Religious Education in Catholic Schools to Educate for Living Faith

Abstract

The central proposal of this essay is that religious education in Catholic schools is to educate for living faith and not simply for instruction about Catholic or other religious traditions. For long this claim was taken for granted. Now, however, and for various reasons, there is growing sentiment that formation in faith is exclusively the work of family and parish, whereas religious education in Catholic schools is to proceed solely as an academic discipline, teaching religion as one might teach mathematics or science or any other subject. This essay proposes that we resist this diminution of religious education in Catholic schools (hereafter RECS) and precisely to honor the nature, purpose, and ways of knowing that are inherent to Christian faith, and likewise to reflect the Christian intellectual tradition.