Faith_Leadership_1

Introduction Schools are a miniature community. They, like the communities in which they are set, reflect what is happening in society and are shaped by current agendas and the cultural environment. Australian Catholic schools today differ from those of the past in many ways. The Catholic Identity of schools, advances in technology, political accountabilities, defined curriculum and the composition of the student population have all changed. The Catholic School in the Threshold of the Third Millennium tells us that “New requirements have given force to the demand for new contents, new capabilities and new educational models besides those followed traditionally. Thus education and schooling become particularly difficult today.” (Congregation for Catholic Education, 1997. p1). The world is a constantly changing place and recently, the rate of change has increased dramatically. In their mission, all schools are impacted by this rapid change and particularly Catholic schools face enormous challenges resulting from situations in political, social and cultural spheres. With these political, social and cultural changes come a variety of challenges for faith leadership in Australian Catholic Schools and Catholic schools around the world. We know from both scholarly literature and from real world experience, that the challenges are great and varied for faith leaders in Australian Catholic schools. This essay will attempt to explore some of the challenges of faith leadership as expressed in scholarly literature and from a personal experience viewpoint. The particular challenges that will be explored in this essay are: * The change in organisation of the Catholic school * Parental perception and expectation of Catholic Education * The distance between the people and the church Challenge: The change in organisation of the Catholic School While the nature and purpose of Catholic schools have not changed fundamentally since their foundation, cultural, theological and ecclesial movements over time have had significant influences on how they are organised and how they function (McLaughlin, as cited in Belmonte, et al, 2006). Catholic schools began in the very early nineteenth century however it wasn’t until around 1820 when significant developments tool place in Catholic Education. Until the mid -19th century, Catholic schools received some financial assistance from governments under a variety of schemes and it was between 1872 and 1893, that every state passed an Education Act removing government funding. “Victoria was the first colony to introduce its Education Act, in 1872. Education was to be ‘free, compulsory and secular’ and funding for denominational schools was abolished” (Pascoe, 2003. p39). This began a turning point in Catholic Education with many lay teachers moving to Government Schools as funding was limited for payment in the Church schools. Australian Church leaders at the time appealed to religious orders from Ireland and other countries, and soon religious sisters and brothers were responding to their need. In some places, significant pressure was placed on Catholic parents from their Bishops to send their children to Catholic schools. It is reported Pascoe (2003), that Catholics were threatened that they would be refused communion at Mass if they did not send their children to the school. The number of religious teaching increased throughout the early 1900’s and Catholic schools expanded in size and number. Whilst the schools were often poorly resourced, they enjoyed autonomy and freedom. Until the 1960s, Catholic schools, taught mostly by sisters and brothers became the main socialising agency for producing Catholics (English, 2007). The Catholic school was seen as an extension of the church and became the community in which Catholic people lived and interacted. The 1960s was a time of change for Catholic schools and the Catholic Church. The post war influx to Australia of a migrant population from Italy, Malta, Germany, Croatia and many other places saw a changing face of the Australian Catholic Church. The church also changed with Vatican 2. In Australia, the 1960s saw the ‘Goulburn Strike’ which was essentially a fight for State Aid to non-government schools. In her article Catholic Education: Looking forward, looking back, Pascoe (2003) explains “In 1963, religious constituted 51.2% teaching staff in Melbourne parish primary schools, by 1971 this had fallen to 32.1%” (p40). Currently, religious constitute less than 1% of staff in Catholic Schools. This brought about further teaching shortages and financial issues for Catholic schools. In addition, teachers in Catholic schools became lay people and most significantly to the organisation of schools, had not done a strict novitiate and were not trained to do as they were told. Formation in faith is a key attribute for leaders in Catholic schools. The church has always required proper preparing of those who exercise a ministry (United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2005). Pope John Paul II told us “To set high standards, means both to provide a thorough basic training and to keep it constantly updated” (p33). With the decline in religious teachers and school leaders, it is even more imperative that faith formation of all staff, but especially leaders, is maintained to high standard. In many smaller communities, the school principal is often seen as the connection to the church. Whilst this can be an honour, it is also a challenge for leaders in this way. The decline in religious staff in Catholic schools is obvious today. I attended parish primary