THE core message delivered to a recent round of meetings between Brisbane archdiocesan parish priests and school principals was that Catholic schooling is all about Jesus.
Priests and Principals forums are held on average every three years and the latest round of meetings were held in four locations over five days to accommodate participants from every part of the archdiocese.
Brisbane Catholic Education (BCE) executive director David Hutton said the forums looked at productive ways priests and principals worked together in their common vision on behalf of the Church.
Mr Hutton said BCE had grown 41 per cent in student enrolments in the 13-and-a-half years he had been executive director.
“There is no other diocese in the country that has grown like that and that presents us with challenges and opportunities,” he said.
Mr Hutton said that time had also seen a more competitive understanding of education particularly in metropolitan areas.
“(This is) what is sometimes called a commodification of education, turning it into a product,” he said.
He said rather than going to a local Catholic or state school and enrolling a child and joining that community, parents now spent time investigating the merits of various schools before making a decision.
Mr Hutton said this meant it was “as though (the parents) are purchasing a product of education rather than joining a community of educators”.
He said the aim of the recent forums was to enhance an existing positive, good relationship between archdiocesan priests and principals.
“The school, the ministry of the school, is contexted within the broader mission of the Church whether that be the local parish or in some cases the school serving multiple parishes in terms of some of our larger secondary colleges,” he said.
Mr Hutton said much of the discussion during the forums focused on the rewriting of a 1993 document titled “The Pastor and the Parish School”.
“We decided to rewrite that document about two years ago and we set up a joint working party of the Council of Priests and the Catholic Education Council,” he said.
Mr Hutton said the document discussed at the 2012 Priests and Principals forums was the sixth draft of the new document titled “Collaborating for Mission – The parish and the Catholic school”.
“So we have done a fair amount of work and it is by no means at this stage complete,” he said.
He said the next few months would see further opportunities for feedback from priests and principals before the document would be finalised and recommended to Archbishop Mark Coleridge for his approval as a policy document for the archdiocese.
“No document can say everything; we are trying to focus on some key relationship issues here and that is absolutely at the heart of what this is about,” Mr Hutton said.
“It is about the quality of working relationship in the mission of the Church.”
Mr Hutton said the rewrite was necessary due to the significant growth in south-east Queensland and the archdiocese since 1993.
He said most of the new schools built in that time were archdiocesan schools as opposed to parish schools.
“What we have attempted to do over the last 15 years or so is build very strong pastoral links between the archdiocesan schools and the local parish or parishes that that school serves,” he said.
Archbishop Coleridge was at each meeting, leading participants in prayer and reminding them of the importance of working together to hand on the gift of the Gospel.
“In the end there is only one teacher and that’s Jesus; we have to mediate him,” he said.
