At St Brigid’s, we express our Catholic faith unapologetically. We interact with our faith in multiple ways. Prayer is our first port of call and we start off each day with the Examen for students to reflect on their previous day and set a faith centred intention for the time ahead. We also help push forward social justice issues, currently, for Lent, we are raising money for Catholic communities such as Caritas. Most importantly, we gather together as a community to express our faith, and so far, we have done this through our celebration of St Brigid’s Feast Day, which is also our Open College Mass and Ash Wednesday, which we celebrated in our House groups.
But, at the moment, our faith community only consists of students and teachers. When we think of the St Brigid’s community, we want it to consist of so much more than this. Most importantly, we want to involve our parents. On Ash Wednesday, the College reached out to parents regarding any questions they may have around faith and we received many. The college is going to explore as many ways we can address these questions and engage with parents as much as possible.
The main question that came through was – what is the difference between the terms Catholic and Christianity?
These two terms are confusing, but easy to explain. Christianity is the religion and Catholic refers to the Denomination, or group, or branch of Christianity. A simple comparison is to think of Catholics are to Christianity is the same as what the Newcastle Knights are to Rugby League. Catholics have the same main beliefs as other Christian groups, but also have their own unique beliefs and practices. For example, Mother Mary is more prominent in Catholicism and the Pope is the head of the Catholic church, but not necessarily the Christian church. Therefore, if the Pope makes a rule, our College needs to follow.
To help build our community further, if you have any faith questions, or want to be involved in the faith community of our College, please fill in this form – https://forms.office.com/r/SJW7PeWCLf.
Dr Ashley Sadler
Assistant Principal, Evangelisation & Catechesis
