Inspiration and Challenge for Catholic Education

In 2010 I returned to school principalship after seven years away from the role, and indeed away from direct engagement with children and young people. Not surprisingly, I had to navigate the inevitable changes in curriculum and organisational practice. But there were two more glaringly obvious factors at work among the students, not present in the same way when I last led a school in 2003: the urgency of their concern about climate change and environmental degradation, and their preoccupation with social media.

I was heartened and challenged by their passion and insights for a more ecologically responsible mindset that demanded changes in our ways of living and working in and with the environment. Less heartening, indeed quite disturbing, was the flagrant use of social media to ridicule and demean other people, in an environment where there seem to be few rules and even less responsibility. In my frustration with a spate of ‘sexting’ and associated cruel social media messages, I recall commenting to a group of students, “How is it that you’ll readily hug trees and yet at the same time brutally wound the emotions and reputations of other people?!”

Some five years later, in 2015, Pope Francis released his much-acclaimed social encyclical, Laudato Si: On care for our common home. Both within and beyond the Church, this superb document has given shape to our efforts to create a more responsible ecological approach to the way we live on the planet God entrusted to our care. 

But the encyclical is more than this. Towards the end, Pope Francis references The Earth Charter, a UNESCO endorsed document: “Let our times be remembered for the awakening of a new reverence for life, the firm resolve to achieve sustainability, the quickening of the struggle for justice and peace, and the joyful celebration of life.” We must be equally attentive to the created physical world, our planet and our universe, as well as to the people who make up our common humanity. 

Laudato Si does not stand alone – it comes to its completion in the social encyclical that followed, Fratelli Tutti: On fraternity and social friendship. In this edition of La Salle Publications, Professor Peta Goldburg rsm explains and unpacks this encyclical and does so with reference to Catholic education. Peta is widely known for her passionate and challenging teaching in areas of solidarity and social justice, and this publication will be a gem for those who don’t have the time to read what is the longest encyclical ever issued by the Church.

Across the country, and particularly in Catholic institutions, we are busy with sharpening our Laudato Si Action Plans. These plans will be all the better if they also attend to the challenges articulated in Fratelli Tutti, so that we may come to care for the earth and its peoples. La Salle Publication Number 10 calls us to look beyond ourselves, our local community and our nation to all the people of the world with whom we share a common human nature and a common home.

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(Source: Professor Br David Hall fms, Dean, La Salle Academy)