Search

LGBTQIA+ educators are a gift to Catholic schools. In this article, two researchers affiliated with the University of San Francisco conducted a national survey of LGBTQIA+ educators in Catholic schools that highlights the blessings and challenges of their work. The survey results demonstrate that, despite the tension and fear experienced by these educators, they still offer significant contributions to the mission of Catholic schools through their prophetic witness of advocacy and inclusion. Most importantly, their LGBTQIA+ identity serves as a foundation for a deeper relationship with God through their vocation as educators. Many LGBTQIA+ educators, who have every reason to leave Catholic education in search for more stability, choose to stay in Catholic schools to support students, deepen their faith, and promote a Catholic climate of inclusion in their schools. Catholic school leaders should stop dismissing them and seek to fully include them into the life and work of the school. In this article, the researchers explore the historical climate regarding LGBTQIA+ educators in Catholic schools and raise some moral and theological questions. Then they analyze the responses to the national survey to generate some key findings. They conclude with some recommendations on how Catholic leaders can best appreciate and include the gifts LGBTQIA+ educators bring to Catholic education.

Public debates and controversies on moral issues have gained visibility in recent decades in both Spain and Mexico. Conservative Catholic groups and networks are increasingly playing a crucial role in raising and framing highly morally charged themes in the public arena, especially on intimacy‐related policies, including sexual and reproductive freedoms. A new generation of young Catholic leaders becoming key political agents has emerged in this scenario. They are fostering new mobilisation repertoires in the public sphere (e.g., digital activism and public performances) and promoting new political narratives merging moral, cultural, and religious elements. These highly religious and conservative young Catholics consider themselves part of a cultural/cognitive minority and feel entitled to become what Howard Becker termed "moral entrepreneurs." Most have been educated in Catholic schools and belong to Catholic movements. Still, they can also navigate secular politics and strategically use different regimes of justification and action. Within this context, the article aims to examine and compare the intersection of historical trends and the relevance of individual biographies to understand the role of these young Catholics in the public space in both countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the conservative and religious origins of social work and the agency of Catholic women in the organization of social action and schools of domestic and family education. The first part of the article discusses the relations between Catholicism and feminine engagement in social action. In the second part, the focus switches to religious women of the Society of the Daughters of the Heart of Mary and Stella de Faro, leader of the Ação Católica Brasileira (Brazilian Catholic Action), in the creation of Rio de Janeiro's first Catholic school of social work, Instituto Social. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Critics, past and present, of state-funded denominational education in Scotland after 1918 have often asserted that the system has promoted social division, separateness and even fostered sectarianism. This lecture – the Cardinal Winning Lecture, 2017, delivered to the St Andrew's Foundation for Catholic Teacher Education, University of Glasgow – disagrees with these views. Instead, the presentation argues that Catholic schooling, in addition to its recognised importance in Christian spiritual formation, has been a crucial influence promoting the integration of a formerly disadvantaged and marginalised community into modern Scotland. 'Integration' is defined for this purpose as the process of incorporation into mainstream society as equal citizens. The lecture considers the long and rocky road to this achievement by setting the educational experience within the broader context of Scottish religious, social, political and economic history in the twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article seeks to overcome a traditional disjuncture between labor and religious history by analyzing the role of labor schools as central points of contact between the Catholic Church and workers in the mid-twentieth century. It takes as its primary subject Hartford's Diocesan Labor Institute, which operated from 1942 to 1967. Hartford's program is of particular historical interest due to its longevity, its extensive public reach, and its role as a model for the founding of several other labor schools. he present study argues that gender and class shifts--particularly the increasing entry of women into the workforce and a perceived climb up the class ladder by Catholic workers--together contributed to both the rise and decline of Catholic labor edu- cation in Connecticut and the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The first Roman Catholic HbS for girls in the Netherlands was founded in 1914 by the Sisters Franciscans of Heythuysen, at the request of the Catholic elite of Amsterdam. The school grew so fast that already in 1925 a new building on the Reynier Vinkeleskade was opened. The character of the HbS made the school not only a breeding ground for Catholic women's emancipation, but also a place where girls could study the medical and the exact sciences. Some of them became the first female doctors and laboratory workers in Amsterdam. Initially, the school had an elitist character, but from the moment the school became a 'lyceum' in 1926, students from other layers of the (Catholic) population started to come to the school. With the opening of an MMS-department in 1952 the school got a new name: Fons Vitae Lyceum. It still exists under that name. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Enrolment in US Catholic schools is declining at a time when the number of US Catholics is increasing due, in large part, to the rapid growth of the US Latino population. To understand these enrollment trends the Institute for Latino Studies, on behalf of the University of Notre Dame Task Force on Latinos in Catholic Education, conducted focus groups among Latinos in seven US cities to examine Latino Catholic perceptions of Catholic schools. The basic story that emerged from the focus groups was uniform: Latinos value Catholic school education for many reasons. However, the perception that Catholic schools are simply unaffordable not only prevents Latinos from enrolling their children but also lessens the likelihood that they will seek information about Catholic schools. The report concludes by offering solutions proposed by Latino parents to make Catholic schools more appealing to them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

France is a country with a Catholic culture and a strictly secular state in which the treatment by Catholic schools of the role of religion in school has been, and continues to be, very contested. This situation has prompted an enormous literature, including significant contributions from Catholic theorists and practitioners. Three principal aspects of the Catholic response are identified and examined. These are the ending of the confrontation between the Catholic and the secular school, the acceptance and promotion of a vision of teaching and learning that is peculiar to the Catholic tradition, and a commitment to promoting the religious dimension of teaching and learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces an emerging movement in catechesis within the academic community. Arguing from the urgency discerned in available data, Philippine catechesis has much to inherit from Catholic tertiary institutions. The shortage of capable catechists viz a viz the growing population of pupils from the government-run primary institutions stands to be the biggest challenge yet to the evangelising mission of the Church. To address the issue, this paper reflects upon the observations and attitudes gathered from the field where volunteer tertiary students had immersed in catechetical education. The favourable responses of volunteers towards the catechetical experience show a new-found hope in Asia's only Catholic nation. This relevant youth experience stands out as a viable strategy for local churches from other parts of the world to harness their students' skills and imagination as agents of evangelisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers a case study of the ways in which a Catholic primary school located in the centre of a large South-Asian community in Leicester, UK, responded to the religious and ethnic diversity of its surroundings. The school, Our Saviour's, engaged in shared activities with a neighbouring school which had a majority intake of Hindu, Muslim and Sikh children. Approaches to religious education at Our Saviour's combined with weekly shared activities with the neighbouring school resulted in improved inter-ethnic relations in the surrounding community, as children from both schools began socialising after school hours. This article draws on ethnographic research to give a case study of the ways in which Our Saviour's employed a responsive approach to single faith schooling by engaging with religious and ethnic diversity as a means of promoting dialogue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]