At St Rose's, we use a scheme called 'Caritas in Action' to support our Catholic Social Teaching.

It shares that 'Catholic Social Teaching is based on the belief that God has a plan for creation, a plan to build his kingdom of peace, love and justice. It holds that God has a special plan for every single one of us, whoever we are. Our part in this plan isn’t just limited to things ‘spiritual’, or times when we do “religious things.” It involves every aspect of our lives, from the things we pray about, to how we live as a responsible global citizen.

Our part in this story is our duty for the common good, a call to treat everyone as our brothers and sisters. It is something that we all share.'

Caritas in Action provides us with additional teaching ideas to ensure that we engage our pupils in expressing their faith through social justice and action. We also use resources from Cafod and more information can be found here https://cafod.org.uk/Pray/Catholic-social-teaching 

The 7 themes we explore are:

• The dignity of the human person
• Family and community
• Solidarity and the Common Good
• Rights and Responsibilies 
• Option for the poor and vulnerable
• The dignity of work
• Stewardship

Stewards of Our World

"As stewards of  God's creation, we are called to make the earth a beautiful garden for the human family." Pope Francis, 2018

In school, we have been thinking about how we can be stewards of God's earth. We have been thinking about why it is important to look after God's world. What would you say to someone if you saw them damaging God's earth? How can we help others to look after God's world?

Catholic social teaching calls us all the work for the common good, help build a just society, uphold the dignity of human life and work for justice.

Our teaching at St Rose’s aims to educate our children not just in global issues of poverty but to gain a better understanding of social justice issues in our community and the UK.

We focus on seven themes which are woven throughout not only our RE teaching but our wider curriculum too:

Dignity of the human person

Family and community

Solidarity and the common good

Dignity of work

Rights and responsibilities

Option for the poor and vulnerable

Stewardship

In additional to our teaching curriculum, there are many opportunities for our children to have an impact on the wider community and experience putting Catholic social into action. Some of these opportunities occur at special times in the liturgical year, others are how we support each other with care and a smile each and every day at St Rose’s.

Ethical stewardship

Since opening our ‘Whispering Woods’ forest learning programme at school in May 2019, our children have been utterly inspired by Pope Francis’ teachings in Laudato Si (On Care for Our Common Home). They have begun to develop a greater awareness of all God’s creation and in time will extend this to thinking of practical actions that we can take from the Gospel to help the common good and deepen our spiritual sense of our common home.

Harvest

We celebrate our first Mass of the school year together for Harvest. Our community thanks God for all we have, as well as taking time to pray for those that have less than us. Before Mass, our community donates food to be shared with those in need.