Two major real-world problems prompted this study: maintaining the Catholic identity of the Catholic schools, and increasing interest in character education. Traditionally, Catholic schools in the United States were staffed exclusively by priests, sisters, and brothers. Today, they are predominately staffed by laypersons. This change has influenced the essential religious character and culture of Catholic schools. While Religious filter their teachings through their own religious training and emphasize the mission and charisma of Catholic education, lay staff often lack the same intensely religious experiences to bring to the teaching/learning environment. This qualitative interview study explored the influence that a series of spirituality and virtue seminars had on lay teachers’ perceptions of the Catholic school and character education.

Knowledge of Catholic educational scholarship and research has been largely confined to specific national settings. Now is the time to bring together this scholarship. This is the first international handbook on Catholic educational scholarship and research. The unifying theme of the Handbook is ‘Catholic Education: challenges and responses’ in a number of international settings. In addition to analyzing the largest faith-based educational system worldwide, the book also critically examines contemporary issues such as church-state relations and the impact of secularization and globalization.

The administration of Pre K – 12 Catholic schools becomes more challenging each year. Catholic school leaders not only have the daunting task of leading a successful learning organization, but also to serve as the school community’s spiritual leader and the vigilant steward who keeps the budget balanced, the building clean, and maintaining a healthy enrollment in the school. Each of these tasks can be a full time job, yet the Catholic school principal takes on these tasks day after day, year after year, so that teachers may teach as Jesus did. The goal of this book is to provide both beginning and seasoned Catholic school leaders with some insights that might help them to meet these challenges with a sense of confidence. The words in this text provide research?based approaches for dealing with issues of practice, especially those tasks that are not ordinarily taught in educational leadership programs. This text helps to make sense of the pastoral side of Catholic education, in terms of structures, mission, identity, curriculum, and relationships with the principal’s varied constituencies. It also provides some insights into enrollment management issues, finances and development, and the day in day out care of the organization and its home, the school building. As a Catholic school leader, each must remember that the Catholic school is not just another educational option. The Catholic school has a rich history and an important mission. Historically, education of the young goes back to the monastic and cathedral schools of the Middle Ages. In the United States, Catholic schools developed as a response to anti?Catholic bias that was rampant during the nineteenth century. Catholic schools developed to move their immigrant and first generation American youth from the Catholic ghetto to successful careers and lives in the American mainstream. However, most importantly, Catholic schools have brought Christ to generations of youngsters. It remains the continuing call of the Catholic school to be a center of Evangelization—a place where Gospel values live in the lives of faculty, students and parents. This text attempts to integrate the unique challenges of the instructional leader of the institution with the historical and theological underpinnings of contemporary Catholic education.

This book explores in a theoretical and practical sense the challenges and opportunities arising in the initial and ongoing formation processes for teachers in Catholic schools. It showcases a range of international perspectives on how prospective teachers for Catholic schools are prepared both academically and pastorally for their professional role. Divided into two parts, Part 1 of the book focuses on certain countries in the Anglosphere; each country with a dedicated chapter in which the academic and pastoral approaches to teacher formation are examined in the context of its particular cultural, political and religious landscape. Part 2 of the book examines specific areas of interest with particular reference to what it means for the Catholic Church’s mission to offer suitable formation to its corps of teachers. Building on the editors' previous work, this book offers a fresh perspective on this subject by bringing together observations from selected local contexts on what Catholic teacher formation looks like as a set of organised processed and structures. It also shows how the study of educational themes offers challenges to current practices, but also opportunities for fruitful engagement with other educational perspectives.

This work gives readers a glimpse into the mind, heart, and vision of Pope John Paul II regarding the present and future life and role of laity in the Church, and his thoughts and reflections inspire us all in our daily living of the Lord's call. This is a collection of insightful teachings from over 300 of the Pope's sermons and speeches. Every word in the book, including titles and sub-headings, is directly from the Pope's sermons. John Paul II stands out as a religious leader who has himself been immersed in the daily grind and joys of lay life. He knew the hardships of the factory, the exhilaration of sport, the intellectual challenge of university life, and the daily pressures of unjust government. In his many journeys we saw him at home with church leaders, politicians, workers, and youth. He chose to address the laity of the world on a broad spectrum of topics, and it is truly exciting to read his reflections and respond to the challenges he presents.

This book tells the story of how the role of the laity - as essential in the life of the Church - moved to "center stage" during the Council, and how lay people were among those who made it happen.

This work addresses Lasallian pedagogical spirituality, defined as the dynamic integration of foundational convictions, basic operative commitments, and consistent practices permeating the teaching dimensions of schools that claim the heritage of St. John Baptist de La Salle and the Brothers of the Christian Schools. The dissertation examines the content of Lasallian pedagogical spirituality and proposes measures for realizing its vitality within Lasallian school life. Particular pedagogical characteristics, components of an overall pedagogical spirituality, are present in the original charism of St. John Baptist de La Salle. The basic operative commitments that underlie those characteristics ought to be integrally realized in a pedagogy that claims to be Lasallian and wholly incorporated in the formation of Lasallian educators. There are three sequential parts to the dissertation: 1) an overview of the St. John Baptist de La Salle's context and personal history, 2) an overview of his literature followed by an analysis of aspects of Lasallian pedagogical spirituality evidenced in that literature according to five pedagogical elements: the teacher, the student, the teacher/student relationship, the activity of teaching, and the school in general, and 3) a contemporary articulation of the Lasallian basic operative commitments that characterize his spirituality today, along with their implications for the formation of Lasallian educators Extrapolating from the life and writings of De La Salle, ten Lasallian operative commitments are proposed. The commitments are presented in the form of attributes that may be applied to Lasallian institutions and their pedagogical components: 1) centered in and nurtured by the life of faith, 2) trusting providence in discerning God's will, 3) with creativity and fortitude, 4) through the agency the Holy Spirit, 5) incarnating Christian paradigms & dynamics, 6) with practical orientation, 7) devoted to education, accessible and comprehensive, 8) committed to the poor, 9) working in association, 10) expressing a lay vocation. The dissertation concludes by presenting teacher formation structures and strategies for introducing Lasallian operative commitments and by providing a Lasallian Mission and Vision Statement.

This book presents a range of perspectives on the current state of Catholic education in the opening decades of the twenty-first century. All of the chapters have their origin in an International Conference on Catholic Education, held at Heythrop College (University of London) in September 2016. The book brings together many leading scholars to present a survey of the latest research on Catholic education in areas such as the aims of Catholic education, Catholic schools and Catholic identity, leadership issues in Catholic schools and fresh thinking about the place of Religious Education (RE) in Catholic Education. This book demonstrates how the field of Catholic Education Studies has firmly come of age. Rather than being a subfield of educational or theological discourse, it is now an established field of research and study. As such, the book invites readers to engage with much of the new thinking on Catholic education that has grown rapidly in recent years. It offers a broad range of contemporary perspectives on research in Catholic Education and rich insights into current thinking about Catholic Education.

In today’s pluralistic world, many cultures feel a shift in the relationship of people with religious traditions. A corresponding movement is a resurgence of interest in human spirituality. This Handbook presents the views of education scholars who engage these concepts every day, in a collection of essays reflecting the international state of the discipline. Out of these rises a vision for the emergence of a just and peaceful world.

Essays originating from the Pan-African Catholic Congress on Theology, Society and Pastoral Life held at Bigard Memorial Seminary, Enugu, Nigeria from 5-8 December, 2019.