Alive-O 6 an Analysis Éanna Johnson Phd Page 1 of 147

Alive-O 6 – An Analysis Éanna Johnson PhD page 1 of 147

A Theological & Pedagogical

Analysis of Alive-O 6

Éanna Johnson PhD

2008, 2013

This Analysis of Alive-O 6 was prepared by Éanna Johnson

as part of his research of the complete Alive-O Programme

for a PhD in Theology at St Patrick’s College, Maynooth.

For the PhD dissertation see

Alive-O 6 is the sixth of eight years of the

Religious Education Programme for Catholic Primary Schools in Ireland.

It corresponds with Fourth Class in Primary School (9/10 year olds).

The Alive-O Programme is published by Veritas Publications,1996-2004.

CONTENTS

PAGE

1.INTRODUCTION & SUMMARY 3

2.ANALYSIS OF PROGRAMME COMPONENTS

Overall Presentation 12
Lesson Structure 13
Pupils’ Book 15
Pupil’s Worksheets 17
Teachers’ Book 17
Songs & Stories 46
Prayer 47
Video 49

3.ANALYSIS BY THEME & LESSON 50

Nourishment: T1L6; T1L7; T1L8. 51
Revelation of God in Scripture: T3L3; T3L4; T2L5. 60
Creation: T1L1; T1L2; T1L3; T1L4. 70
The Holy Spirit: T3L6. 84
Mary: T1L5. 86
The Church: T2L2; T2L3; T2L4; T2L5. 90
The Saints; T3L7.100
The Last Things (Eschatology): T1L9.103
The Liturgical Year: T1L12; T2L6; T2L9; T3L1.107
Liturgy and Sacraments: T2L1; T3L2.119
Life in Christ / Morality: T1L10; T1L11; T2L7; T2L8.133

ABBREVIATIONS:

The Alive-O Programme is structured in Lessons of one week in three Terms. The abbreviations above indicate Lessons within Terms: T1L1 is the first Lesson in the first Term; T3L8 is the eighth Lesson in the third Term; and so on. A prefix is often used to indicate Book of the Alive-O Programme, e.g. A6- for Book 6.

CCC – Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1992.

GDC – General Directory for Catechesis, 1997.

GCD – General Catechetical Directory, 1971.

CT – Catechesi Tradendae, 1979.

SECTION 1: INTRODUCTION & SUMMARY

INTRODUCTION.

This analysis seeks to assess Alive-O 6 in comparison with the relevant teaching of the Catholic Church, in particular the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC)[1] and the General Directory for Catechesis (GDC)[2]. The Church requires that a Catholic catechetical text must be in perfect harmony with the CCC, and must give due consideration of the norms and criteria contained in the GDC [3]. In relation to norms and criteria, some are mandatory (e.g. the Pedagogy of God), while others are more in the nature of good advice.[4]In the context of these requirements of the Church as expressed in the General Directory for Catechesis the principal evaluation criteria for content used in this Analysis are Authenticity and Completeness, while the criteria used for pedagogy are Faithfulness to the Church’s prescribed Pedagogy and Educational Effectiveness.

SUMMARY

The summary material below is arranged in accordance with the principal themes that are addressed in Alive-O 6. The themes are arranged in the sequence in which they appear in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, with the exception of the theme of 'nourishment' which has been selected by Alive-O 6 has the principal theme for its own programme.

The Summary seeks to cover all the relevant material in Alive-O 6. This consists of some information for the teachers alone, which is partly contained in the Introductory pages, and partly prior to each lesson. It also includes the lesson material that could be expected to be seen directly by the pupils, covering the material in the Pupil's Book, Worksheet, and video material. The remainder is the lesson material that is provided for teachers to be used at their discretion with the pupils; this analysis cannot assess how much of this material will actually be used with pupils, because there is much more material than could be used in the allocated lesson time, so teachers must be selective in deciding how much or how little to use.

Nourishment.

Nourishment can be physical, mental/intellectual, emotional/psychological or spiritual. The most important kind of nourishment is spiritual. All catechesis or religious education should be spiritual nourishment, so there is no real need to pick 'nourishment' as the theme for any one part of catechesis programme, such as Alive-O 6 does. A good Catholic catechesis programme will automatically give spiritual nourishment, and also as a byproduct should also give intellectual/mental and emotional/psychological nourishment.

Three lessons are specifically dedicated to the theme of ‘nourishment’, which emphasisemainly physical nourishment. This includes teachings on the body and food, which really belong in biology class, not in the religious education lessons. A secondary emphasis is on emotional and mental nourishment, but spiritual nourishment, which should be the major emphasis of any catechetical programme, is largely neglected.

The titling and content of these three lessons present the three persons of the Trinity, as: God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit, which is not an authentic Christian expression of the Blessed Trinity. In the first lesson it is ‘God’ who nourishes us, while in the second and third lessons it is ‘God’ who sends ‘Jesus’ and the ‘Holy Spirit’ to nourish us. This implies that Jesus and the Holy Spirit are other than, and less than,‘God’.