schools in country Victoria through the late 1980’s and recall having religious sisters as school leaders. Now, less than 20 years later, it is not uncommon for parish communities to have no religious brothers or sisters, and becoming even more so, in our little part of Victoria that parishes no longer have their own parish priest. This too is a significant change in the Church which leads to challenges for faith leadership in our Australian Catholic schools. Challenge: Parent perception and expectation of Catholic Education Over the last 50 years, the organisation of Catholic Education has continued to change in this way. Graham English, in his commentary Catholic Religious Education in Australia (2007) explains that “For many, the church has ceased being their primary community. It has become just one community among others that Catholics are part of” (p4). He goes further to talk about the fact that parents stressed pastoral care, discipline, and good quality education as higher priorities than religious education in their top ten requirements for Catholic schools. Government accountability encourages this type of response from a parent population. The recent release of MySchools website and publication of school result data has allowed, although governments said it wouldn’t, production of school ranking lists. Initially these types of transparencies were not presented with the fullness of the picture of schools and some parents, educated or not, built a perception based on these results. Further to this, as the Head of Year 7 at a regional Catholic College, I was privileged to have been given the responsibility of completing pre-enrolment interviews with parents and children wanting to enrol at the College. Though a reflection on society, it was concerning for me that discipline, good teaching and academic results were all listed regularly by parents as reasons for wanting their children to attend our College. It was rare that parents would reflect that Religious Education and education in the faith of the church were important. Even more intriguing to me was that some parents would express that they were students of the College and wanted their children to experience the same education that they did. Further discussion however leads back to focuses above as opposed to the Catholic life of the school. Of interest is the general age of parents of primary school age children today. It could be argued that many parents are part of the Generation X cohort (born 1960 – 1975). Mackay (as cited in Rymarz, 2004) describes Generation X as the options generation, characterised as moral boundary riders. Having options brings with it freedom from commitment and little interest in ideology (Barna, cited in Rymarx, 2004). This is in line with my perception and experience of life as a leader in a Catholic school today. It is a rare occurrence to hear a parent discuss a child’s ‘progress’ in regard to religious education. Parents are far more concerned with the assessment based subjects such as literacy, numeracy and science. A point that I have found through involvement in Parish activities, and one which Graham English raises, is that many of our Catholic school teachers are themselves, parents of children in Catholic schools. English suggests that ‘we can presume that they want what most parents want. We also have to presume that the teachers’ way of being Catholic is roughly the same as all other Australian Catholics way of being Catholic” (para 9). Although I would not claim that church attendance makes a Catholic person, I do believe that raising our children in the Catholic faith includes the element of worship, and what fuller and more powerful worship is there than the celebration of the Eucharist. This is a particular challenge for faith leadership and for the future of our Catholic schools today. As leaders we face the challenge of ensuring the Catholic Identity, the things that make us truly Catholic, are preserved and celebrated in our schools. In some cases this is a contradiction to the views expressed by parents and young people. Challenge: The distance between people and the Church There are a number of issues and challenges facing the Church in this new millennium so much so that Treston (as cited in Belmote, 2006) concludes that as a result it faces uncertainty, division and confusion. The first point to consider here is one that appears to have been a concern of church leaders for some time. That is the diminishing size of congregations and the further, the ageing population of priests and the decline in vocations to the priesthood. James McEvoy (2002), in his article Faithful Witness in a Fractured World, describes a picture that seems so real in my experience of the last 10 years. Thirty five years later then community gathers on Saturday evening for the Eucharist, although ‘gather’ is hardly the right word. Scattered at the back and to the edges, with a small clump front and centre, fifty parishioners, mainly elderly, pray in modest, undemonstrative fashion. This picture of declining church attendance is parcelled throughout our land. (p1) My observations at a local parish level are supported by the data. According to the 2001 National Attendance Count conducted by the Pastoral Projects Office of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, around 765,000 people attended church in Catholic parishes and other centres on a typical weekend (Dixon, 2002). This represents around 15.3% of the Australian Catholic population in 2001. This concern was raised at a Parish Pastoral Council at our local parish last year, particularly