Reflecting on my First Year of Teaching the Catholic Faith in the Contemporary Classroom

As we enter into the New Year, I have been reflecting on the previous year that was 2023, particularly as it relates to my experiences as a first year secondary teacher. No doubt, 2023 was a wonderful and blessed year filled with many opportunities to learn how to better love and serve the Lord Jesus Christ as a Catholic educator. In this short article, I reflect on a few insights that I have gained during my first year of teaching the Catholic faith in the contemporary classroom.

            Firstly, my work in the classroom is grounded in the belief that Catholic schools principally exist to serve the apostolic and educational mission of the Catholic Church, which is to announce the universal way of salvation by communicating to all the life of Jesus Christ: the Word of God made flesh.[1] Since this is the primary goal of an authentic Catholic education—indeed, its raison d'etre—Catholic educators must therefore be concerned with helping their students to grow closer to the knowledge and love of the Christ-God. The Catholic Religion does not profess faith in a god who is distant or impersonal, but rather, a loving God who desires to have a “personal relationship with” each human person.[2] As Pope Benedict XVI once noted in an address to the young people of Germany in 2005, the God of the Catholic Religion “has a name and a face: It is Jesus of Nazareth, hidden in the Eucharist.”[3] Thus, an insight that I have gained in the past year is that an authentic Catholic education will help the young people of our times to encounter and experience the Risen Christ, particularly as He makes Himself truly present in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, for in the Church’s Sacred Liturgy awaits the living God who desires to have a loving, intimate and personal relationship with each human person.

            Against this backdrop, I now wish to direct my attention to the teachings of St. Pope John Paul II, who in an apostolic letter celebrating the Jubilee Year 2000, taught that the Church must “apply, as faithfully as possible, the teachings of Vatican II to the life of every individual and of the whole Church.”[4] I recognise (and am sympathetic to) the view that perhaps some aspects of the Catholic faith and its practices are “no longer intelligible to the modern [or contemporary] world.”[5] This is not to suggest that the Catholic faith must be, or ought to be, changed, since the fullness of Divine Revelation “preserved in the Church… until the end of time” is immutable.[6] Rather, I am only proposing the consideration that as far as Catholic education is concerned, if some of the Church’s practices are “no longer intelligible to the modern world,” then Catholic educators must be prepared to adjust their teaching techniques and rely upon evidence-based practices to ensure that the Word of God can be accessible to all, particularly the young people of our contemporary world.[7] In this way, Catholic educators can say that they are working assiduously given their best means to faithfully hand on the holy and apostolic teachings of the Church to the next generation of believers. In a word, contemporary Catholic educators must be able to make the fullness of truth accessible to their communities through the practical aid of evidence-based teaching and contemporary pedagogical methods. This is why St Pope John Paul II described the New Evangelisation as being “new in its ardor, new in its methods, [and] new in its expressions.”[8] Thus, I have gained the insight that Catholic educators of our times must be accutely aware of the unique demands of their vocation in the Church, namely, of their responsibility to help each student to grow in the knowledge and love of Jesus Christ. Catholic educators should therefore rely upon the practical aid of their human teaching, grounded in evidence-based teaching practices and their own personal life of Christian witness, to faithfully serve the apostolic and educational mission of the Catholic Church.

            To summarise, this article contains a reflection on some of the insights that I have gained during my first year of teaching the Catholic Religion in the contemporary secondary classroom. I have come to appreciate that my role as a Catholic educator is to simply plant the seeds of faith in the lives of my students, even if it begins as “the smallest of all seeds,” because I hope and pray that “when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds come and perch in its branches” (Matthew 13:31-32). May God be praised!

[1] Congregation for Catholic Education, The Identity of the Catholic School for a Culture of Dialogue, Vatican Website, March 29, 2022, https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/en/bollettino/pubblico/2022/03/29/220329c.html#:~:text=To%20this%20end%2C%20the%20Catholic,world%2C%20life%20and%20man%20is.

[2] Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. (Vatican City: Vatican Press, 1997), 2558.

[3] Benedict XVI, Papal Address, August 8, 2005, https://champagnat.org/en/the-happiness-you-have-a-right-to-enjoy-has-a-name-and-a-face-it-is-jesus-of-nazareth/.

[4] Archbishop Salvatore Rino Fisichella, Council and Jubilee: A Vital Tie, Vatican Website, https://www.vatican.va/jubilee_2000/magazine/documents/ju_mag_01051997_p-20_en.html.

[5] Richard R. Gaillardetz, By What Authority? Foundations for understanding authority in the Church (Minnesota: Liturgical Press Academic, 2018), 7.

[6] Catechism of the Catholic Church, 77.

[7] Gaillardetz, By What Authority?, 7.

[8] Sergio Giovanni Pintor, The Holy Spirit: Protagonist of the New Evangelisation, Vatican Website, https://www.vatican.va/jubilee_2000/magazine/documents/ju_mag_01111997_p-72_en.html.