a few comments on some of the dimensions, the features, the people, incidents and anecdotes that created the fabric of the 170-year history of Catholic education in Ontario. The ultimate significance of examining this history is to be found in not only he light it casts on the past but also in what it says to the present. And that present includes problems and challenges which Catholic education faces today.

 

 

THE THREAT OF ASSIMILATION

The Catholic school system originated in a small and generally impoverished group of people who found themselves in an alien environment. At risk of generalization it can be said that the Roman Catholic population of mid-19th century Ontario was largely Irish in origin, often unlettered, considered socially inferior and held little clout in the halls of political power. In the new-found ecumenical spirit of our times it is perhaps difficult to realize that this Catholic minority was surrounded by a large­ly Protestant and Anglican population which had little respect for them and no time for their papist religion. Their saving grace was that Ontario and Quebec were joined in a legislative union. This meant that in the legislative assembly their interests were often protected by the power of the French Catholic vote which had its power base in the province of Quebec.

 

What our Catholic forbears feared most was that they would be assimilated. Their cul­ture, their belief system, what they held to be valuable and worthwhile, were threat­ened by the dominant majority in Upper Canada, now the province of Ontario. To have their own school system in which their children would not lose their identity to the generic Christianity of the public school system was the Catholic solution.

 

This has particular significance for our contemporary society. Roman Catholics no longer are a tiny minority. They represent approximately 30 per cent of the popula­tion, and are neither economically deprived, nor without political clout. Catholics remain, nonetheless, a minority in an increasingly secularistic society. Many of the social and cultural institutions of our time - and one thinks here in particular of the news media - have an avowedly secular agenda. This agenda often supports one pub­lic homogenized educational system as an ideal to be achieved. The media allow reli­gion little place in the public forum, and this only grudgingly. Too often anti-religious and particularly anti-Catholic comment remains acceptable as the last refuge of big­oted and offensive commentators. The danger now, as in mid-19th century Ontario, is the danger of assimilation. Today it is the danger of losing all that is distinctive in an historical religious culture and in a belief system daily confronted with an aggressive philosophy of secularism. It can be persuasively argued that within this context the Catholic school system contributes significantly not only to the life of the Catholic Church but also to the social and cultural public life of our province and our country. It is one of the few remaining institutional presences of transcendent value in our Western world, as it seeks to create a learning environment which challenges and questions much of the value system of the dominant secularism.

 

THE CHARGE OF DIVISIVENESS

One of the earliest charges levelled against the Catholic school system from the time of its inception - and a charge which Egerton Ryerson, the father of education in our province, at least implicitly supported - was that Catholic schools were a socially divisive force. That charge repeated time and time again throughout the pages of his­tory, continues to be found often enough in the letters-to-the-editor columns of many of the papers of our province.

 

As in the days of Ryerson no proof of this divisiveness has ever been brought for­ward. Indeed, throughout our country and in all provinces where Catholic education is publicly funded, there is absolutely no indication that Catholic schools have caused bias, prejudice or divisiveness within their provincial communities. Moreover, although there is precious little research done in this field, the data that has been brought forward suggests quite the contrary. Longitudinal studies done in 1966 and in 1976 by the National Opinion Research Center in Chicago demonstrate that Catholic students who attend Catholic schools are much less likely to have prejudi­cial and racial attitudes than Catholic students who go to public schools (The Education of Catholic Americans, 1966, and Catholic Schools in a Declining Church, 1976). Probably Catholic educators will always have to face this unsubstantiated charge. The only effective response will be increased efforts to encourage their stu­dents through social justice and community involvement programs to make commit­ments to public life which reflect the unifying imperative of the gospel.

 

