Catholic Identity & Mission News

Between Catholic Education Week and Reconciliation Week sits Pentecost Sunday. On the Feast of Pentecost, we remember and celebrate God’s ongoing presence in the world in the third member of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit. We are learning about the Trinity in Year 7 RE and I was saying to my Year 7 class that I think that the Holy Spirit is the ultimate ‘quiet achiever’! An abiding presence, the Holy Spirit inspires and accompanies us as we negotiate day to day life. If we are open to it, we can feel the work of the Holy Spirit and see the fruits of the gifts the Spirit has bestowed on people. These have both been so evident over the past two weeks in the College’s celebration of Catholic Education Week and Reconciliation Week. 

During Catholic Education Week, staff and students were among other things, especially invited to be prayerful, creative, thoughtful, musical, generous and grateful for their involvement in Catholic Education. We shared chocolates in the yard, wrote kind words about each other, participated in musical concerts, gave time and thought to what it meant to be a part of a Catholic school and created posters around many themes, including that we are in a ‘Place of Encounter’ where we hope the words we speak are always ‘full of grace’. There is so much to be grateful for here at St Peter’s and it was not lost on us that the sense of ‘agency’ that education hopes to foster in students is not always shared with other groups in society. As we headed towards Reconciliation Week, we connected these two themes. Magnificently led by our Liturgy Captains, Scarlett Bastow and Abigail Muigai, staff and students were asked to consider the empowering aspects of the themes of Catholic Education Week and Reconciliation Week: ‘Let the words you speak always be full of grace’, and ‘Be a voice for generations’.

Learning more about the Uluru Statement from the Heart and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice Referendum, we could see how these two themes can complement each other in terms of who we are called to be in a Catholic school. Scarlett and Abi shared their understanding of Catholic Social Teaching, especially the aspects of the dignity of the human person, solidarity and subsidiarity and wanted to recontextualise these to this current issue. That led beautifully into Reconciliation Week where a ‘Catholic Considerations’, article by Sr Antonia Curtis OSB, was shared on our SPACE noticeboard across the week, as well as our Reconciliation Week themed daily prayers. We also celebrated the achievements of Indigenous Australians and had Indigenous musicians provide our bell music at Clyde North campus for the week. We understand that all communities whether they be our College community or the wider Indigenous community are diverse but as a Catholic school, regardless of differences, we are guided by the teachings of Jesus to be places of encounter. We are called to put ourselves in the ‘shoes of others’ and ensure that all are afforded the human rights of dignity and ‘voice’ so that all can have the opportunity to live life to the full. We know that the Holy Spirit is at work in us when we do this well so it is my hope that our community has been able to do it well over the past two weeks! 

Fiona McKenna

Deputy Principal - Catholic Identity & Mission