WELLINGTON Papers aimed at encouraging priestly and religious vocations and promoting environmental justice have been sent to Catholic schools by the New Zealand Catholic Education Office. The NZCEOs deputy chief executive officer, Susan Apáthy, said the office appreciated the good work done by priests, school chaplains, members of religious orders and congregations, directors of religious studies and other staff in schools, in encouraging young people to consider religious life.

This area might be further strengthened, she said, by encouraging those involved in career education and career advice to collaborate with such people, with the possibility of presenting religious life within careers programmes.

The paper on vocations says careers advisers might not always consider the concept of vocation as one that comes within career education.

However, it is appropriate in a Catholic school that it should do so. It is valuable that our students develop an awareness of the vocational element in any life choice and career choice.

The vocations paper adds: While religious orders and the seminaries do not normally accept students until some years after they have left school, it is really important to have this option placed in front of students considering their careers.

Students could also be provided with a sense of the pathways that can lead to a commitment of ones life to specific Church work, which may include being a lay volunteer, working in youth ministry, justice and aid or advocacy roles, teaching in Catholic schools, joining a community of young people who are engaging in life-choice discernment while they study or work, etc.

The paper on Catholic schools and environmental justice says that taking care of the earth is for Catholic schools a spiritual issue, not just a scientific, economic or political issue.

Schools have a moral and Christian imperative to educate students to care for the earth. It is good that some Catholic schools have become enviro-schools, and that others are involved in recycling, composting, permaculture and worm farms, cleaning up local areas and monitoring their power use and paper use . . . .

All these actions and many more are imperative if schools are to fulfil the need to offer a practical example and education to students, showing them what it means locally to adopt principles of living sustainably, and preserving our global ecology.