DISAGREEMENTS WITHIN THE CATHOLIC COMMUNITY

Then as now it could be argued that Catholic education engenders more divisiveness within the Catholic community than outside of it. Even a cursory glance at the histo­ry of Catholic education in Ontario indicates that seldom was there universal agree­ment regarding various school questions. The Catholic newspapers, of which there were more than a few, involved themselves in what was often acrimonious debate regarding a variety of school questions. Their differences were often more pro­nounced than those now found in our contemporary Catholic press. The educational efforts of Bishop Alexander MacDonnell, the first Catholic bishop in Upper Canada, and in some ways the founder of Catholic education in Ontario, were not immune to such controversy. MacDonnell had close ties with the British authorities. Before com­ing to Canada, he encouraged his Scottish contemporaries to survive the difficult eco­nomic realities of the late 18th century by joining the British army. He saw no prob­lem in maintaining loyalty to the Catholic faith and loyalty to the British government. As the first bishop of the new diocese of Kingston, Ont. (1826) he found that eccle­siastical honours were soon followed by political recognition. MacDonnell was appointed a member of the legislative council and took his seat in 1831. He was a confidante of Sir John Colbourne, the lieutenant governor of Canada, and of Lord Bathurst, the colonial secretary in London. In all of this he was not short of adver­saries, including priests, within the Catholic community. It is not difficult to believe that the Irish community of Ontario considered his relationship with the British authorities as supping with the devil. They would at best be suspicious of one per­ceived as taking the British coin in support of Catholic schools. What is clear in all of this is that from the beginning disagreement was an everyday reality within the Catholic school community. Long before their role was more clearly delineated by the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), the laity emerged as powerful actors in this drama, particularly in the kind of lay control gradually exercised by predominantly lay trustees and educators. These lay Catholic leaders in many instances did not hesitate to challenge the leadership of the clergy. From 1882 to 1903 James Frances White was an inspector of separate schools, a predecessor of current supervisory officers. Not only did he oppose the Ontario bishops regarding teacher certification but he went on to win the day in this struggle. In the 1930s the trustee Martin Quinn was a founder of the Catholic Taxpayers Association and in this capacity he responded to Archbishop Neil McNeil's question as to why the Catholic laity did not seem to interest themselves in schools questions: "They fear that in the final analysis, their work is quite likely to be destroyed by faulty judgment on the part of the hierarchy, followed by ill-considered action on their part." Assessed through such historical lenses the phenomenon of disagreement in Ontario's Catholic edu­cation community tends to relativize our present disputes.

THE RELIGIOUS

One cannot recount any history of Catholic education in the province without high­lighting the role of the religious communities of men and women. If the ecclesiasti­cal leaders, and many of the high profile lay leaders, were the architects and engineers of Catholic education in Ontario, it was the teachers and principals of the schools in the early days who were the bricklayers and stonemasons. Theirs was the task of drawing the stones and placing them laboriously one upon the other in order to pro­vide the quality education system in which the Catholic community in Ontario takes justifiable pride. Most prominent among these teachers and principals were the reli­gious, and particularly religious women.

 

Not for them the hurlyburly of political intrigue, editorial comment, or thundering denunciation. Rather, from the beginning, they provided the human resources which assured that, with meagre funds, a school system could develop that respected at once the practical educational needs of mainly immigrant people and the educational her­itage of Catholic education. The story has yet to be told adequately of the sacrifices which they made, sleeping in attics above schools and living on the most meagre of rations. Their contribution raises the question whether a significant and distinctive Catholic education system will ever exist unless some group of people is sufficiently committed with that passionate belief that inspires extraordinary and heroic sacrifices.

 

SIGNIFICANT REFORMS - A POISONED CHALICE?

Throughout the history of Catholic education in Ontario many of the various educa­tional reforms were replete with all of the ambiguity which usually attends any sig­nificant institutional change. One example is the eagerness with which the Catholic education community accepted the establishment of the larger units of administration in 1969. This was a significant moment. The establishment of the larger units had been legislated for the public school system. It was then requested by the Catholic education community. The motivation of Catholic educators at that time was surely to provide a better quality of education for some of the small and less affluent Catholic boards. With this change, however, there was a lessening of parental influence on school boards and in the running of individual schools. To some extent the home-­school-parish relationship was negatively affected by this change. Similar comments could be made about the Foundation Tax Plan in the early 1960s. As more money flowed to Catholic schools because of this legislation, an attendant increase in gov­ernment control followed. The eagerness of Catholic educators to accept the legisla­tive enactments of Bill 30 in 1985-86 also carried a price. These included the open access provisions to Catholic secondary schools and the temporary loss of discrimi­natory hiring rights which threaten that essential component of Catholic education - the creation of a Catholic community in our schools. Of more recent vintage is the very explosive and divisive conflict that arose within the Catholic community over Bill 160, particularly as this bill affected the right of Catholic school boards to levy taxes. The goal of Catholic educators for years had always been equitable funding - the guarantee that the Catholic system could provide education along with the public system on a level playing field. What was clear from the beginning was that the cost of equity would be further government control over both systems. For Catholic edu­cators, the unrecognized cost at the time was the long and ugly battle between the Catholic School Trustees' Association and the Ontario English Catholic Teachers' Association. Probably we remain too close to the events that transpired to provide cool and rational evaluation of them. As with most historical events, proximity to them often beclouds rather than clarifies their ultimate significance. There remain, nonetheless, significant questions which continue to be much discussed today. For example, in their quest for equitable funding, did the OCSTA in supporting the fund­ing provisions of Bill 160 surrender too much in losing that measure of important practical control that comes with taxing power? And in opposing Bill 160 was the teachers' association principally motivated in its struggle against the bill's taxing pro­visions by a desire to maintain the "Catholicity" of the system as they claim? Could/should the bishops have intervened more forcefully, at least at the level of ascertaining where the truth of the matter lay in the early moments of this discussion? Should the Ontario Catholic Supervisory Officers have remained on the sidelines as this battle escalated? Would any of the Catholic parties have entered this fray if they had known how acrimonious it would become and what the ultimate cost would be? And what is the final result in terms of funding for our Catholic schools? All of these are questions which we must continue to examine. The way we answer them will surely be affected by the recent unanimous decision of the Supreme Court of Canada which determined that the province of Ontario in its new funding legislation did not offend the constitutional rights of Catholic schools. Nonetheless definitive answers to all these questions will continue to elude us for some time.

