Craigmyle Lecture 5 October 2017

The full text of the Craigmyle Lecture given by the Rt Hon Baroness Scotland QC, Secretary-General of the Commonwealth on 5 October 2017 is at the link below:

Secretary-General Patricia Scotland Craigmyle Lecture

The text of the Press Release issued by the Commonwealth Secretariat is at the link below:

http://thecommonwealth.org/media/news/secretary-general-opens-discussion-faith-commonwealth

 

 

Children and the Lord’s Prayer

Children and the Lord’s Prayer

Children at primary schools in the West of England have taken part in a special “Lord’s Prayer” project run by the Catholic Union’s Education Committee. The project is also supported by an ecumenical group – Christian Projects. A London-based group, LOGS, based at the Church of the Most Precious Blood at London Bridge, also took part, covering schools across Greater London and Surrey.

In the 2017 Children’s Handwriting and Artwork Project, children at primary schools in Somerset, Berkshire, Devon, Wiltshire and Hampshire showed their understanding of the Lord’s Prayer by writing it out and answering questions about it. The project followed a similar venture in 2016 for schools in Yorkshire and Lancashire.

Children were also asked to explain the meaning of “hallowed” and “trespasses” and many of them showed that they fully understood what these words meant.

Joanna Bogle, who leads this programme, has devised a simple leaflet that is sent to voluntary aided primary schools – mostly Catholic or Church of England – inviting them to take part in the project and the entries came pouring in to the Catholic Union office.

Education committee chairman Priscilla Sharp said “The aim is to help teachers to encourage children to get to know and appreciate this beautiful prayer”

“The judges were impressed with the children’s work – it is always hard choosing who should get prizes. There were some fine examples of really good calligraphy – and some excellent answers to the questions.”

Every child taking part in the project received a commemorative prayer card with the words of the Lord’s Prayer, and the best entries received specially-commissioned prayer books.

MARTYRS AND EXILES

MARTYRS AND EXILES: TRAGEDY AND HOPE IN THE MIDDLE EAST

A record audience of over 100 people crowded into the Trafalgar Hall at Notre Dame University near Trafalgar Square on Thursday 1 June to hear two complementary accounts of the current situation for Christians and other persecuted minorities in the Middle East.  The event entitled “Martyrs and Exiles” was organised by the Catholic Union Charitable Trust.

The first speaker was Gerard Russell, the former British and UN diplomat and author of Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms: Journeys into the Disappearing Religions of the Middle East. Gerard began by recalling the ambush and murder of a group of Coptic Christians in Egypt on 26 May who were on their way to a monastery.  Sadly this is only the latest in a series of attacks on Egypt’s minority Christian community which makes up 10% of the population.

Gerard said that he had wanted to show in his book that the situation does not need to be like this and that it hasn’t always been like this. In earlier centuries Christians, while not regarded as equal in Islamic societies, were often recognised and valued in the public space. In Egypt, Copts have served as Prime Minister although their situation deteriorated under President Sadat.

Gerard also spoke about some of the non-Christian minorities featured in his book: the Yazidis, Druze, Mandeans, Samaritans and Zoroastrians. He said that without adopting a relativist approach, religious liberalism should strengthen our faith and make us better Christians because it helped us understand more clearly the possible origins of some of our own ideas (for example, Zoroastrian ideas about heaven and hell). All these faiths have played a part in our history and while we don’t have to agree with them, he hoped that they would survive and he observed that they have proved remarkably resilient over many periods of persecution.

John Pontifex, Head of Press and Information for Aid to the Church in Need UK then spoke about his recent visit to Aleppo and the return of Christians to the Nineveh Plains.  Work in Iraq and Syria is now the main focus for ACN and John showed images of the destruction in Aleppo, including many of the ancient city’s cathedrals.  Aleppo has seen a 90% reduction in its Christian population and ACN supports those who remain-in many cases the poorest and weakest in society.  ACN also provides support for other faiths, including Muslims from Eastern Aleppo.

In Iraq, the proportion of Christians in the population has gone from 10% in 1980 to 1% in 2017, perhaps now as few as 150,000 people of whom half are displaced.  Nevertheless, with Daesh now removed from Nineveh, there is the possibility for Christians to return.  There are huge challenges as Christian villages have been devastated but ACN have been taking careful steps to support those who wish to return as they are best hope for the survival of the Christian community in Iraq.  What is needed is a “Marshall Plan” for Iraq and Archbishop Bashar Warda of Erbil was in London in May seeking support in meetings with the Prince of Wales, Cardinal Vincent Nichols and government officials.

Both speakers saw some grounds for hope amongst the destruction and killings, described by many as genocide, but a massive international effort will be required before Christians and other minorities can again live and flourish in these parts of the Middle East.

The next Catholic Union Lecture will be given by Baroness Scotland, Secretary-General of the Commonwealth on Thursday 5 October 2017 at Notre Dame University, London.

 

 

Martyrs and Exiles: Christian and other persecuted minorities in the Middle East.

Thursday 1 June at 6.30pm – Catholic Union Charitable Trust Lecture

Martyrs and Exiles: Christian and other persecuted minorities in the Middle East.

Speakers:

Gerard Russell – Former British and UN Diplomat. Author of “Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms” (Journeys into the Disappearing Religions of the Middle East). Gerard spent 14 years representing Britain in the Middle East and speaks Arabic and Dari.
His book published in 2014 chronicles the threatened religious minorities of the Middle East including the Copts, Yazidis, Zoroastrians, Druze and Samaritans. His article “The Long Good Friday” about Pope Francis’s visit to Egypt and the Copts appeared in the Catholic Herald on 28 April.

