Graham P. McDonough

Can there be ‘faithful dissent’ within Catholic religious education in schools?

Abstract Catholic education struggles with an apparent tension between student-centred methods and remaining true to the official Church teaching. The traditional view holds that students are to learn ecclesial facts, but contemporary pedagogy promotes a wider range of experiences. Consequentially, teachers struggle with the question of how to deal with reasonable student dissent on non-infallible teachings like contraception, female ordination and homosexuality. This essay comments on interview findings that religion teachers attempt to accommodate dissent, but since there is no firm theoretical grounding for student-centred methods the possibility of nurturing a reasonable intra-Church intellectual plurality becomes lost in the Catholic school.

Why Dissent Is a Vital Concept in Moral Education.

Moral education is concerned with depolarising the tension between loyalty and sedition, but little work has been done in the field to describe and map the territory between these poles. This paper proposes that the concept of dissent accomplishes this task and satisfies the need for a construct which describes the condition of sitting apart from those one is a part of. Through a seven‐part descriptive and prescriptive conceptual analysis it is revealed that this kind of ‘loyal disagreement’ depends upon disagreeing within rigorous and desirable conceptions of franchise, shared history, contra‐hegemony, ethical principles, reasonable heresy and a publicly pronounced attitude of persuasion. Through revealing dissent’s conceptual complexity, this argument also demonstrates that such complexity is also, generally speaking, central to the aims of moral education insofar as these can be described as making correct judgements in the interests of maintaining social relationships.

The Catholic school, controversial issues and the laity: a Canadian research study

Catholic schools have an important role in helping cultivate the future adult laity, especially given the continuing numerical decline and ageing of clergy and vowed religious persons. As there is demonstrable plurality among the laity on some issues that are controversial within the Church, however, and receiving and responding to controversy is an inherent feature of participation and leadership in the Church, it stands that the way in which Catholic schools frame the discussion of controversial issues will have some influence upon the way in which todays students imagine their future participation as adults in the Church. This paper demonstrates how Catholic students in a private Catholic high school perceive its role in discussing issues such as contraception, same-sex marriage, and abortion. The findings reveal a variety of perspectives on what students think a Catholic school should emphasise, and the discussion explores their implications for Catholic educational theory and practice.

Catholic schooling, the concept of laity, and the future church

Abstract The Catholic laity currently faces some concerns that are of importance to its future. The current decline and ageing of clergy affects the availability of sacraments and leadership. Moreover, the plurality of views among Catholics on ordination, ethical issues and Church governance suggests that controversy may accompany concurrent increased lay involvement. Finally, in recent years theorists have argued that the traditional establishment of clergy and laity as distinct categories unhelpfully sustains the laity in a passive role. So if the Catholic school wishes to respond to these challenges, it would be prudent to have some awareness of how Catholic school adolescents are currently establishing themselves within the Church. This paper uses semi-structured interviews with 16 Catholic high school students to focus on the questions of (1) what images and expectations adolescents have of the laity; and (2) how they respond to the fact of an ageing and declining clergy. These questions are coordinated so that conceptualising about the laity leads to indicating participants’ assumptions about the basis for any action in the Church, thus illuminating how one might think about Catholic education contributing to ecclesial structures.

Education in a Catholic perspective

the person should be used as explicit rationale for educationally emphasizing the ‘Right’ of community. Rousseau would applaud. Heinrichs wrote the concluding chapter, where she re-interpretatively engages most of the contributions. Although Heinrichs’ action theory is substantive, her attempt to broadly engage the reader is thwarted by having English as a second language. Her main foil is Jim Rest’s influential four component model, which Thoma and Bebeau reprise (and revise) in Part 1 of the handbook. Like Klöckner’s model, Heinrichs’ theory includes multiple sub-component processes in merely forming an intention. Her goal is to represent generic psychological processes, whether or not moral, as a series of distinct states that would predict morally relevant action. Why be moral? The handbook makes plain that grappling with this question remains a central task in advancing developmental theory, research, and education. We confront it when we connect theories of social psychological processes with theories of holistic development. We frame it by articulating personhood through meta-ethics and conceptions of the good life. We engage it when we seek to educate. There is no single answer, but our answers and how we understand the question will shape who we become.