 

In all of these instances - from the Scott Act in 1863 to Bill 160 - the question must be asked whether we drank a "poisoned chalice." What price did Catholic education pay for large units of administration, for the Foundation Plan, for Bill 30 and the completion of the Catholic education system, and for equity in funding? Some claim that the price was too high. Others counter by saying that many of the strategic con­cessions gradually achieved the possibility of Catholic education for students both rich and poor, and from every stratum of Ontario's Catholic community. In addition, they say, the Catholic system reflects for the first time, all levels, convictions, strengths and weaknesses of the broader Catholic community. In all of these events, and in the dramatis personae who played them out on the stage of history, the ques­tion remains how one recognizes in this story of ours the hand and the word of God? What do these recent chapters of salvation history mean for us? The closer these events are to the present the more difficult the discernment becomes. But that dis­cernment remains always the task of the Catholic community. We are called finally to discern the word of God not only in the past, but in the present educational reali­ties with which we are faced.

 

 

PRESENT GOVERNMENT POLICES AND THEIR CONSEQUENCES

No Ontarian who has been paying the slightest attention in recent years doubts that the context for education has altered radically in the province. Some have attempted to reduce these reforms to nothing more than part of the neo-conservative agenda of the current government. However, similar educational reforms have taken place in many jurisdictions in the Western world. The recommendations of the Royal Commission on Learning (1995), in its report For The Love of Learning, did not share the political ideology of the current government. Nonetheless, this report called for significant educational changes, many of which have been taken up by the current government, even if the manner and purpose of their reforms appear to be quite con­trary to the spirit of the royal commission report.

 

There is a new context for education in Ontario. It has very important, not to say rad­ical, consequences for the Catholic education system. There follows a brief descrip­tion of six elements of this new context and some of the consequences these have for the Catholic education system.

 

CURRICULUM

A new curriculum based on clearly defined expectations at the various grade levels has been mandated and is being created through the Ministry of Education. This cur­riculum is characterized by a more rigorous content. In many cases it advances the teaching of certain concepts to an earlier grade.

 

A fortunate consequence for Catholic education has been the development of distinc­tive curriculum materials for Catholic schools. These materials attempt to bring to all of the different subjects or disciplines the distinctive approach to education which is the hallmark of Catholic education. Such a curriculum insists, therefore, not only on knowledge and skills - as does the curriculum for the public system - but also on cer­tain value expectations.

 

What is necessary for this curriculum to be successful and reflective of the peculiar­ity of Catholic education is that teachers at both the pre-service and in-service levels be familiar with it and prepared to use it. To some extent this has been attempted. At the in-service level summer institutes funded by the government have been prepared and staffed by the teacher federations. However, for student teachers intending to teach in the Catholic school system, the faculties of education have no programs to prepare teachers for these distinctive curriculum materials. Nor are many teachers. particularly in Catholic secondary schools, sufficiently aware of the Catholic educa­tion implications in their particular subjects or disciplines.

 

ACCOUNTABILITY

In our current atmosphere of accountability it is not surprising that transparent accountability is demanded at every level of the education system. People want to know who does what. New levels of accountability are demanded of trustees, teach­ers, principals, supervisory officers, directors of education and all those involved in the educational enterprise. What is not clear is to what extent this accountability  applies to the faculties of education, as indicated above, and to the Ministry of Education itself.

