Introduction

This volume brings together many leading scholars working in the field of Catholic education to consider the various ways in which Vatican II and its teaching on education has been received. Almost all of the chapters have their origin in an International Conference on Catholic education, held at Heythrop College (University of London) in June 2015. The book, like the original conference, seeks to mark the fiftieth anniversary of Vatican II’s declaration Gravissimum Educationis , which addresses the importance that the Catholic Church attaches to education. The fiftieth anniversary, reached on the 28th of October, 2015, provides a highly apt opportunity to consider afresh the new thinking about Catholic education that Vatican II ushered in. Five decades on, it is apparent that Gravissimum Educationis is regarded as one of the lesser fruits to have come from Vatican II. However, at the same time it is clear that the place of education and the Catholic school is an increasingly central feature of the life of the Catholic Church. For many of those inside as well as outside of it, the ordinary or every day way in which the Church is encountered is through the Catholic school.