Archbishop Timothy Costelloe SDB greets Linda Rainsberry, PhD candidate at Mary Immaculate College, Maeve Mahon, Co-ordinator of Primary Education, Kildare and Leighlin, and Dr Marie Griffin Chair of the Catholic Educational Partnership. There is no place for wellbeing programmes that “deny” the Catholic Church’s unique understanding of humanity in Catholic schools, a major international conference attended by Ireland’s leading educators has heard.
Speaking at the Global Researchers Advancing Catholic Education (GRACE) conference at the University of Notre Dame Australia in Perth last week, Irish theologian Prof. Eamonn Conway, who gave the opening keynote lecture, said that what young people grapple with today is not so much fear of truth claims but rather fear that there may be no truth at all, and so, that their lives lack ultimate meaning and distinctive purpose.
There is no place in Catholic schools and colleges, Fr Conway said, for wellbeing programmes “that deny, bracket or ignore the unique understanding of human flourishing that the Catholic intellectual tradition draws upon, or which fail to invite students and staff alike to consider Christ as ‘the way, the truth and the life.’”
The Irish delegation included Catholic teachers and principals from Ireland, North and South, as well as the CEOs and Board Chairs of the key management and trust bodies.