 

For Catholic schools, such insistence on accountability requires at the board level dis­tinctive indicators for their system. Trustees must assure the distinctiveness of Catholic belief and practice not only in board policy on school and curriculum mat­ters but in policy on administration matters or labour relations, on contracting out. and on the way all business is done. As well, the practical and personal expectations outlined in the OCSTA document Witnesses to Faith, should be uniformly applicable to all trustees and educators.

 

CENTRALIZATION

Increasing centralization in the areas of funding, curriculum development and policy making have been part of education reform in the last few years. This has particular curriculum implications that have already sounded warning bells in the Catholic edu­cation community. Although, as mentioned above, a distinctive curriculum for Catholic schools is being developed and funded by the government, concern remains that the centralizing of this dimension of education can create a tension between a government's political ideologies on the one hand, and Catholic school systems on the other. A particularly striking example of this tension arises when the social justice dimension of Catholic education, which should permeate all subjects, stands at an oblique remove from government policy, especially in areas such as life issues and social welfare. The centralized and equitable funding issue of education also raises two serious questions that Catholic educators must face. In the first place, because funding now follows the student, Catholic school boards in their secondary schools must resist the temptation to attract as many students as possible regardless of their faith in order to increase the available funding. The effects of such attitudes will effectively undermine efforts to create Christian community which must be the fun­damental learning environment of a Catholic school. Secondly, the following ques­tion must be faced: with the same funding available to every student in the province, how does the Catholic school system fund those extra dimensions of education which are part and parcel of its educational package? This question will be treated in greater detail below.

 

NEW ROLES

School boards and trustees, principals and supervisory officers, are all called to play roles quite different from those of the past. The principal responsibility of the trustee - albeit not a new responsibility is to be a policy maker. Principals become not only curriculum leaders and administrators but also the chief catalysts in the process of bringing the community into the educational process. This latter responsibility they share with supervisory officers and directors of education. The "community" for a Catholic school will embrace not only various civic institutions and businesses but the local church community as well.

 

Obvious consequences follow as to how Catholic boards legislate, and how educators implement policies. Of special importance is a new kind of partnering with "the Church." This is unique to Catholic schools and accompany their partnering with var­ious industrial and commercial enterprises.

 

NEW INSTITUTIONS

In less than 10 years Ontario's education scene has witnessed the establishment of several new and significant institutions. Chief among them are the Ontario College of Teachers (OCT) and the Education Quality and Assessment Office (EQAO). The for­mer is now responsible for the many different aspects of teaching as a profession. The latter is charged with assessing and evaluating all levels of the province's education­al system from boards, to students, to educators themselves.

 

There is, as well, an increased interest by parents, educators and government in Early Childhood Education (ECE). This interest, unfortunately, has yet to be translated in to serious government support for this "new kid on the block."

 

The College of Teachers appears to increasingly recognize the uniqueness of the Catholic school system and of the particular pre-service and in-service programs it requires. It is probably the OCT, through its accreditation process for faculties of edu­cation, which will determine how the unique needs of student teachers headed for the Catholic school system are to be met by the faculties. At the level of the EQAO, how­ever, there seems to be little current recognition of the fact that the expectations of Catholic schools are different from those of the public schools and consequently require particular forms of assessment and evaluation.

 

In the area of Early Childhood Education educators are increasingly aware that ECE is of particular benefit to the most marginalized and vulnerable children in our society. Should it not, therefore, be of particular importance to Catholic edu­cators, and given priority in requests to government concerning changes in the current funding formula?

 

ASSESSMENT, EVALUATION AND REPORTING

Ontario's Ministry of Education has moved to assure the use of standardized process­es of evaluating and assessing students. Standardized report cards are part of its over­all strategy. Serious questions remain as to how the data and information learned can best help student learning. The whole matter of assessing, evaluating and reporting in the disciplines of religious and family life education has not yet been resolved with­in the Catholic education community and the Ministry of Education. There still remains considerable debate as to whether the provincial report card is adequate in the area of religious education at the elementary level and how it is that such reporting should take place at the secondary level.

 

FINDING OUR WAY INTO THE FUTURE

Never before has there been a greater need for a clearly articulated, strategic plan for the Catholic school system and for the Catholic Church in our province. Such a plan must take into consideration the current realities of our church, and of its largest and most significant institutional expression: the Catholic school system. Discrete pas­toral strategies for parish, school and diocese are not adequate. An integrated pastoral approach at both the provincial and local board and diocesan levels is necessary.

