PART 1: INTRODUCTION
Our current context is no longer marked by a dominant Christian world view; instead, a plurality of religious and non-religious world views present themselves. In this context, the Christian person has to choose to be Christian rather than to be Christian ‘by default’. Fr Frank O’Loughlin, in his book This Time of the Church, identifies this change as a transition from Christendom to pluralism (O’Loughlin 2012, Chapter 1). In so many of our school communities there is increasing diversity of culture and religion alongside a decreasing familiarity with the Catholic tradition. How might Catholic schools respond to this changed and still changing context? The ECSI research findings indicate three necessary responses to this context – or three shifts: 1. a move away from secularising tendencies and towards a strengthened Catholic identity. 2. the move from a literal faith position to a faith position that opens itself to interpretation, difference and otherness (post critical belief). 3. a move away from a harmonising approach in pedagogical practices where Christian values are emptied of their Christian particularity (Christian Values Education). This third shift attends faithfully to the Christian narrative, situating the Christian tradition right in the middle of the plural cultural context and there making new meaning through the process of recontextualisation. Together, these three critical responses constitute the theological normative.
