Catholic schools seeking authenticity in a secular and pluralist society

This thesis reports on a case study of three Catholic schools in the Archdiocese of Melbourne, Australia. It also provides an exploration of the contemporary Catholic school as it seeks to participate in the educational mission of the Church. Catholic schools are no longer institutions for the converted. Today their purposes are challenged by a contemporary demographic which finds little formal relationship with the institutional Church. Yet these schools still hold a strong enough attraction for parents to select them as their school of choice for their children. At a time when enrolments have never been higher, identification with the institutional Church in its various forms has never been lower, a reality which is equally true of teachers in Catholic schools. This situation seems to pose a challenge to the authenticity of the Catholic school, in terms of the consonance or otherwise between purpose and action, between the school mission statement and the ways in which the Catholic school lives this out.