 

Such a strategic plan will require the input, the co-operation and the resources of all of the partners in Catholic education and in our church. One need be neither a Cassandra nor a Jeremiah to recognize that the educational and political directions of the current moment severely challenge the existence of Catholic education as a pub­licly supported system. Catholic education in Ontario has never been more seriously threatened. And this at a time when many of the various players have not had their act together. The moment is long past when busily blaming one another for the current situation will be of service to anyone or any group.

 

A FEW HARSH REALITIES

Outside of the Catholic education community there appears to be only precarious and declining support for the Catholic school system as it now exists in Ontario. To deal with this situation the first thing required is a serious reality check about our Catholic school system and our Catholic Church.

 

To speak of the latter for a moment is to recognize that whatever figures one cares to use, most of the Roman Catholics in the province of Ontario do not participate on any regular basis in the life of the church. What is evident everywhere is a high level of disenchantment with the church by both young and middle-aged Catholics. These lat­ter attach no great credibility to the teaching of the church, particularly on moral issues. Hardly anyone pays attention to church teaching on birth control; and this arguably is the reason for a lack of credibility in other areas, particularly areas of per­sonal morality. Catholic young people are quite convinced that pre-marital sexual relationships do not pose a moral question but one of health and social convenience. Younger Catholics particularly have been profoundly affected by the individualism and relativism of contemporary Western society. The self has become the arbiter of personal moral choice. Each one decides what is right or wrong, and no one person, and no tradition or institution is allowed to advise otherwise (cf. John Fulton, et al., Young Catholics at the New Millennium, University College Dublin Press, 2000). Catholics generally believe that people who have been divorced and remarried should with sufficient cause be allowed to participate fully in the Eucharist. Celibacy as an absolute requirement for the priesthood is considered unnecessary by most Catholics and an ideal which only a few of those called to the priesthood can or should attain. Few deny the need for serious changes in the role of women in the church. Commitments and fidelity in what has been called our "three minute culture" are tem­porary at best. In our highly individualistic culture the social teaching of the church finds little resonance among people who prefer tax cuts to better social welfare pro­grams. As all this happens, those who have traditionally provided the leadership in our community, priests and religious, are fewer and fewer in number and greyer and greyer in appearance.

 

As mentioned earlier, another reality that must be faced is that our young people do not know the story of our faith. Those professors who teach the religious education cours­es in the faculties of education are unanimous in reporting that very many of the Catholic students - those who intend to teach within our Catholic school system - are, in large part, religious illiterates as far as the Catholic and Christian story is concerned.

 

Many of the young people in our Catholic secondary schools betray an obvious lack of familiarity with the Eucharist, how to participate in it, and how to comport them­selves. They betray both a lack of any sense of the sacred and of any conceptual con­text within which to place the Eucharist as the center of our Catholic life. Such fun­damental questions as the nature and meaning of sacraments and how sacraments have been traditionally understood in the life of the church are understood in very incomplete fashion by students in many of our elementary schools. This religious illiteracy may be due in part to the failure in the schools, but mainly it is result of children from families where faith is attributed little practical importance.

 

To summarize: most of the Catholics in the province of Ontario do not practice their faith. Not surprisingly, their children who go to Catholic schools do not know the story of faith, or the attitudes to faith that come from family and which are its sus­taining foundation. The student teachers in our faculties of education, and I would suggest many of our younger teachers, although wonderfully eager and talented young people, are quite blissfully unaware of our story. Priests and religious, who tra­ditionally would be called on to respond to this situation, are too old and too few to deal with the challenge. We are in the process of forgetting who we are.

 

WHAT TO Do?

 

It is painful to paint the Catholic education landscape in colours as bleak as this. However, to do otherwise would be less than honest. There does remain hope if we will grasp the nettle. A few suggestions, therefore, regarding our way into the future. Ultimately, we need a province wide strategic pastoral plan for both our church and the Catholic school system in the province. Such a plan must recognize that we have many more pupils in our schools than we have worshippers in our churches. What follows is not such a plan but suggestions regarding certain elements which it must include.

A NEW LANGUAGE

 

At the present moment in the life and development of the Catholic Church we find ourselves in the uncertainty of "between times." This is particularly evident in the realization that our language, our words,' our teaching, do not seem to have the power to communicate that they once possessed. More is involved here than children not knowing our story, tradition and heritage, of suffering from religious amnesia. We are also in urgent need of new words, of a new language to tell our story - a language which resonates with contemporary experience and which can communicate with the present generations.

