| Year Levels Focus: | Christian life is based on the life, teachings and values of Jesus Christ and requires informed decisions and appropriate actions. (TCREK039) |
| Aims: | |
| Content Statement: |
Free to Choose, Called to Love Students will examine conscience as the inner guide, the voice of God within, and will consider its place in moral decision-making. Students will reflect on human nature’s inclination to sin, expressed as living for oneself only. They will explore the nature and impact of sin and will consider examples of initial choices or of changes of heart that brought/bring right order and peace, experienced in their own lives or observed/ recognised in the lives of others. Through engaging with chosen Gospel characters and some exemplars from the Church through the ages students will explore the nature, process and experiences of those who choose or who reject goodness and life. Through considering these models, students will explore how morality/ethics flows from encounter with God in Christ Who reveals Love itself. They will consider how Christian life and loving decision-making is nurtured and lived within a faith community. Students will engage with a simple Examen process as a support for reflecting on their own attitudes and actions as contrasts with Jesus’ teaching and values ; and will compose or engage with prayerful expressions of sorrow and change of heart.
Students will engage with some scriptural accounts of how Jesus chose His courses of action and will identify and reflect on His practices. They will prayerfully consider examples of His actions and His teaching, e.g. Matthew 25: 35-40, about committing to love and compassion. Students will consider how the witness of good people challenges and inspires us to act in support of others. They will compare and contrast various examples in order to identify the characteristics of “lives of real love, really lived” for God, for others and for all of life. They will explore the principles of Catholic Social Teaching through researching parts of some key Church documents, e.g. Pastoral Statements of the Church, Encyclicals and Apostolic Letters, and will apply these principles in considering and responding to social issues. |
The entire Christian spiritual, ethical and moral “system” is Christian insofar as it begins with God loving us in and through Christ, and ends in our becoming one with that Love, which is nothing less than God’s own self, given to us and known by us as the Holy Spirit. How we address all the spiritual, ethical and moral questions in life as Christians is what happens in between. Or, as St Augustine put it: “Love, and then do what you will”.
Real love is about moving out of oneself towards another in self-gift, while at the same time opening oneself up to another’s gift of themselves to oneself. Christian spirituality and Christian ethics/morality are both grounded in real love really lived.
Real love is about vulnerability, which takes an enormous amount of courage, strength and commitment (or “fortitude”). Real love begins in a kind of wonder before the awe-inspiring, indeed terrifying, mystery of another who loves us. It grows and takes possession of one’s whole being with a profound sense of respect, indeed reverence, for the Other who loves us. And this awe and this reverence are what give rise to the courage, the “fortitude”, to risk everything in committed giving of oneself to that Other in love—which is precisely what is meant by Christian spirituality and ethics/morality, or “the Christian life”.
Real love is about desiring the good of those we love, wanting and working towards the very best for them, desiring that they may flourish according to their nature as the image of God.
In GNFL this understanding of Christian life is developed with emphasis on these theological and anthropological principles:
- Christian ethics/morality is one with Christian spirituality; and both are grounded in the God who loves us, and who therefore enables us to grow in love.
- Real love—God’s love—costs. Real love isn’t cheap. Real love costs, but it is God whom it costs. And God “pays the price”, as it were, in person: Jesus, giving himself even unto death for love of us.
- At its deepest core, the Christian life (spirituality and ethics/morality) is about God and the Spirit.
- Our ethics/morality flows from our spirituality, our encounter with God in Christ; it flows from who we are as Christians, from our life in Christ, from who we are as creatures alive through and with and in the Holy Spirit, the very Self and Life of God loving us.
- To speak of Christian life in a meaningful way, to do Christian moral and mystical theology properly, or to work out a genuinely Christian ethics, we must always begin where we mean to end: in God loving us.
- To do anything less than that—to start with principles, ideals, the law, virtue, values (even “gospel values”), etc.—is to focus on ourselves as though we were anything less than loved-by-God, anything less than destined for communion with God, and with one another in God. To start with any of these things is to reduce our ethics to ideology, our morality to legalism, our spirituality to selfishness, and therefore our theology to idolatry, by reducing ourselves to our egos, and our lives to a meaningless existence between the cradle and the grave.
URL link to Theological Conversation chapter (PDF).
- Christian life is centred on relationship with Christ and is lived within a faith community that is true to his example and teaching.
- Christian life calls us to act on the basis of informed and graced decision-making. Conscience is a person’s inner guide (the echo of God’s voice) that helps in making moral decisions.
- We are inclined to sin, to live for self only and are called to constant change of heart and ways. God’s grace leads us to lives of real love, really lived.
- Inspired by the example of Jesus, informed by the Church’s teaching and guided by Spirit-filled exemplars, we can respond with compassion to suffering within our community and the wider human family.
- Human Dignity and the Common Good are foundational principles of Catholic Social Teaching.
