Article
Version 1
Preserved in Portico This version is not peer-reviewed
An Empirical Study of the Problem of ‘Ecclesiastical Drift’ in Catholic School Religious Education
Version 1
: Received: 26 October 2022 / Approved: 2 November 2022 / Online: 2 November 2022 (08:39:55 CET)
How to cite: Rossiter, G. An Empirical Study of the Problem of ‘Ecclesiastical Drift’ in Catholic School Religious Education. Preprints 2022, 2022110050. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202211.0050.v1 Rossiter, G. An Empirical Study of the Problem of ‘Ecclesiastical Drift’ in Catholic School Religious Education. Preprints 2022, 2022110050. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202211.0050.v1
Abstract
Just when Catholic school Religious Education (RE) needs to be more outwardly focused on the contemporary search for meaning, its discourse has ‘drifted’ almost so exclusively into ecclesiastical terminology that its value as a spiritual/moral subject is being eroded –creating an ever widening discontinuity with classroom realities and young people’s spirituality. Religious educators’ perceptions of this problem, labelled as ‘ecclesiastical drift’, were investigated. While ecclesiastical terms were respected, issues related to their excessive usage were identified. By contrast, the unanimous, positive endorsement of educational terms raises the question why such language is largely missing from many Catholic accounts of RE.
Keywords
Religious Education; Catholic schools; Catholic education; ecclesiastical drift
Subject
Arts and Humanities, Religious Studies
Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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