 

This was a common, if incompletely understood, conviction of religious educators 20 or 30 years ago. Only in recent years, however, has it been so clearly born in upon us that a radical rearticulating or re-speaking of the faith is necessary. The marvelous and mind-shattering advances in science in the past century have meant that our world­view, our cosmology, is profoundly different from the worldview and cosmology of previous generations. Our deepened understanding of historical context and how it conditions everything from theological concepts, to scientific understanding, to artis­tic expression, to history itself, has resulted in our contemporaries thinking different­ly and expressing themselves differently. There has been a profoundly radical shift in how we grasp and in how we speak of life itself, the human journey and the physical and moral universe in which we find ourselves. It serves no purpose simply to shout louder with a language that is foreign to the ears of our contemporaries, be they our young people or their parents.

 

At the time of the Second Vatican Council Pope John XXIII obviously sensed the new moment which humanity is living. He told us that although the eternal and essential truths of our faith remain ever the same they must effectively be clothed in and expressed in new words, new concepts, in a new language, if they are to touch and affect the lives of contemporary men and women.

 

The great German theologian Karl Rahner expressed the same conviction: "The form of preaching (teaching) in a particular age must be `translated' into another form of preaching (teaching) to make the language understood, particularly if the meaning of the message must remain the same. This preservation of identity cannot be achieved by the mere repetition of old expressions if the mentality and concepts change in sec­ular society through an historical development which is not under the church's con­trol" ("Demythologization and the Sermon" in The Renewal of Preaching: Theory and Practice, Consilium 33, 1968).

 

The lexicon of this new language will include the mind-boggling discoveries of the physicist and of the astronomer, the vocabulary of information technology and the marvels of evolution and of genetic engineering. It will also be a language which finds expression through the arts and all the cultural riches of different societies. Finally, and most importantly, its words will depend on the medium of compassion, care and commitment to express the reality of a God of love.

 

 

IN THE SCHOOLS

From the foregoing one could conclude that the first insistence must be on assuring that our story and its teachings, beliefs, and moral codes be told in clear and uncom­promising fashion in all of our schools - and told in a new language. This surely is necessary. But of equal necessity is facing the fact that kids who come from non-prac­ticing families live in a formative context of practical atheism. There is a huge ques­tion as to whether or not one can call them believers as they enter a Catholic school classroom. If they are not believers then we should speak not of catechesis but of con­version. This has consequences for how we teach in Catholic schools. A few of these consequences follow.

 

William J. O'Malley, a Jesuit who has taught for many years in a Catholic high school in the Bronx, insists that only if we are ruthlessly honest as to where the kids in our classrooms are these days will we be able to get to them (America, Sept. 16, 2000). He claims that teachers in Catholic schools today almost have to be apologists. They have to prepare the ground before ever announcing the Christian message. O'Malley says that the only sane place to begin with students is through creating a felt need in them for some consistent worldview, something that will make sense out of death and the moral ambiguities that every human being faces. To do this we must tell young people above all else that they are worthwhile. Young people want to hear that mes­sage even though they may not realize how much they want to hear it.

 

A Catholic school should at least provide a precious zone of personal stability in which a young person can grapple with these kinds of questions aided an abetted by the educators. Students need a place where there is some coherence. If we create this coherent and consistent zone of stability then according to O'Malley we can put for­ward four non-negotiables of Christian faith:

 

a) Jesus is the embodiment of God. Somehow God came from behind time and space to show us how it is done.

b) Jesus/God died in order to rise and how us that we are immortal and to share divine aliveness with us.

c) Those who belong to Jesus/God see the values of "The Kingdom" (them first - God and neighbour) as more important then the values of "The World" (me first)

d) We celebrate that incorporation in a serving community and a weekly meal of thanksgiving.

 

In our elementary schools we should put emphasis on teaching children to pray. Never before has prayer been so essential to maintain individual faith as in our increasingly secular society. Perhaps centring prayer or some prayer which uses the imagination would best be taught to them before their religious imagination is in some way atrophied by the secularism of our times.

 

Andrew Greeley, in a recent article, also calls for a new approach to the way in which we tell our story in Catholic schools. His prescription is that we should emphasize what is beautiful in our story, what is beautiful in sound doctrine. "At every step of the educational process," he urges, "we must attend to beauty - that small tear in the sur­face of the world, as Simone Weil puts it, that pulls us through to some vaster space. Beauty lifts us off the ground, spins us around and then deposits us back on the ground perhaps only a few inches away. It is not that we no longer stand at the centre of the world; we never did. Rather, we are still in the power of that which has happened to us in our encounter with beauty. But encounters with beauty open us up to their own alchemy, which gently guides us to goodness and truth" (America, Sept. 16, 2000).

