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As challenges to anti-discrimination exemptions are likely to persist within Catholic education, how can the government and religious institutions collaborate effectively to balance the freedom of expressing religious beliefs with safeguarding the rights and freedoms of everyone involved?
As Australia grapples with educational inequality, those in the Catholic education system must ask: how do we test for a clear commitment to Catholic Social Teaching and the seminal role it plays in enunciating the guiding principles of Catholic education, particularly in regard to it being offered, ‘first and foremost … to the poor’?
Every Australian diocese and parish already has its particular subcultural identity that inflects its liturgy. Celebration, being the authentic hallmark of a liturgy that reflects identity, must keep pace with a theology that also incorporates the diverse cultural space that the young inhabit.
Martel's work cannot be ignored because it is published at a time when the Church is engulfed by several sexual scandals of global magnitude. Reviewing Martel's book provides an opportunity to critically examine the narratives of accusation and defence that surround such accounts, so that onlookers can make sense of them.
Amid the furore surrounding Minister Birmingham's disclosure of figures showing massive discrepancies in public funding between some independent schools and low-SES schools, some facts need scrutinising. Systemic Catholic schools draw for their enrolment from lower-SES postcodes than independent schools. Postcodes being an indelible predictor of the educational chances of Australians, balancing systemic school funding against that of independent schools is politically and ethically problematic.
Given that Catholic and independent schools tend to produce better results than government schools, one would expect to be able to demonstrate that the non-government sector adds more value to a student's education. The evidence does not bear this out.
There is much to salvage from Howard's policies, misconstrued as universally liberal and bereft of state intervention in the interests of the underprivileged. More could be done to link such a policy frame with several aspects of Catholic Social Teaching.
Michael Furtado on public money and private schools.