Scripture.

The Introductory sections for teachers on Revelation and Using the Bible have some good material, but still present an overall picture which is more theist than Christian. This is because Alive-O omits the critical dimension of salvation history and falls short on bringing out the divinity of Jesus Christ. The Old Testament is treated simply as the way that God loved the people before the coming of Jesus, and the New Testament is treated simply as the story of Jesus who came to tell people that God loves them. There is no sense that Jesus is our divine saviour, who was foretold in the Old Testament as the Messiah who would redeem his people, and that the New Testament tells the fulfilment of our salvation. The Bible is described simply as 'a source of inspiration'. The impression is given that the literal meaning of Scripture is the only meaning of the scriptural text. The information for teachers on the Bible falls short of a full Christian understanding of Scripture as taught by the Catholic Church, and indicates why Alive-O throughout the programme tends to treat Scripture as something that may be freely added to, subtracted from, altered or reshaped at will.

There are three lessons which address Scripture in general, the Old Testament in particular. They do contain some reasonable information about the Scriptures, but overall they fall far short of an authentic Catholic understanding of the Scriptures, the Old Testament in particular. There are some good points in the presentation of the Old Testament episodes, but also significant weaknesses.

Alive-O presents the Old Testament as simply the story of the Jewish people before the birth of Jesus, which shows how God loved his people and cared for them. From this we can learn that God continues to care for us now in just the same way as he cared for people of Old Testament times. Jesus knew the stories of the Old Testament, and was nourished by them, in the same way that we can be nourished by those stories now.

There is of course much truth in the foregoing, but the problem is in what Alive-O omits. Alive-O omits the dimension of salvation history from its understanding of the Old Testament. There is no sense that the Old Testament is God's loving plan, first of all for the creation of the human race, and then for the salvation of the human race after the Fall of Adam and Eve, in preparation for the sending of the Messiah, who is Jesus, God the Son, who became man in order to give his life for the salvation of the human race from sin.

Also, Alive-O presents Jesus as just no more than a human being, who learnt from the stories of the Old Testament in the same way that we can learn from them today. What is omitted is that the Old Testament tells of Jesus (as he explained to the disciples on the road to Emmaus, Luke24:13-35; see also John5:39,46) and that his coming is the fulfilment of all God’s loving plans and promises which we find in the Old Testament.

There are four episodes from the Old Testament presented in these lessons – Ruth, Rebekah, Joseph, and David – some good, some fair, but in general they suffer from being presented as isolated incidents, lacking context and connection, out of sequence, and without any mention of salvation history and the part they play in that great plan of God the Father's love for the human race.

Alive-O does teach that the Bible is the inspired Word of God, but its treatment of divine inspiration falls short of the Catholic Church's teaching. Also, Alive-O makes no mention whatsoever of the Church's Magisterium or of Sacred Tradition; by contrast, the Church teaches of the unbreakable connection between these three: Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition, and the Church’s Magisterium.

There is some good information in the lessons on the Bible in general, and on the Old Testament in particular, but it is quite limited, and its value is greatly diminished by the inclusion of a large amount of distracting and irrelevant material.

Creation.

The Introductory material for teachers does not address Creation. There are four lessons that specifically address Creation, but the presentation of creation in these lessons is less than satisfactory, with significant omissions. One deficiency is that creation is presented as being entirely material, and there is no mention at all of God's unseen creation: the immortal soul of every human being, angels (including the angels who fell from grace and became devils), and heaven.

The Church stresses the critical importance of authentic catechesis on Creation. ‘Creation is the foundation of all God’s saving plans, the beginning of the history of salvation that culminates in Christ. ……Catechesis on creation is of major importance. It concerns the very foundations of human and Christian life. ………Since the beginning the Christian faith has been challenged by responses to the question of origins that differ from its own.’ (CCC 280, 282, 285). Also, the CCC teaches ‘we cannot tamper with the revelation of original sin without under-mining the mystery of Christ’ (CCC389). Alive-O’s deficient teaching on Creation therefore leads on the many other consequent deficiencies, in a kind of ‘hierarchy of errors’.

Alive-O’s principal emphasis is on inductive learning, that is, coming to know about God from observing material creation, both the natural world and human beings, but this approach could notgo beyond theism, that is learning of the existence of God but without any understanding of Christianity. The Church teaches that there is certainly a place for inductive learning in religious education, but the main emphasis in learning about God must come from deductive learning, that is, based on Divine Revelation. Inductive learning and deductive learning support one another and are best used in combination.

Alive-O includes creation as given in the book of Genesis; it is good up to and including the creation of the animals and other living creatures, but is not satisfactory for the creation of human beings. It falls short of giving a genuine Christian understanding of the creation of human beings, omitting the original blessedness of our First Parents, God’s command to increase and multiply, original sin and the Fall. Alive-O presents an understanding of salvation as something purely material, and goes beyond implicit denial of Original Sin by omission, but actually teaches that original sin is an impossibility.

