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Tag: Catholic social teaching

Prophets of the Future 3: Migration and Catholic Schools

26th Mar 202126th Mar 2021standrewsfoundationblog

In this series, 4th year primary Catholic Teaching Certificate students share the findings of their studies on a new elective course entitled Prophets of a Future not our Own: Catholic Schools and Contemporary Issues.

Niamh Torrens, MEduc4 student

Migration is an issue which has a great impact on the world’s community today, with the World Health Organization estimating that there are 1 billion migrants, making roughly 1 in 7 people a migrant. This issue permeates public and media debate around the world, not least in the UK, and also affects Catholic schools directly.

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Uncategorized Catholic schools, Catholic social teaching, Migration Leave a comment

Covid and the Common Good: Learning from the NHS

23rd Mar 2021standrewsfoundationblog

Dr. Catherine Blackman (NHS General Practitioner)

Photo by Magdaline Nicole on Pexels.com

As students return to school, this is a perfect opportunity to reflect on what lockdown has taught us, and is a wonderful chance to integrate the children’s own experiences with their faith. Catholic Teachers have the responsibility to empower their pupils to influence the secular world, to teach their pupils what is important, to live as Christ taught us, as a community, with decent values; to be Christ-centred. The NHS’ commitment through COVID, provides us with a wonderful example stemming from within secular society, to emphasis, as Catholics, the absolute necessity of the Church’s social teaching.

Over the last 40 years, society has been encouraged to put the individual, rather than the community, first. As a consequence, values have altered. Respect of others has dwindled, the blame culture has been promoted and instant access to our multiple needs has been enabled. It is a material rather than a godly world. The pandemic has shifted all of this. We are now in a situation where we all need to act together, to be patient, to take responsibility for and accept the consequences of our actions. It is important now, more than ever, that the Church reinforces the principles of Catholic Social Teaching.

As a Catholic Doctor, I have come to realise the importance of this through my work. I have always tried to bear witness to the truth, by example. Throughout, my working life, I have not been particularly spiritual, perhaps due to laziness, though the ever-increasing pressures placed on NHS workers have certainly played their part. I have humoured my conscious by telling it “laborare est orare”, yet I do believe there is something within the NHS ethos that is spiritually important to learn from. Fundamentally, the NHS is held together by people committed, even when this comes at their own expense, to achieving the common good. This has been demonstrated no more clearly than during the current crisis.

We have seen how throughout the pandemic the NHS has faced challenges from the public, by those who refuse to abide by COVID safety measures. The recent, unjustified, abuse of NHS workers, illustrates this. Support from the government has also been woeful at best. Indeed, this is a much longer governmental trend, through underfunding and overburdening the NHS, in the hopes it will conform to the individualistic and consumerist trends we see in wider society. As health care workers we strive to do our best for the patient and do not actively intend to do harm. However, as professionals we are also human. Currently we are working under extremely difficult and stressful situations. Many of us are suffering from stress, anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress and burnout. The commitment to our patients, however, continues to spur us on despite these challenges. As a Catholic GP, I see this as faith in action.

NHS Care Workers are trained to be patient centred. It is important to put the needs of the patient before your own.  We are trained to explain things in simple terms that the patient understands. We are expected to keep up to date with the latest medical advances and to continually update our knowledge so that we treat our patients in the best possible way.  Surely this follows Christ’s teaching of “Loving our neighbour as ourselves”, and promotes the inherent dignity of the human person. We are encouraged to be constantly self-analytic and self-aware, reflective of our practice to determine any need for change. In essence this must equate to examining our consciences in serving the other in a spirit of solidarity.

As a GP Partner, I promoted the importance of the team. When we work collaboratively, we can achieve far more than when working on our own. We all have different strengths and talents and if we pool these together, we are far more successful. It is important to value each team member as we are all inter-dependent. No one is more or less important than anyone else and the team is only as strong as the weakest link.  No man is an island. This is the heart of the common good; it is only this style of work and thinking that will get us through the pandemic. In this case, it is not just about the individual but about the wider community. We all need to play our part. If we were to act with integrity as one big team, taking responsibility for our actions, everyone would benefit and there would be more chance of overcoming the pandemic. Let us use the challenges we have all faced as a moment of teaching, for hope and renewal, in the common good of our society.

Uncategorized Catholic social teaching, Covid, NHS Leave a comment

Prophets of the Future 2: The Attainment Gap and Catholic Schools

17th Mar 202117th Mar 2021standrewsfoundationblog

In this series, 4th year primary Catholic Teaching Certificate students share the findings of their studies on a new elective course entitled Prophets of a Future not our Own: Catholic Schools and Contemporary Issues.

Hannah Castle, MEduc4 student

The growing attainment gap in Scotland represents a crucial issue which Catholic schools need to face in the 21st Century.  What is the attainment gap? It is the growing divide in academic performance between children from low-income areas versus their more affluent peers. Currently in Scotland, the goal is to close this poverty-related attainment gap as almost one in four (230,000) of Scotland’s children are officially recognised as living in poverty, and this figure is expected to rise over the next few years, which the Child Poverty Action Group projects to reach a rate of 38% by 2030/31. A 2014 report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation discovered that by the age of 5, the gap between these two demographics of children sits at 10-30 months of difference. They also discovered that this gap widens as they progress further to secondary school leading to significantly different educational outcomes when they reach the end of their school career.

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Uncategorized Attainment Gap, Catholic schools, Catholic social teaching 1 Comment

Pedagogies of the Pandemic Blog 3: Digital Alienation in a Shared World

8th Feb 20218th Feb 2021standrewsfoundationblog

Nicolete Burbach (Consultant researcher in the Centre for Catholic Social Thought and Practice, and Lecturer in postmodern theology at the University of Durham).

Photo by Josh Hild on Pexels.com

It has become a truism in Catholic circles that online forms of communion are not really communion; that the presence it offers is a false, ‘virtual’ one; and that however much closer it may seem to bring us lonely individuals, bound to our houses, the physical gulf between us is an alienation that can never be overcome in a purely digital medium.

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Uncategorized Catholic social teaching, communion, Remote learning Leave a comment

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