Why We Need Sensuality

Over many years I have worked with thousands of teachers and hundreds of thousands of Catholic students. Why is it so hard to reach people with the message of faith? We have no trouble in modern life getting people to watch MasterChef, buy Iphones or buy bigger houses. Why is it so hard to reach adults and students with a message that might transform their current life in amazing ways and set them up for a nice superannuation deal in eternity?

Read More

What Will Make Me Truly Happy?

Click here to download (right click and save as).

Not sure how to download? Click here.

Watch the preview of my new video here.

 

The title of our second session is What Will Make Me Truly Happy? I wanted to ask your permission to work this talk off my laptop. It will be a little different to my first talk.

So lets begin,

I think that we can hopefully agree from our first session that there are lot of things about our current culture and its ‘culture of silence’ that are not making us happy. It takes a lot of courage and humility to look into our lives and be honest enough to see that we are believing things or choosing things or doing things that are making us miserable. It’s much easier to just continue on as if everything is fine. We get rewarded for doing that by various forms of social acceptance.

Read More

More Haste For What Really Matters

This morning I was reading Pope Emeritus Benedict’s Infancy Narratives from the Jesus of Nazareth series…as you do. Let’s be clear about one thing. Whether you’re a Benedict fan, not a fan or don’t care either way, he is irrefutably a stellar theologian. Along with Von Balthazar, he is among the best of the last 500 years.

When you read Benedict you find a very accessible read and frequent flashes of theological brilliance; striking in their simplicity.

Today he drew attention to the presence of ‘haste‘ in the infancy narratives. We note that when Mary leaves to visit Elizabeth, she went, “…with haste to the town in Judea where Zechariah and Elizabeth lives.” (Luke 1:39)

Read More

5 Things Every Catholic Teacher Needs To Know

In the daily battle of Catholic education it’s easy to get lost in the grind. Assessments, assemblies, deadlines and detentions can quickly conspire to make you wonder why you turned down that job in the circus! As you make your way through each day here are five simple ideas to keep you going.

Read More

Religious Education Planning Checklist

There are a lot of things I am good at. I can MC weddings, put backspin on a 9 iron, and I can reverse a trailer, which is effectively the last remaining male initiation ritual in the developed world.

However, some things have always been beyond my ability and one of these is the ‘dark arts’ of curriculum and lesson planning. Luckily, there are more than a few good souls who know their scaffolding from their outcomes and their KLA’s from their scope and sequence. I’ve always thought curriculum stuff was a bit like the lions enclosure at my local zoo. Interesting to stare at but I would not want to jump the fence and get close to it.

Read More

Can Catholics Watch ‘Game of Thrones”?

No. No they can’t. And if they think they can…they’re dreaming.

Some things in life are complex. Nuclear fusion is one. Linguistics, something I failed miserably in university, is another.

Mercifully, many things are pretty straightforward. So let’s make this simple. Being Catholic, a serious Catholic who loves the faith and seeks to become a better person via prayer, the sacraments and the life of grace means that there is a truckload of stuff that you can do and some that you can’t.

Read More

Pornography and Relationships – Jonathan Doyle Interview for The World Congress Of Families

Pornography is a huge issue in modern culture even if it is not one that people like to discuss. So many good people and good relationships are impacted. It is also an important issue for Catholic educators as they seek to bring about the best outcomes for young people. In this interview, Jonathan Doyle talks about the upcoming World Congress of Families where he will be addressing business leaders and also marriage educators on the latest research on how pornography is changing the landscape of intimacy.

Download (right-click and save as)
Not sure how to download a podcast? Click here.

A Challenge For Catholic Teachers

I have a pretty cool life. I get to work when I want and I get to do things like go and sit in my favourite church in the middle of the day…just because I can. I do actually work. It’s just that your most likely to find me at the keyboard at 2am instead of nine! 

