Catholic social teaching should permeate the Catholic secondary school curriculum: an agenda for reform

Abstract

International research shows that the curricula of Catholic secondary schools are increasingly becoming dominated by the pressures of conforming to the requirements of nation states. These requirements are generally expressed in economic and utilitarian terms and evaluated by criteria of measurable outputs. As a result of these pressures, Catholic secondary schools are in danger of losing a distinctive religious and educational cultural programme expressed in a distinctive Catholic school curriculum. It is suggested in this article that a serious permeation of Catholic social teaching is crucial, not only for the intrinsic importance of its subject matter but also as a means to resist total cultural incorporation into state-mandated curricula. Particular attention is given to the educational potential contained in Pope Benedict XVI's encyclical, Caritas in Veritate (2009).

Keywords:

• state pressures
• incorporation
• distinctive curriculum
• Catholic social teaching
• Caritas in Veritate

Acknowledgements

This is a revised version of a chapter which originally appeared in the book Catholic Social Conscience (2011), published by Gracewing Publications. The author and the publishers of this journal thank Gracewing for permission to publish this revised version.

Notes

1. All quotations are taken from the 2009 edition of Caritas in Veritate published by The Catholic Truth Society, London and reproduced with permission.

2. It also has to be accepted that some young people will disagree with the stance taken by the Pope and the Catholic Church on these issues as part of their own individual critical development.

3. There have been some attempts to bring the Christian religion and the world of economic enterprise into dialogue, e.g. Morality and the Market Place: Christian Alternatives to Capitalism and Socialism (Griffiths 1982); God and the Marketplace: Essays on the Morality of Wealth Creation (Davies 1993); Managing as if Faith Mattered (Alford and Naughton 2001); Globalisation for the Common Good (Mofid 2002). However, this literature does not seem to have affected school curricula in general.

4. This situation varies internationally. Catholic schools and colleges in the USA, especially Jesuit schools, have engaged seriously with Catholic social teaching in their curricula and in social action.

5. Caritas in Veritate could be the catalyst for this, but it could also help in the rediscovery of other Papal encyclicals of Catholic social teaching. It is clear that Pope Benedict XVI was deeply influenced by Pope Paul VI's encyclical, Populorum Progressio (1967). See pp. 11–21 of Caritas in Veritate.

6. See Young Adult Catholics (Hoge et al. 2001).

7. This is a clear criticism of the present effectiveness of the United Nations Organisation.

8. ‘Real world’ is a contemporary ideological device used to suggest that proposed alternatives to the status quo are impractical theory or naive utopias.

9. For one response to this debate, see Can There be a Catholic School Curriculum? published by the Centre for Research and Development in Catholic Education in 2007.

10. In first using the concept of mission integrity in 2002, I stressed the importance of the mission to the poor. However, mission integrity involves not only service to a particular category of students, but also a distinctive Catholic curriculum content.

11. See International Handbook of Catholic Education (Grace and O'Keefe 2007) chapters 6, 10, 22, 24, 33, 37 and 39.

12. See also the earlier statement of Father Joseph Ratzinger, when acting as theological adviser to the Second Vatican Council: ‘Over the Pope as expression of the binding claim of ecclesiastical authority, there stands one's own conscience, which must be obeyed before all else, even if necessary against the requirements of ecclesiastical authority. This emphasis on the individual whose conscience confronts him with a supreme and ultimate tribunal, and one which in the last resort is beyond the claim of external social groups, even the official church, also establishes a principle in opposition to increasing totalitarianism’ (Vorgrimler, 1967, 134).

13. Congregation for Catholic Education (1988, para. 10).

14. Catholic Social Teaching: Our Best Kept Secret (De Berri et al. 2003, 18–34).