Addressing the problem of ‘Ecclesiastical drift’ in Catholic Religious Education

Abstract

Philip Phenix’s (1964) book Realms of meaning: A philosophy of the curriculum for general education started the ever growing movement concerned with how school education might help young people in their search for meaning, purpose and values in times of rapid cultural change. Today, in globalised, digital, secularised culture, the importance and urgency of this role have never been greater. Religious Education, with core curriculum status in Catholic schools, has both credentials and precedents for studying directly the contemporary human quest for meaning to help resource the spirituality of young people, no matter what their religious disposition. But a ‘course correction’ is needed for the discourse of Catholic Religious Education which has ‘drifted’ almost so exclusively into ecclesiastical terminology that its educational credibility as a valuable spiritual/moral school subject has been eroded, creating an ever widening discontinuity with the realities of the classroom and young people’s spirituality. A more outward-looking and less Catholic-centric emphasis would help, without neglecting commitment to the faith tradition. While concerned with the Australian Catholic sector, the article may well have relevance to other countries and contexts.

Keywords:

• Religious Education
• Catholic schools
• youth spirituality
• ‘ecclesiastical drift’

Notes on contributor

Graham Rossiter is adjunct Professor of Moral and Religious Education at The Australian Institute of Theological Education, Sydney. Email [email protected]

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 ‘Ecclesiastical drift’ is defined as the problem in Catholic School Religious Education where its discourse about purposes and practices has gradually come to be dominated almost exclusively by constructs like faith development, faith formation, Catholic identity, new evangelisation and Catholic mission – with what are considered to be unintended negative consequences.

2 It is difficult to explain why some words rather than others become popular in any educational discourse and why they have a distinctive appeal. In this instance, I consider it was mainly a ‘follow the leader’ phenomenon as the word ‘faith’ (and its derivatives like faith formation) became prominent in Vatican church documents related to ministry, with follow up in diocesan documents and in the literature of religious education.

3 I think that when bishops and leaders in Catholic schooling used the concept ‘faith formation’ to replace ‘religious education’ there were implied assumptions that the former was more effective in changing the religious faith and practice of students; and that faith forming activities could somehow be readily differentiated from ‘merely’ educational activities. These assumptions are questioned in Rossiter (2018, 87–93.).

4 Researchers Smith and Denton (2005), Mason, Singleton, and Webber (2007), Crawford and Rossiter (2006), Hughes (2007), Maroney (2008), and Kenyon (2010) have written about the secular spirituality of youth – and this could be expected to be typical of most students in Australian Catholic schools; the last 4 references also noted how poorly they regarded religious education – Kenyon (2010, 234) reported that some teachers regarded Religious Education as a teacher “health hazard”. Finn’s (2011) empirical research on the views of Religious Education teachers and parents reported evidence of the effects of ecclesiastical drift, without using this terminology; he found that a sample of both teachers and parents were respectful of the ecclesiastical terminology used by authorities, but they felt that such language was confusing and had little useful meaning.

5 Currently, an online survey of the views of teachers and senior students about the potential problem of ecclesiastical drift has been developed and data collection has been initiated. See https://asmre.org/.

6 There has been no empirical research on this question; but teachers have reported anecdotally that it is not uncommon in their experience.

7 One might ask “Does the Catholic system have the teachers capable of implementing this more open and inclusive approach to spiritual, religious and moral education?” My answer is a definite Yes.