Director of Mission
“We are about passing on a living tradition in living condition….. Tradition is a living reality, not a cement block and the desire to bring the gospel up to date is a desire to be faithful to the Gospel.”
- Fr Richard Lennon
How do we ensure we are passing on things in a living state and not cemented in our own traditional views or understandings. It is easy to fall into ‘this is the way it has always been done’ instead of asking what needs to be done? How can we ensure something is growing, always for the better?
These are the questions that we used as reflection points for staff and students in the past couple of weeks as we prepared for one of the biggest group submissions of the diocese for the Plenary Council 2020.
I have mentioned the Plenary Council in almost all of my articles over the past 12 months and it is finally reaching its pinnacle. The students unveiled their beautiful mural last week outside of the main office. A mural that was designed around the Plenary logo and appropriated to express the many different expressions of faith our students hold and identify as vital. Mr LeBrocque presented the new inclusion and its meaning at our opening Mass to our students.
So far we have had over 32 Yr 12, 80 Yr 10, 26 Yr 8 submissions and a College mural being collated and organised to submit directly to the council before the deadline next week. MCC also ran a staff listening and dialogue session after hours to inform and prepare.
Marian Catholic College has taken this opportunity very seriously and found that there is a voice out there in our youth that we need to listen to in order to hand over our traditions of religion and religious education in a ‘living condition’. In conclusion of this process I look forward to sharing with you some of the many views our students hold in growing our faith. For now I leave you with this to reflect on to wrap up this topic for this week:
“I hope to see the Catholic church modernizing its methods to make it more enjoyable for everyone, especially youth. Expressing your faith should be fun, loud and meaningful. incorporating changes into the traditional mass to make it more personal and fun would make a difference in my opinion.”
- MCC Yr 12 Student
Special thanks go to the Mercy Sisters, Sr Tricia and Sr Therese and also the MCC maintenance staff for their contributions to the MCC Plenary council submissions and mural.
Heath Neville
Director of Mission
Marian Catholic College