Read More

An Interview with Vice-Chancellor Professor Celia Hammond

In this fascinating interview Jonathan Doyle interviews Professor Celia Hammond who is currently Vice-Chancellor at the University of Notre Dame. Beginning with her journey through law school and into her role helping to establish Notre Dame’s fledgling Law faculty Jonathan and Celia discuss a range of key issues relevant to Catholic education and the role of Catholic institutions in the 21st century. How does moral relativism impact the belief systems of students? How can Catholic educators and leaders advance the mission of Catholic education in the public square. Sit back, relax and enjoy another powerful interview from the team at BeingCatholic.

 

Download (right-click and save as)

Not sure how to download a podcast? Click here.

An Interview with Richard Sellwood

In this awesome interview we meet father of seven, evangelising surfer and Religious Education Coordinator, Richard Sellwood. Join your host Jonathan Doyle as he and Richard explore the big issues in Catholic education.

 

 

 

Download (right-click and save as)

An Interview with Richard Sellwood

What is your current role?

Head of Religious Education- Mandurah Catholic College

What do you spend most of your time doing in this role? Tell us about your work/vocation?

I’m a teacher and so I spend most of my time in the classroom explaining to students the truth and beauty of the Catholic faith. This I fit around my primary vocation as husband and father to seven children.

I’m a covert to the faith and chose to become a teacher specifically to share the Catholic faith.

I really try hard to enjoy each day. All the personalities, all the questions, all the laughs, all the youthful enthusiasm that pervades school life.

Read More

An Interview With Tom Gourlay

In this interview Jonathan Doyle interviews dynamic young Religious Education Coordinator Tom Gourlay. Listen in as Tom and Jonathan explore a range of important issues in faith and education.

Download (right-click and save as)

 

An Interview with Tom Gourlay

What is your current role?

Head of Religious Education Department

What do you spend most of your time doing in this role? Tell us about your work/vocation?

Aside from my teaching my own classes I spend a lot of time generating and finding resources for my staff, who are scattered around the school in various departments – There are no full-time Religious Education teachers here, so it is often not the first priority for teachers. Resourcing and guiding my staff is probably the biggest job for me right now.

My staff are very capable, but time, our greatest resource, is also our most scarce.
I also spend a lot of time find tuning programs and assessments.

Read More

An Interview With Marie-Therese Gibson

In this podcast Jonathan Doyle interview Principal Marie Therese Gibson who is Principal of a girl’s school in Sydney. Marie-Therese explores some key issues in Catholic education, faith and impacting young women that are bound to make a difference in your home or school.

Download (right-click and save as)

 

An Interview with Marie-Therese Gibson

What is your current role?

Principal of Tangara School for Girls

What do you spend most of your time doing in this role? Tell us about your work/vocation?

“As the Principal of a Girls School which is under the Pared Foundation I am working constantly with staff, parents and students. I also tutor so I have my own tutees. This gives me some real hands-on time with the girls and with their parents. I teach Philosophy to Year 12: Philosophical Anthropology- or as we sometimes call it: the Study of Human Nature.

I realise that to do my job well I need to put God in first place so prayer and the Sacraments-daily Mass and weekly confession- give me the strength to do what I do. As I am working with God’s children I need to be in tune with him so that I do what he wants me to do.

Read More

Who are the New Poor in Your School?

On my first trip to Asia I was struck by the sheer volume of people, by the noise, the energy, the humidity and by the vast gulf between wealth and poverty. On a long drive from a conference venue I was taking photos of the streets, the people abd the whole great big carnival of life. Suddenly I saw a blind woman walking along the road. You can see the photograph below. I was confronted. We don’t see that kind of poverty in our first world lives.

Read More

Did Jesus Steal My Wallet?

A few minutes ago I lost my wallet. This time I really lost it. I tend to lose it several times per day until Karen puts it in my hand after telling me to have a grown up look. But this time it’s different.

