CATHOLIC schools will always face the tension between wanting to be as inclusive and tolerant as other educators, and wanting to be exclusive and distinctive in their endorsement of Catholic values, says Jesuit Father Frank Brennan.
Fr Brennan, a lawyer and social justice activist, was speaking at a conference at Jupiters Casino on the Gold Coast involving 400 Catholic school teachers and administrators from Brisbane archdiocese.
The Celebrating Inclusive Practices in Catholic Schools Conference was held on July 6 and 7.
Fr Brennan spoke on the topic ‘The Church as a Tolerant and Inclusive Employer, Teacher and Community versus The Church as an Exclusive, Counter-Cultural Witness, Practitioner and Community’.
He said there was ‘no neat answer to the tension’.
‘It is irresolvable and it is messy. It we are to celebrate inclusive practices, we have to admit the tension between being the Church as a tolerant and inclusive employer, teacher and community, and being the Church as an exclusive, counter-cultural witness, practitioner and community.’
Among the challenges, Fr Brennan spoke of was dealing with abuse.
‘Whether before the courts or in the glare of media publicity, we still need to extend pastoral care to the victim of abuse, seeking a relationship of reconciliation,’ he said.
‘As Church we must get our own affairs in order if we are to celebrate inclusive practices, appreciating that our students may still have claims on our pastoral solicitude many years after they have left our classrooms.’
