Teaching Scripture
The study of scripture in a classroom context takes the reader into
the world of Jewish and Christian believers. The Catholic approach to
interpreting scripture is summed up in the Catechism of the Catholic
Church:
In Sacred Scripture, God speaks to the person in a human way. To
interpret Scripture correctly, the reader must be attentive to what the
human authors truly wanted to affirm and to what God wanted to reveal
to us by their words (n.109)
In order to discover the sacred author’s intention, the reader must
take into account the conditions of their time and culture, the literary
genres in use at that time, and the modes of feeling, speaking and
narrating then current.
“For the fact is that truth is differently presented and
expressed in the various types of historical writing, in prophetical and
poetical texts, and in other forms of literary expression (Dei Verbum, 12)
Catholics do not read scripture from a fundamentalist understanding.
Such an approach begins with the view that the Bible, being the inspired
Word of God, is error free, historically accurate and therefore should
be read and interpreted literally in all its details. This is not the
approach taken in the Catholic Church or in the religion classroom.
Rather, the Catholic Church’s understanding of scripture accepts the
Bible as the inspired Word of God and as the work of human authors who
were conditioned by their time, place, culture and worldview.
The Religion Curriculum supports this view of teaching scripture
through the inclusion of core and supplementary texts for each year
level. Texts and explored and interpreted through the framework of the
three worlds of the text.
Mandated Prayers
The Explicit Teaching about Prayer
is taught in every year level of the curriculum. The tables below depict
the year level at which particular prayers and meditative prayer
practices are explicitly taught, as identified in the content
descriptions of the Prayer and Spirituality sub strand of the Religious
Education Curriculum, and their development across the year levels.
Mandated prayer click to enlarge
