Gospel Values and Catholic Education: Revitalizing the Faith Community in a Culture of “Whatever”

Abstract

The Second Vatican Council introduced a new narrative for Catholic school. Rather than serving a primarily catechetical purpose, Catholic schools were to share in the Church's evangelizing mission by embodying an ideal learning community in a manner rooted in Gospel values. This paper argues that Gospel values are not exported from the Bible and applied to Catholic schools. Instead, they emerge in the experience of teaching-learning as a humanly liberating activity in relation to the human reality of God's Kingdom realized in Jesus of Nazareth and explores revitalizing Catholic education through Gospel values, without at the same time being sectarian.

About the author

Richard Shields, Ph.D., is a on the Faculty of Theology, University of St. Michael's College, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. E-mail: [email protected]