A Faith Community of Learning

A Catholic MAC creates, supports and enriches Catholic schools as faith communities of learning, working together to achieve results beyond anything they could achieve alone.

Can a MAC call itself Catholic if it has not appointed a fully qualified and experienced Person in Charge of Catholic Life? Who else on the team can build, lead, monitor and evaluate the success of their core purpose of preaching the gospel message through excellent teaching and learning?

Don’t claim to be part of the diocesan mission to serve the gospel if you don’t have an expert on delivering Catholic Life.

You fail the test of being a Catholic MAC if, when asked where Catholic Life surfaces in your schools, you start by listing how many times you have Mass said in your schools, or claim that pupils lead prayers in form time, run Mini Vinnies, or assert you are Christ-centred without explaining what that phrase means.

Catholic schools are living faith communities of learning where everything that happens is an example of and expresses Catholic Life. A few prayer sessions and a chapel do not make it Catholic.

They show their Catholic nature critically in their teaching and learning styles. It underpins and surfaces in teachiong and learning, in classroom activities, in relationships, in worship, in prayer, in behaviour policies, in leadership and must shape the aproach to isolation chambers and punishment rituals.

A Catholic school can write about promoting prayer, social justice, religious activities, ritual, and visits from the local priest, if they can find one willing to visit.

A Catholic MAC can’t use those elements. A MAC isn’t a school.

The MAC organises Catholic Life across a cluster of schools. They might employ the best bean counters in the world, presiding over a bumper bottom line, but unless they can show how Catholic Life runs through every part of their enterprise, like the writing through a stick of rock, then they are a fraud.

Reading Catholic school and MAC websites can be a depressing exercise. Explanations of their Catholic nature are littered with slogans, shibboleths, and slight of language. Sprinkling “Christ-centred”, “Mini-Vinnies” and “Gospel values” in the verbose meanderings on their website does not make them Catholic. Their writing diminishes a tradition whose richness is beyond anything they can comprehend. They might as well print badges reading, ‘This is a Catholic school’, and let the badge say it.

When MACs and schools see their role primarily in terms of educational activities with the Catholic element tacked on, or something they do on special days, or that happens in rooms set aside for prayer activities, then they might just as well be named “The Fred Gubbins Academy”, part of the Fred Gubbins Carpet Bespoke Carpet Empire with the motto “We Pile Up the Goodness”.

A Catholic MAC is the organiser, the structural engineer of learning and growth in faith communities that cover the years of a child growing from age 3 to age 18. The skilful combining of schools, families, and parishes is the MAC’s responsibility.

The educational and theological implications of what they do are enormous.

The range and reach of their planned activities would task the skill of a general in a war.

They are doing this in an education system battered and bruised, understaffed, under-resourced, unappreciated, lacking in vision, with inept authorities advocating going back to a dead past as the best way of facing an unfurling future.

A Catholic MAC must explain how they manage the four key elements vital to the young person’s personal growth in faith from age 3 to age 18 . How do they weave them through the daily life and the richest educational processes possible? They need to show how doing that for their cluster of schools enriches the experience in each of its schools across the group.

An experienced Person in Charge of Catholic Life will show them how to do it.

a) Each child and student will experience over those years all aspects of the faith community of learning that they have joined: its rituals, its high points, its rules, its regulations, its ethics, its worship, its guidance, its invitation to be a participating leader, its successes, its service of the poor, its worldwide reach and its continuity over time and through history. That programme requires planning and access to the best experiences.

b) They will know the faith community’s basic beliefs, its teaching, its moral stance, its structure. They will see the place of their faith community of learning in the wider world of the Church, and be able to articulate these elements when asked. That knowledge demands excellent RE teaching.

c) Each child and student will understand what they experience and know. They will grasp the implications and applications. As a result, they will work out their responses to the daily events in their world, without running to an answer machine spewing out set texts that are irrelevant in an ever-changing world. That growing insight requires sustained example and well-planned, rich opportunities and superb guidance.

d) By the end of their time in their faith community of learning each student will commit to living their faith. Or they may delay that commitment while they develop more knowledge, or gain more understanding of their faith experience, or engage with a wider range of faith activities. There will be the possibility, like the rich young man in the gospel, that some will walk away with a heavy heart. That time of decision requires trust by the providers and openness by the young person.

Catholic MAC leaders, tell us how your coordination of all these elements across your schools adds value to what each does and we will call down blessings on you and your enterprises.

© Ted Dunphy

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Disclaimer

I am not connected with the Birmingham Diocesan Education Service or the Catholic Education Service. The views expressed are my own and are based on experience, research and evidence. 

The experience comes from teaching in and working with Catholic schools around England over many years.

The research is based on the past three years investigating Catholic school websites in countries around the world, but especially in England.

An evidence-based approach challenges and refines the learning from the experience and the research.

I strongly support Pope Francis’ concept of synodality as a way of finding truth. I welcome you to have your say.

Ted Dunphy

edwarddunphy1@mac.com

Tel: 44 (0) 7891 179180

www.schoolwebsitewriting.com