TeachingRE Issue 4.pdf - the Second Level Support Service

peculiar way it reminds me of a report from one of thefirst conferences of (the now defunct) ProgressiveDemocrats held in Cork city in the party’s heydaysduring the 1980s.The reporter began by saying “as thebells of Shandon peeled across the city of Cork, the PDsvoted to take God out of the constitution”. The reactionwas such that they ran for political cover and quicklyre-instated God. But I digress.But back to the RE syllabus. As you would expect, itwould be a distortion to judge a whole (104-page) texton one sentence but interesting nonetheless. Religion isabout meaning or the search for meaning and while thatis not solely the function or indeed the preserve ofreligion it is certainly a feature of religion.The search formeaning is fundamentally a function of society andculture whether or not that society or culture is imbuedwith formalised religion. And if that search for meaningis to be in any way real, it must extend beyond thepersonal, beyond a narrow fixation with salvation andencompass more political issues like current economic(dis)order, society and the nature of power relations.Andmuch to the credit of the RE syllabus it does allow fordiscussion of these complex difficult issues. While youare no doubt more familiar with the document than Iam, the syllabus challenges the accumulation of wealthand the dominance of elites (e.g. Section BTopic 2.3 page25). It provides a space for students to question themeaning of authority (e.g. Section C Topic 2.3 page 37):the common good (e.g. Section D Topic 1.3 page 43):structural injustice (e.g. Section FTopic 2.3 page 45) andprovides students with the tools for social analysis (e.g.Section F, page 61) to mention just some.I have always however had deep reservations about theextent and capacity of state-sponsored political andsocial awareness to effect change as ultimately the statealways sets limits on what it regards as acceptablepolitical action.The most successful campaigns have beenorganic in origin and have never been staged-managedby agents of the state. The current Shell-to seacontroversy, the summing of all the forces of the state toprotect US President George W. Bush on his 2004 visitto Ireland and the use of state forces against the Re-claimthe Street demonstrations in 2002 are just three cases inpoint.That said, anything that gets young people to think,to search for meaning has to be good and in thatcontext the syllabus is a welcome addition to the schoolcurriculum. But again I digress.However, the search for meaning that is so much a partof the RE syllabus cannot be confined to neat intellectualcategorisation. Inevitably that search draws onphilosophical, theological, sociological and politicalthought to name but four. While in Paraguay this yearcovering a story about the adverse effects of intensivecommercial soya production, we asked former CatholicBishop and now President of the country FerninandLugo if politics and religion had any points ofconvergence and what, if anything, religion has to offer interms of understanding or critically analysing issues likeglobalisation. This is what Lugo had to say:Miner BoliviaI always considered them (religion and politics) as two sidesof the same coin. The political and the religious are notmutually exclusive; during the campaign we have alwaysused that great expression, the wise expression of Pius XI,wasn’t it, that politics is the most sublime expression of love.Politics is the sublime expression of charity and that is agreat conviction of mine: there is also political charity.Thatis why I think that our attempt to conserve the faith withinthe Catholic Church that we love so much, that we haveserved for thirty years as priests, as missionaries.We can’tsay that overnight I lost my faith and I became a politician.I think that I have to be a leader who is inspired and alsosustained by the faith that I proclaim, profess and live.(Religion) is the great spiritual and mystical sustenance ofour political tasks and decisions. Although, as I said at thebeginning, there are no ‘chemically pure’ processes, but thereare processes that are intermingled; faith and politics arenot mutually exclusive—in fact they complement eachother.That is why I believe that this process, even though insome aspects it has been traumatic, we have sought themost harmonious and peaceful way to go from being areligious leader to a political leader and as president ofParaguay. 5Lugo comes from a long line of politicised clergy themost prominent of whom have very well-definedleft-wing political views.These were and are arch criticsof the current model of globalisation framed as it is in aneo-liberal agenda that has emanated from the ChicagoSchool of Economics under the tutelage of the lateMilton Friedman 6 intellectual mentor to amongst othersthe aforementioned Gipper and former British PrimeMinister Margaret Thatcher.Francis Fukuyama, the darling of the neo-conservatives inthe United States and elsewhere and another acolyte ofFriedman, stunned the world in the early 1990s with hisTEACHING RELIGIOUS EDUCATION ISSUE FOUR SEPTEMBER 200925