The Leuven Project: Enhancing Catholic School Identity?

Abstract

The stated aim of the Leuven Project is to help Catholic schools respond to the cultural and religious changes taking place in a pluralised and secularised society. In this new environment, the ideal Catholic school should be a ‘recontextualising’ school. This article examines the nature of the Project, and how it proposes to enhance Catholic school identity. It analyses the terminology that the Project uses and seeks to lay bare its epistemological and theological premises to critique them. In this critique, the key terms that are analysed and placed within their epistemological and theological contexts are ‘literal belief,’ ‘post-critical belief,’ ‘symbolic,’ ‘interpretation,’ ‘meta-narrative,’ ‘recontextualisation,’ ‘literal,’ ‘mediation,’ ‘presence,’ ‘faith,’ and ‘interruption.’