in relation to younger people attending Mass. Our Parish priest at the time, whilst acknowledging the concern, proceeded to remind the group that although we may not see young people at church, we are educating and evangelising to almost 1800 school aged children in our Parish Catholic Schools. This sentiment, whilst not increasing church attendance at our parish, is reflective of society and of the Rymarz Culture 3 Gen X Catholic group. The concern was acknowledged too by Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, in the early 1980’s. He lists the emptying of churches, seminaries and convents in the previous 10 years as the first in a series of disturbing, negative factors that cannot be denied” (cited in McEvoy, 2002). In the 30 years since, this trend seems to have continued. Here in our Parish, I am a member of the Baptism Preparation Team and regularly see parents who bring their children for Baptism. Much like the parents of the Year 7 children I discussed early, these parents list that their request for baptism is about my child having what I had, belonging and, most sadly, so they can be enrolled in a Catholic school. These parents are not regularly seen at Sunday Mass. This group is what Rymarz (2004) refers to as Culture 3 Gen X Catholics. Like my experiences, he explains that this group is a very large group within the Catholic Culture. He insists that they are connected to the church on some way – perhaps through attendance on special occasions such as Christmas and Easter. The strongest link however, is through Catholic schools, either as students or through their own children. This is a seemingly important point in relation to the challenge of distance between the people and the church. This large group of Culture 3 Gen X Catholics see themselves as part of the wider group which is the church, but this identity doesn’t impact strongly on the way they practice their faith. Rymarz goes on to say that “the Catholic tradition can be seen as an important part of their family background, with parents or grandparents expressing much more explicit and identifiably Catholic views.” In exploring this challenge further, Dixon (2003) compares survey data from 1996 and 2001 in his article Mass attendance trends among Australian Catholics. He looks at two points that are of great interest. The first is in relation to the age of Mass attendees. He finds that age varies greatly with over 30% of Catholic people aged 70 and over to only 6% of Catholic people in their 20s attending Mass regularly. An implication for this is that the low rate of attendees in their 20s will likely lead to further falls in the number of children attending mass and the cycle is likely to continue. The other point that Dixon looks at is the pattern of young adults returning to mass. This is something I have found has happened personally, and have given some thought to whether their is a pattern or not. Dixon found that there was a pattern of return to mass attendance when young adults children are baptised or begin school. He concluded however that the net effect is very small. Whilst the rate of church attendance is on the decline is seen in experience and in data, the challenge for the church is that, as Dixon (2003) puts it “...in the foreseeable future, the majority of people in each successive generation of people who identify themselves as Catholic will not belong to the Church in any substantial way. People of earlier generations had to gauge the cost of opting out of the church; now younger people have to decide whether to opt in”. (p1) This continues to pose challenges for Faith leadership in Australian Catholic schools as children are becoming less and less familiar with the practices of the Church. The teachings of the Gospel are what give Catholic schools their ethos and culture and there is a very real fear that if we teach values as opposed to Catholic Religious Education we are no longer different and unique. Maintaining the traditions of our faith with a largely unchurched population of children and even parents is a challenge now and will continue to be a greater challenge into the future. Conclusion Whilst Faith leadership in Australian Catholic schools is a highly challenging role today, it will continue to become more and more challenging in years to come. Like those before us, we are seeing an increasing secular society and of those that are baptised Catholic, a great minority are practicing the faith as it had been in generations past. The impact of the change in organisation of Catholic schools, from being run and taught in by mainly religious to now being almost entirely lay teachers and leaders has been and will continue to be a profound challenge for faith leaders and our schools. The challenge of parental perception and expectation is that majority essentially want to enrol their children in a good school, not necessarily a Catholic school. This too creates challenges for faith leaders and their school as they attempt to uphold the traditions of an aging faith in a modernised and secular world. Of greatest challenge explored in this paper, is the distance that has been created between the people and the Church. As generation after generation pass, the explicit trend is a decreasing participation in the Church. This is observed in both literature and in life. This is the most concerning challenge for me as a faith leader in a small parish community. While there is much research and literature about challenges for faith leadership in Australian Catholic schools, the answers, solutions and ways forward are not so clear and obvious.