Ed Podgorski, Toronto

It is good that we now have Graham P. McDonough’s Beyond Obedience and Abandonment, a thoughtful and scholarly presentation on the role of Catholic schools in Canada and providing an extensive bibliography for his readers to pursue. Quoting from an impressive variety of theological and pedagogical sources McDonough presents a provocative thesis: that Catholic schools should be engaged in a pedagogy of dissent – dissent being defined as faithful disagreement with the Church and Church meaning the hierarchical institution.

It is good that we now have Graham P. McDonough’s Beyond Obedience and Abandonment, a thoughtful and scholarly presentation on the role of Catholic schools in Canada and providing an extensive bibliography for his readers to pursue. Quoting from an impressive variety of theological and pedagogical sources McDonough presents a provocative thesis: that Catholic schools should be engaged in a pedagogy of dissent – dissent being defined as faithful disagreement with the Church and Church meaning the hierarchical institution.
      The Catholic community has a wide variety of expectations of its schools. We generalize here, but only to give a sense of the diverse perspectives. Parents typically look for a disciplined school environment which will support their children in achieving academic success. Prompted by the Ontario Catholic Graduate Expectations teachers hope for at best that each student will ideally learn to be:
      a discerning believer formed in the Catholic Faith Community who witnesses Catholic social teaching by promoting equality, democracy, and solidarity for a just, peaceful and compassionate society
and so will become equipped to deal with life decisions informed by the Catholic tradition.
      Church leaders who observe the disturbing decline in church attendance and serious waning in adherence to official Church teaching especially as it relates to sexual morality, look to Catholic schools to instill an allegiance and faithfulness to authoritative Church affirmations.
      Finally, students are in school to have a good experience of learning and hope for some sense of community. Students typically do not understand themselves to be “people of faith.” Certainly they do not see themselves as the future of the Church. Young people increasingly find the Church irrelevant. The world has passed the Church by.
      McDonough wades into the fray and states that:
      Engaging dissent might have instrumental value in opening discussions with the expression of student interests and leading them to consider the prevailing view. . . (p. 221)
      This sounds reasonable and practical. But McDonough overreaches, I think, when he proceeds to argue that:
      Engaging with dissent in a way that develops a student’s agency as a dissident within the Church is a way of reaching out to a fellow Catholic with the intent of helping them to re-imagine their place in the Church. (p. 221)
      Serious questions and reservations arise. Among them is the age appropriateness of McDonough’s approach. Certainly the children in primary grades, who indeed have an innate spirituality, have no need or interest in engaging in a critique of Church teaching. To be fair McDonough addresses this criticism and acknowledges that:
      The requirements for dissent . . . should therefore be scaled according to the cognitive abilities of the students processing these problems. (p. 252)
      Also, older students, those in the latter years of secondary school, while they may know official Church teachings regarding various issues and disagree with them, simply “bypass” them and  ignore them. The adolescent view is that the world has passed the Church by. The institutional, dare I say the adult church which is in desperate need of rejuvenation, would need to change radically before young people would think to engage in a “pedagogy of dissent.”
      McDonough might have taken to heart what he referenced in Graham Rossiter when Rossiter  warned of using “excessive” language and “exaggerating the religious expectations of the school.” (p. 135).
      Sadly, in Canada, there is very little scholarly research exploring the nature and purpose of Catholic schools. Beyond Obedience and Abandonment stimulates debate and discussion. Hopefully, others will take up the task.

Ed Podgorski teaches the Catholic option at York University in Toronto.