John Pontifex – Head of Press and Information, Aid to the Church in Need UK. John has worked for ACN for many years and has visited many countries where Christians are persecuted. He will speak about the situation in Aleppo and plans for displaced Christians to return to the Nineveh Plains of Iraq.

Venue: Notre Dame University, 1 Suffolk Street (off Trafalgar Square), London SW1Y 4HG. Lecture to be followed by a Drinks Reception.

Free Admission. All Welcome. Please register on Eventbrite (Martyrs & Exiles Lecture) or with the Catholic Union Office on 020 8749 1321 or at info@catholicunion.org.uk.

Do Our Schools have Mission Integrity ?

 

Do Our Catholic Schools Have Mission Integrity?: Part 1

by Prof Gerald Grace, of St Mary’s University Twickenham

  1. Introduction

I would like to begin this lecture by pointing out that the main question named for this presentation, necessarily provokes 3 subsidiary questions. These are:-

  1. What is the meaning of the concept of ‘Mission Integrity’ and of its opposite ‘Mission Drift’ and why is it important in the academic and research field known as Catholic Education Studies?
  2. Assuming for the present that it is important, how can we increase research which investigates the existence of ‘Mission Integrity’ or ‘Mission Drift’ in Catholic schools, nationally and internationally. On the latter point we must not focus only on ‘Our Catholic Schools’ as meaning those in the UK but rather our Catholic schools, meaning the 200,000 which exist internationally. We must, if we are Catholics always remember that we are part of an international Church (It was for this reason that I edited the first ever survey of research on Catholic education worldwide, reported in International Handbook of Catholic Education (2 vols) in 2007 and launched the first ever journal, International Studies in Catholic Education in 2009).
  3. However, it will be of interest to raise the question, ‘is the state of mission integrity of Catholic schools in the UK likely to be any different from those in other countries?

1  What is ‘Mission Integrity’ and its opposite ‘Mission Drift’?

We need to be clear about what we mean by ‘mission’.

  • Catholic education in its various forms of school, college, university and seminary is faced with the challenge of attempting to mediate to children, youth and adults some understanding of, and some engagement with the nature and the power of the sacred, which Emile Durkheim in his classic study, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (1912) defined as ‘superior in dignity and power to the elements of mundane life, to things ‘set apart’, to notions of the transcendent and divine, of souls and spirits and of the ultimate destiny of persons’ (p.422) – an inclusive definition which applies to all major religious groups.
  • For the Catholic Christian tradition this means in practice, engagement with the life and teachings of Jesus Christ and of the saints, regular participation in the Holy Mass, understanding the spiritual and moral teachings of the Church and the study and practice of Catholic Social Teaching. Catholic education, in all its forms, is a mission (inspired by Jesus Christ to ‘Go and Teach all Nations’ (Mt. 28.19); the Catholic school is not just a social or economic enterprise, it has higher purposes which relate to the formation of good people, of good citizens and of good Christians. That is its ultimate mission – a mission of personal transformation.
  • Mission Integrity highlights a central concept in all my writing, research and conference presentations. Having always insisted that Catholic education is a mission and not just a social or business enterprise and having emphasised the importance of mission statements as a condensed form of the theology of Catholic schooling, the issue of the nature of mission integrity in our contemporary Catholic education naturally arose as a focus for research.
  • In 2002, I defined Mission Integrity as ‘fidelity in practice and not just in public rhetoric to the distinctive and authentic principles of Roman Catholic education’ (p498). In other words, all schools in a prospectus or other marketing literature proclaim to parents what the fundamental principles are which permeate and regulate their ethos and educational practice.

The research question here is, to what extent does their actual day-to-day practice articulate with these public principles? To the extent to which there is a high degree of articulation, then it may be said that such a school has high mission integrity. To the extent to which there is low articulation, then it may be said that a school is experiencing mission drift.

  • Mission drift may be defined as ‘an unintentional historical process which causes a school in its practices to move away from its foundational mission principles’. This ‘drift’ may be caused by many factors eg. weak mission leadership from headteachers and governors, changed expectations from parents and external pressures from government policies and agencies and the effects of local and national media publicity about educational ‘success’.
  • If mission drift in Catholic schools should be found to be happening on a large scale, then the claim by Catholics that their schools have a distinctive spiritual educational ethos can be questioned and, over time, they could become ‘integrated’ with secular state schooling systems.

2 Who has the authority to define mission integrity for Catholic schools? The Roman Catholic Church and the definition of Mission Integrity

  •  In 1977, the Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education decided that the time had come to make an authoritative statement about ‘the distinctive and authentic principles’ which should characterise Catholic schools internationally. The document issued at the time, Simply called, The Catholic School can be regarded’ as the foundation charter and universal mission statement for Catholic schools’ (Grace 2016). It can be said that while certain local or situational adjustments may have to be made by schools in some locations (caused by cultural, ideological and economic circumstances) no school which claims the title ‘Catholic’ can be seriously at odds with the principles proclaimed by the Congregation in 1977.
  • The Catholic School (1977) document is therefore the authoritative guide for any research studies relating to mission integrity / mission drift.

PLEASE TURN TO PART 2 PAPER – click  here to read part 2

 REFERENCES

Durkheim, E. (1912/1971)             The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life London, Allen and Unwin.

 

Grace, G. (2002)                                ‘Mission Integrity: Contemporary Challenges for Catholic School Leaders’ in Second International Handbook of Educational Leadership and Administration: Part 1, Dordrecht, Kluwer Academic.

 

Grace, G. (2016)                                Endorsement for re-print of the Catholic School, London, CTS

Sacred Congregation for

Catholic Education (1977)            The Catholic School, Rome, Liberia Editrice Vaticana