Christian life is based on the life, teachings and values of Jesus Christ and requires informed decisions and appropriate actions. (TCREK039)
Free to choose, called to love:
Students will examine conscience as the inner guide, the voice of God within, and will consider its place in moral decision-making.
Students will reflect on human nature’s inclination to sin, expressed as living for oneself only. They will explore the nature and impact of sin and will consider examples of initial choices or of changes of heart that brought/bring right order and peace, experienced in their own lives or observed/ recognised in the lives of others.
Through engaging with chosen Gospel characters and some exemplars from the Church through the ages students will explore the nature, process and experiences of those who choose or who reject goodness and life. Through considering these models, students will explore how morality / ethics flows from encounter with God in Christ Who reveals Love itself. They will consider how Christian life and loving decision-making is nurtured and lived within a faith community.
Students will engage with a simple Examen process as a support for reflecting on their own attitudes and actions, contrasting with Jesus’ teaching and values. They will compose or engage with prayerful expressions of sorrow and change of heart.
Jesus’ teaching - Scriptures, Church documents, writings, exemplars:
Students will engage with some scriptural accounts of how Jesus chose His courses of action and will identify and reflect on His practices. They will prayerfully consider examples of His actions and His teaching, e.g. Matthew 25: 35-40, about committing to love and compassion.
Students will consider how the witness of good people challenges and inspires us to act in support of others. They will compare and contrast various examples in order to identify the characteristics of “lives of real love, really lived” for God, for others and for all of life.
They will explore the principles of Catholic Social Teaching through researching parts of some key Church documents, e.g. Pastoral Statements of the Church, Encyclicals and Apostolic Letters, and will apply these principles in considering and responding to social issues.
TCREI013
The students will identify and use a variety of Catholic, Christian sources to investigate, reflect on, summarise and discuss key findings about the Catholic Tradition.
Elaborations- Sources may include Liturgy, Scripture, Magisterial documents, writings of Saints, contemporary Christian authors, iconography, architecture, sacred art and sacred music.
TCREI014
The students will begin to read and interpret Scripture using literal and spiritual senses.
ElaborationsComing soon
TCREI015
The students will communicate their knowledge and understanding of key doctrinal concepts using appropriate forms, vocabulary and terms.
ElaborationsComing soon
TCRED015
The students will reflect on their reading and interpretation of Scripture as a "light for the path" of their daily living (Ps. 119:105).
ElaborationsComing soon
TCRED016
The students will identify, examine and reflect on personal attitudes, values and behaviours in the light of Catholic teaching.
ElaborationsComing soon
TCRED017
The students will consider ways to transfer into daily life (through attitudes, values and behaviours) understandings gained of Catholic teaching.
ElaborationsComing soon
By the end of Year 8, students indicate developing understandings of the living unity of God: Father, Son and Spirit and of God as Mystery and Love. They explore, reflect on and describe God’s covenant relationship with humanity and the related loving call for each person’s response. Describing sin as a choice to live for self at the expense of others, students can explain how this damages relationship with God, others and all of life and calls for a change of heart. Students explain how Jesus Christ, in revealing God as love, offers hope to the world and calls his followers to discipleship. They identify how Jesus Christ, fully divine and fully human, embodies and brings about the Reign of God. Describing the Church as a community of disciples sent out, they explain how it proclaims the Good News and seeks to serve God’s mission. They describe the Church’s missionary and prophetic nature and explain how the action of the Spirit continues to guide and inspire Christians in reading and responding to the signs of the times. Students explain that a sacramental way of viewing the world sees God in every-day things, people and events. They give examples of how, through the Sacraments, the Church recognises and celebrates the transformative presence of God through ritual, sign, symbol and word. Students explain how living the Christian Life grows out of and is sustained by relationship with Jesus. They reflect on and detail how the life and teachings of Jesus, the teachings of the Church and the lives of Christian witnesses and the practice of prayer can inform conscience for decision-making and action. They will identify examples of how our sinfulness, to choose to live for oneself at the expense of others, contrasts with Jesus’ teaching and values. Students study and meditate on the Scriptures, the Word of God, which reveal God’s love and they explain how this study and prayer can nurture relationship with Jesus and can help guide our lives. Students recognise that effective Christian Prayer is transformative and they identify examples of prayer leading to a deeper love for God and to growth in loving care for one another and all of life.
Students investigate, reflect on, summarise and discuss key findings about the Catholic Tradition using a variety of Catholic Christian sources. They begin to demonstrate their application of the literal and spiritual senses for the interpretation of selected Scripture. They use appropriate forms, vocabulary and terms to communicate their doctrinal knowledge and understanding. Students self-reflect on their reading and interpretation of selected Scripture. They identify and reflect on their attitudes, behaviours and values, examining and identifying ways to transfer their knowledge and understanding of Catholic teaching to their own attitudes, values and behaviours.