The treatment of Jesus and creation is most unsatisfactory. The Church teaches that creation is the work of the Trinity,that all creation has been created in and through Jesus, and that the salvation which Jesus brought to the human race will in some way be shared by all of material creation at the end of time. Alive-O completely fails to present this beautiful Christian understanding and instead presents a view of Jesus as just an ordinary human being who was greatly impressed by God's material creation. In addition, Alive-O gives great attention to a most unsatisfactory New Age song and dance (‘Celtic Blessing’), which is not at all Christian.

There is a presentation on St Francis and creation, which has some good aspects concerning Francis’ great love and care for material creation as a gift of God. However the presentation falls far short of genuine picture of St Francis, because the spiritual dimension is completely omitted. Francis is presented rather like a theist-humanitarian who is also a caring naturalist. Omitted is Francis’ passionate love for Jesus Christ as his Lord and Saviour, his response to the Lord's call to 'Rebuild My Church', and his total dedication to the Catholic Church, which were all the wellspring and sources for his great love for human beings and God’s created natural world.

The Holy Spirit.

The lesson on the Holy Spirit has some reasonable information about the Holy Spirit, but is not satisfactory because of the dominant impression given that the Holy Spirit is not God, but only some kind of presence of God, and therefore less than God. A most unsatisfactory feature is the changing of Scripture in relation to Peter’s speech on the day of Pentecost, omitting parts of the speech which are authentically Christian, and substituting material which fits in with Alive-O's theistic spirituality.

There is one brief but good teaching on the Trinity, but it is greatly de-emphasised and effectively 'buried' in the middle of an optional discussion session.

Mary.

The Introductory material for teachers has some reasonable material on Mary, but Jesus’ divinity is undermined by describing Mary only as ‘the mother of God's Son, Jesus’, but not as ‘mother of God’. There are also some very significant omissions concerning Mary: her Immaculate Conception, her Virginity, and her Assumption, these omissions all correlate with Alive-O’s spirituality. Alive-O does not recognize the existence of original sin, and therefore everyone is immaculately conceived, Mary is no different to anyone else. Alive-O does not apparently believe in Mary's virginity; there are illustrations in the Pupil's Books which imply that Mary was already pregnant at the time of the Annunciation and that she had several other children besides Jesus.

The wedding feast at Cana is featured in the lesson material, but the account is poor, with a lot of imaginative fictional additions which overwhelm the story, some key omissions and a most unfortunate presentation of Jesus and Mary Magdalene as if they were 'an item', and/or Mary Magdalene was an Apostle. Mary is described as mother of Jesus, but not as mother of God. The meaning of the miracle is not developed.

There is a good summary of the Assumption, but it lacks backup information and explanation. The Hail Mary is presented, which is good, but there is no explanation of the meaning of the prayer, which is not good.

The video segment presents images of Mary, which are excellent. The only pity is that these excellent images are not reflected in the illustrations in the Pupil's Book, which tend to show the ordinariness of Mary, rather than following the great Christian tradition of presenting Mary as someone who was really special, worthy of our greatest respect and devotion.

The Rosary is included, which is good, but the actual material presented is rather mixed. There is an excellent instruction for the teachers on how to pray the rosary, but it would have been better if this material was incorporated in some way in the pupil texts. There is a poem on the Sorrowful Mysteries, which is most unsatisfactory in that it omits from the Crucifixion any reference to Jesus’ death on the cross winning our salvation from sin.

The Church.

The Introductory material for teachers includes information on the Church, but it is quite limited and weak. Here, and throughout the lesson material, the impression is given that ‘The Church’ is all the baptized; there is no teaching on the Catholic Church.

Four lessons are devoted to the theme of the Church. While they do contain some good material, nevertheless the lessons fall seriously short of giving authentic Catholic teaching on the Church.

There is some useful information on the parish, but in general the parish is treated very much like a local human community. There is mention of priests as part of the parish community, but their role and position are gravely diminished. ‘Parish Priest’ and ‘Curate’ are not mentioned.

There is some limited information on the Diocese, and the Bishop is mentioned, but there is no explanation as to what a Bishop is and what is his role.The term 'pope’ only appears once, jumbled up among a number of other names on a worksheet; there is no explanation as to who or what a ‘pope’ is. The identity of the Catholic Church is confused and obfuscated, because the word 'Church' sometimes implies the Catholic Church, but in other places the word 'Church' is defined as all those who are baptised. These lessons will give the pupils minimal understanding of what the Catholic Church is, and probably a great deal of confusion.

The image of the Church as the Body of Christ, which appears in the letters of St Paul, is used a lot in the lessons, but is radically changed from the scriptural image. The key point of the scriptural image of the Body of Christ is that Christ is the Head of this Body; without Christ as Head the image is meaningless. Alive-O omits Christ as Head, and presents the image of a headless body, which is really no more than a secular image of a group of people who are connected to and care for each other.