How can a Catholic school – in a postmodern culture – enhance its identity? This is the subject of the ‘Enhancing Catholic School Identity Project’, also referred to as the ‘Leuven Project’. It is a vision for Flemish Catholic Education that aims to respond to the cultural and religious changes taking place in a pluralistic and secularised society. In this new environment, the ideal Catholic school should be – according to the ‘Leuven Project’ – a “recontextualising” school.
Dr. Peter McGregor, professor in Dogmatic Theology and Spiritual Theology at the Catholic Institute of Sydney, Australia, examined the nature of the Project and how it seeks to strengthen the identity of the Catholic school. He analysed the terminology used by the Project and attempted to uncover its epistemological and theological premises in order to critique them. This critique analysed the key terms and placed them in their epistemological and theological contexts: “literal faith,” “post-critical faith,” “symbolic,” “interpretation,” “meta-narrative,” “recontextualisation,” “literal,” “mediation,” “presence,” “faith,” and “interruption.”
His analysis “The Leuven Project: Enhancing Catholic School Identity” has been published in the Irish Theological Quarterly and can be accessed here. In a second article, McGregor responds to Professor Robyn Horner’s attempt to refute the claim that the Enhancing Catholic School Identity Project is antithetical to the evangelising mission of the Church.
Together with Dr. Jörgen Vijgen PhD, professor in philosophy at several church institutes in the Netherlands and member of the editorial board of the Dutch-Flemish theological journal Communio, the undersigned, founder of Biofides which originated from the reality of Catholic education in both the Netherlands and Flanders, collaborated with the publication of McGregor’s first article, in abridged version published in Communio (2023/3 pp. 216-227).
In this video Peter McGregor, Jörgen Vijgen and Vincent Kemme elaborate on the problem of ‘enhancement’ of the Catholic identity of education according to the ideas of the Leuven Project and the criticism that has been directed at it. The aim is not to criticise just for the sake of criticising, but to make a substantial contribution to the reflection on the question on which theological principles Catholic education – in our view – should be based, also or even especially in our time and culture. At the same time, we are realistic about its feasibility in the short term. The discussion is therefore no more than an impetus to a further reflection which might lead to new developments within and/or outside the existing educational frameworks, in Flanders and beyond.
Peter McGregor
Jörgen Vijgen
Vincent Kemme