 

Catholic schools today need an EQAO approach to determine both the level of reli­gious literacy and how to provide whatever remedial help is necessary. Surely by now those who argue that religious faith is not measurable have come to realize that there are religious skills and knowledge which are measurable and assessable. And that not to assess kids in this way is to suggest that it is unimportant to know the richness of our Catholic tradition, heritage and culture, and be able to articulate it.

 

THE NEED FOR COMMUNITY

Some three of four years ago OCSTA commissioned focus group research to deter­mine, among other things, how the Catholic school system was perceived in the province of Ontario.

 

One of the questions asked of the various groups was to speak the first word that came to their minds when they thought of Catholic schools. The word that far out-stripped all other words as defining these schools, the word that came from both Catholics and non-Catholics, the word that came from both young and old, was community. Community is a reality that is really hard to define - but usually easy to recognize.

 

For some people it is no more then a social construct - a grouping of people coming together simply to realize an achievable goal. More thoughtfully, however, people such as Henri Nouwen have recognized that "community is created when we care for the vulnerable." Community is created when not only a school staff but also those who support the school recognize that in some way we are jointly responsible for a group of vulnerable people who have been entrusted to us, in other words when we realize that we are responsible for the very vulnerable, mysterious and precious com­modity that are our children.

 

It may well be that the most important exercise or object of all professional develop­ment for both educators and trustees will be discussion concerning the ways of creat­ing community. This should surely be the principal objective of every school princi­pal and he/she should be aided in the achievement of that objective by all of the sup­port services for which supervisory officers are responsible.

 

TEACHER ASSISTANCE AND PREPARATION

If there is to be some integrated pastoral, educational strategic plan then at the centre of it must be way in which we commit to support the needs of the teachers within our system.

 

Our Catholic education community has argued effectively and successfully in the courts of the land that the teacher is at the heart of the Catholic educational enterprise. These arguments were sufficient to convince a judge of the Ontario Supreme Court that section 136 of the Education Act should be expunged.

 

With the passing of the legislation to complete the Catholic school system in 1985-1986 there was - at the insistence of the New Democratic Party - a clause inserted which legislated that after a 10-year period Catholic schools would no longer have the right to discriminate in hiring practices. This effectively meant that Catholic boards could no longer control the entrance into the Catholic schools of people who did not share the distinctive educational philosophy and goals of the Catholic school system.

Four years ago the indisputably secular Ontario courts struck down this legislation as injurious to the Catholic school system and in violation of our constitutional guaran­tees. Mr. Justice Sharpe, in rendering his judgment, argued persuasively about the centrality of Catholic teachers as witnessing to and handing on the faith, culture and tradition which are essential to the Catholic education community.

 

The question posed today is this: If the Catholic teacher is at the heart of the Catholic educational process and essential to it, how is the Catholic school system to ensure that its teachers are well able to transmit its story, create its culture in the community of the school, and speak in all disciplines the language of Catholic faith? From the earlier dis­cussion it is clear that many students in faculties of education, and many young teach­ers currently engaged in Catholic schools, are unfortunately unable to do this.

 

There have been some remarkably successful efforts at seeking to address this ques­tion over the last number of years. One thinks of the three-part course in religious education sponsored by OECTA and OCSTA. 15 years there have been, as well, intensive efforts to persuade faculties of education to offer courses which would adequately prepare those teachers who intend to teach in Catholic schools for the kind of education that is particular to these schools. Not much success has been met in this latter endeavour, however, even following the clear recommendation of the report of the Royal Commission in Learning in 1995.

 

The Catholic education community requires major initiatives at this time over and above the three-part OECTA/OCSTA religious education courses, the course offered by the Catholic education community to prospective supervisory offices, the laudable efforts in professional development of both OECTA and the Catholic Principals Council, and the current religious education courses offered in the faculties of education.

 

Leading Catholic educators in the province acknowledge that what is of primary importance for teachers is to know something of the history of Catholic education in the province, to be exposed to the philosophical underpinnings of Catholic education, to have a clearer sense of the story, tradition, heritage and culture of Catholicism, and to understand how all of this affects both the development and implementation of cur­riculum. In short, some kind of in-service, which will be supported by all of the Catholic education associations in the province is required, whatever the cost of that may be.

