Springer International have recently published the book Global Perspectives on Catholic Religious Education in Schools, edited by Michael Buchanan of the Australian Catholic University and Adrian Mario Gellel of the University of Malta.
The book, the first of its kind, covers theoretical aspects of Catholic Religious Education in schools and examines them from multiple theoretical and contextual perspectives. It captures the contemporary academic and educational developments in the field of Religious Education while discussing in detail the challenges that Religious Educators face in different European, Asian, African, Australian, American and Latin American countries. The edited collection investigates how to pass on a Catholic heritage as a “living tradition” in diversely populated schools and communities. In this way it explores and asserts the proper identity of Catholic Religious Education in dialogue with Catechetics and with the wider discipline of Religious Education. The breadth and depth of scholarship presented in Global Perspectives on Catholic Religious Education in Schools makes this edited collection a major resource for those involved in Religious Education in general and in particular those who are interested in the examination of Catholic Religious Education from multiple theoretical and contextual perspectives.
As the different articles of this publication demonstrate - through a series of interesting and critical points of view - Catholic Religious Education is confronted with many challenges from the risk of marginalization to the confusion produced by a religious indifferentism leading to a strictly comparative or neutral method in the study of religions. It is essential to take into account in our research perspectives that Catholic Religious Education is not only a subject but also a mission in the light of the diakonia of truth in the midst of humanity
H.E. Cardinal Zenon Grocholewski, Prefect, Congregation for Catholic Education, Holy See, Vatican City
Reading this book is like looking through a kaleidoscope. Its twenty-three essays are like so many pieces of the whole whose brilliance is enhanced by their ever-changing relationships with others within the whole. As with a kaleidoscope whose slightest twist of the hand yields new patterns and possibilities, so too with Catholic Religious Education in schools as seen through the lenses of multiple countries, cultures, ethnicities, languages and theological and educational thought.
Prof. Gloria Durka, Fordham University, New York, NY, USA