Read More

The Water Angel

Some things you never forget. Your first crush, the sound of waves as you fall asleep near the ocean, the loss of a loved one or the unexpected kindness of strangers.

Read More

The Best Sex You Will Ever Have.

There is a reason you have never tried to dry your hair with a blowtorch or hammer a nail with a fish. 

The first would be painful and the second, while amusing, would be rather ineffective and equally messy. While the trend of our modern society is to believe that all things are relative and up for negotiation depending on your perspective, – the “dictatorship of relativism” that Pope Benedict XVI has spoken about – the universe operates on certain laws that quietly laugh at our desires to remodel reality.

Read More

The Meaning of Life!

Life is simple. We make it complex. And that complexity shows no sign of changing in the time ahead. Our brains store billions of bytes of information and we absorb thousands of media and marketing images every day. For most of the 20th century most of the planet had never made a phone call and now the average teen can send and receive several thousand text messages per month.

Read More

Loving Sophia…why philosophy matters to Catholic educators.

Richard Sellwood MA MPhil is Head of Religious Education at Mandurah Catholic College. In this short article he shares the important fact that our students are hungry for truth and answers and that we can answer them. 

We are all philosophers. Most of us are not paid professional philosophers but we still all desire to know and reflect on the big questions of human existence. Is happiness possible? Does God exist? Why is there suffering? What is the meaning of life? The lure of philosophy is the study of what the smartest people in human history have said about the most important human questions.

Read More

Catholic Schools and The Sacrament of Reconciliation – A Bridge Too Far?

Best I can tell there are only two ways to make alpha male students cry. One is to guide them to winning a Grand Final in any sport that involves pounding their opposition into submission. After all, high-level sport is the only culturally sanctioned place where men can cry. The other way is to work in a deeply Catholic school where the sacrament of reconciliation is taken seriously by serious Catholic educators.

Let’s be clear. Crying is not the goal, either of a sporting event or of a sacrament. What is interesting though is what can happen to students on the affective and spiritual plane when they are both suitably prepared and then given an opportunity to encounter the sacrament of reconciliation by staffs that take it seriously themselves.

Read More

Should Catholic Schools Put Students In Their Place?

A few weeks ago I appeared on a national television program to debate the issue of pornography’s impact upon young people. I knew the program well enough and to be honest every alarm bell within me was going off. The agenda was clear and the outcome decided long before the cameras were rolling. That said, I was possessed of the belief that Catholics need to be active in the public square and one friend even said that she believed, “…I had a civic duty to do the show!”

Read More

A Quick Reflection On Marriage.

In his culture changing book Love and Responsibility, John Paul II said that a young man is never more vulnerable than when he is on his knees asking a young woman to marry him. If you think about that moment there is so much taking place. With a single word of a single syllable, his entire future hangs in the balance. ‘Yes’ or ‘No’. The entire path of his life stretches out before him in a moment. He is at the mercy of another human person’s radical freedom to choose.

Read More

The Year of Grace for Schools

Last year our Bishops at their Australian Bishops’ Conference, had to deal with a lot of paperwork.. One of the Bishops looked at the heap, pushed it aside, and exclaimed: “What has this got to do with Jesus Christ and our pastoral work?”

This outburst encouraged the Bishops to organize something special for the Church in Australia, to give us hope and encouragement. And that is how the YEAR OF GRACE for the Australian Church started. It began on Pentecost Sunday.

Read More

Why a Catholic Teacher Needs to Know Where They Come From.

One of my favourite speakers has the great line, “You don’t need a great idea. You just need a good idea that you are prepared to use.” Over the years I have learned that most of the time all it takes to change a paradigm or an important area of our lives is simply a good idea that we are prepared to use.

Read More

Your words shape your world

The truth is our language gives shape to our experience. We begin to believe what we repeatedly say. It is the tool we use to interpret the things that happen to us. But, and it’s a big but, we actually have enormous control over how we express what happens to us.

Read More