 

As far as pre-service programs in the faculties of education are concerned, there is now needed the uncompromising political will to pursue the introduction of such courses, just as the Catholic education community has pursued other major objectives in its history. The Ontario College of Teachers has come to recognize that there is an individual and unique philosophy of education with considerable curriculum consequences in the Catholic school system. Its acknowledgement of the need for distinc­tive courses has in large measure followed upon the development of publicly funded curriculum materials peculiar to the Catholic system. The OCT seems willing to press the faculties of education to respond to this acknowledged need.

 

The Catholic education community does not have the luxury, however, of continuing to draw this process out with the glacial speed which seems to have accompanied it in the past. It is a matter of such urgency that it requires the Catholic education com­munity to act now lest those responsible for handing on the language, the story, and the culture of our faith fail in their task because they themselves are not sufficiently familiar with this heritage and tradition.

 

EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION

An integral part of distinctive Catholic education should be a commitment to Early Childhood Education whether the government moves in significant fashion to fund this important dimension of education or not. ECE has been shown to advance and assist in the education of all children. As already mentioned, however, the value of this becomes particularly clear in the case of the most vulnerable and marginalized of students. Given this fact, Roman Catholic schools should have a particular commit­ment to these socially disadvantaged students. In keeping with the "option for the poor," which is central to the gospel message, Catholic schools should be in the van­guard of any educational direction and programming which addresses the needs of children on the edge of the educational process. Even if the government fails to move in this direction in the near future, Catholic schools should take leadership in this important educational development.

 

A CATHOLIC INSTITUTE ADEQUATELY FUNDED

Both in the United States of America and in England considerable discussion and momentum has developed concerning the establishment of academic research and development facilities of teaching and learning within the Catholic education tradi­tion. If Catholic education in Ontario is to continue to grow and to develop, as it must, it would seem that nothing less is required in Ontario. Our efforts, for example, in the areas of teacher preparation and development, and of Christian models of early child­hood education, will require such a facility.

 

Whether this be through the establishment of a new facility or by properly funding the research objectives of the present Institute for Catholic Education is unimportant. What is important is that this matter be addressed forthwith as a major component of a provincial Catholic education strategy for finding our way in this new millennium.

 

FUNDING CATHOLIC EDUCATION

All of the above will require more funding than is allocated to the issues and matters which have been indicated. What is becoming ever more obvious is that the critical dimension of Catholic education not found in secular education does involve an added expense. With the advent of equitable funding, Catholic students now receive funding on a par with their counterparts in the public system. However, Catholic schools offer extra programs in areas such as religious education, family life educa­tion, pastoral care departments and the like. Arguably, Early Childhood Education programs and community education initiatives should also be given priority. These "extras" in Catholic schools require extra curriculum materials, resources people, space and facilities, professional development, and so on. And importantly, there is the present and urgent need to remedy the religious amnesia described above.

 

The Catholic school system is badly in need of funding for these urgent necessities. If it is true that more Catholics touch the life of the church at the level of the school than elsewhere, there is a certain logic in suggesting that the whole church should come to the aid of the school at this particular historical moment. The monies need­ed to fund the "extra" dimensions of Catholic education should mot be obtained by asking educators and other school board employees to accept lower salaries. The monies necessary to respond to the kind of crisis which has been described herein should come from the broad Catholic community. We live now a challenge which involves all Roman Catholics and all should be asked to respond to this pressing need.

 

Earlier mention was made of the considerable sacrifice which religious, especially women religious, made to ensure the survival and development of Catholic education. Without these religious communities we would mot have Catholic education today.

 

The time for sacrifice has mot passed. At this moment, should it mot be, or could it mot be, parishes and dioceses which come to the aid of the school system, at least in pro­viding that. "extra" so critically needed at the present moment? Could mot dioceses and parishes institute regular funding appeals that would ensure the immediate introduc­tion of the proper programs for aspiring Catholic teachers, even before such are intro­duced into the faculties of education? Could these same institutions mot guarantee the financial support for the necessary in-service program, professional development in religious and family life education, the provision of pastoral care - and all of the nec­essary extras that make up Catholic education? Funding is needed mow for communi­ty education and ECE programs that reflect Catholic thinking, and for research and development facilities which will articulate this thinking. It would seem clear that such sacrifice would have its own benefit within parishes and dioceses as well.

 

This has mot been the usual practice in Ontario in recent years. However, certainly in am earlier era, and in different countries, in different times and places, dioceses and parishes have come to the aid of the Catholic school system. What is being suggest­ed here is that we are living one of those moments in Ontario where events challenge us to respond to a moment of crisis. If there is no will to move in this direction it is difficult to foresee a long future for Catholic schools in Ontario.

 

The Catholic community is being called to write another chapter in its history, in the history of salvation.