Category: R.E

A Melancholy Monday

The first day back this term for St. Aidan’s caritas class was a rather sad one. Their beloved Caritas teacher – and head of department- Mrs Barton was leaving. Mrs Barton has been in St. Aidan’s high school religious education department for 23/25? years but has taken up a new position as … in Edinburgh . The pupils said farewell on Monday by putting together a party with the of assistant school chaplain, father Kieran. There was many a hug going round,  but the school and pupils wish Mrs Barton all the best in her future endeavours.

Mrs Heinz commented on Mrs Barton work within the school ” Mrs Barton has enriched the life of every pupil in the school, through curriculum and pastoral events and by organising special mission and retreat times. Over the last twenty years. We will all really miss her generous, caring ways.”

In other news, St. Ignatius long term parish priest of 9 years – Father Gerry Maguiness- is taking up a new position as General Secretary of the bishops conference. Father Gerry has been a very involved member of the schools religious education department for many years.

 

Tin Tuesday

“We want to make everyone feel included at Christmas, we send them a Christmas card to wish them a merry Christmas”

The RE department in St. Aidan’s have started it create Christmas parcels for local parishes filled with tins, sweets, and essentials. Pupils have also been donating money. With the help of all the WPS classes, Caritas pupils, and the school as a whole they aim to send 100 parcels to local community.
Mrs Hynes said “We need to remind ourselves Christmas is about receiving presents but also about giving. The parcel give everyone the opportunity to give something. We’ve had some people bring in bags of shopping.”
Caritas student Hollie Conlin said “We want to make everyone feel included at Christmas, we send them a Christmas card to wish them a merry Christmas” This thought is shared throughout the school and the students are getting ready to deliver the parcel.

SCIAF Real Gifts

This week St. Aidan’s High school Caritas class promoted and sold SCIAF Real Gifts during a Christmas themed staff coffee morning. The pupils served mince pies, coffee and tea to the large number of staff who visited during their Christmas lunch to show support.

Purchasing a Real Gift provides something vital for people living in poverty in Africa, Asia or Latin America such as emergency blankets, seeds or even a goat. Whilst also giving a thoughtful gift to someone in your life. The pupils raised around £180 from this event.

2019 Auschwitz Visit

On the 3rd of October, two S6 students went on a reflective visit to the Auschwitz Concentration Camp in the South of Poland. Joined by approximately 200 other visitors from Scotland, S6 R.E Vice Captains Carla Foley and Kate Hughes, had an emotional experience as they visited one of the most important sites of European history.

“I feel like dissociated would be the best way to describe how i felt, I just couldn’t comprehend this was where I was” explained Kate. She said she didn’t realise herself that this was where everything happened until she saw a ‘work makes you free’ sign while walking around. Kate also mentioned the tragic side of how the holocaust had a big impact on religion for Polish Jews as many synagogues were destroyed but never rebuilt. Oświęcim, the town near where Auschwitz is located, had a 50% Jewish population.

Kate and the community near Auschwitz urges people to talk about the severity of the genocide that occurred and to find some stories from individual survivors as it is “easier to connect to one person than 6 million.”

 

Charity Football Match

A charity football math was hosted by RE class S5 D and their teacher, Mr Bradley. Mr Bradley commented, “The match was the pupil’s idea, not mine, they instigated it. Most of the organisation was down to them and I just made sure that staff knew what was happening.”

The project is part of the S5 RE course. Classes try to raise cash in an enterprising way to support a good cause. The footballers raised over 100 pounds for the Talbot Centre which supports homeless men and women of Glasgow. Sean McKeever and Kieran McMahon, both S5, were enthusiastic participants in the match and in their post-match analysis Sean said, ‘I think the game went very well and I think that we raised a lot of money for charity’.

Lots of staff and students turned up to support the match, which was played in such a friendly manner that nobody knows what the final score was!

ACN S6 Visit!

On Thursday afternoon, Clair Sweeney from Aid to the Church in Need, or ACN for short, visited the S6 pupils and gave them a talk highlighting the struggles Christians all around the world face each day.

Before the talk we caught up with Clair to discuss the work ACN does and how young people can get involved. She explained ACN’s mission to protect Christians in countries where it is unsafe to practise their faith. She also talked about the work they do from providing children with bibles in Pakistan to rebuilding destroyed homes in Iraq, and this is only a small amount of work compared to everything they do in the 140 countries they work in.

When asked about how it feels working with so many young people she said “Its fantastic and I love the variety and all the exciting ideas they bring”. She expressed how young people can attend the youth rally being held on the 7th of October and described it as “a real highlight of the year” after having such great numbers the year prior.

Clair expressed how central Prayer and Information is to their organisation and they encourage young people to pray for other Christians in need or tell anyone they can about the amazing work ACN does.

On behalf of the JMAC team, I thank Clair for having a chat with us before delivering an excellent talk to the rest of S6. Thank you for reading.

SPUC Visit 2019

This week the school had the first visit of many from the Society for the protection of the unborn child or as its more commonly known as SPUC.

SPUC provides talks for students of fourth to sixth year covering a variety of pro-life topics. On Wednesday afternoon some of our JMAC team managed to interview one of the SPUC apprentices, Eden Linton.

Eden commented ” It’s important for school children (to receive the talks) because you are the future and we want our future to be as supporting of women and Valuing of human life as much as possible.” Eden also expressed her thoughts on the controversy surrounding the Pro-life movement ” SPUC Wants to help young people to see a different perspective, that pro-life people do care about women as much as the child. To get them to see pro-life people as not weird or hating women is really important for the organisation” .

We also broached the topic of Pro-life movement in the future and discussed whether or not cultures were changing, Despite only working at SPUC for a few months Eden can already see a shift in culture and society is becoming more inclined to be pro-life. They also run a programme known as project Truth which is a programme which allows 18-20 year olds to travel around different cities in Scotland providing information and support stands for women in crisis pregnancies, those who have had abortions etc. This year Eden was surprised by the sheer support the received from the public because they are so used to abuse online.

 

 

S.P.U.C.

We met with Emmit, part of the S.P.U.C group and asked him a few questions on what the S.P.U.C are and when they were established. He told us “They were founded in 1967 after the abortion act had gained momentum. A lot of supporters were spurred on at the fact that abortion could be performed at the early stage of life, even at 4 weeks. That’s excluding ‘the morning after’ pill. You are human from the moment you enter the womb until the moment you are in the ground.” He told us about why he came to St. Aidans and he said “Whn I was in school I didn’t have ‘speaker’ as such, and its good to have an ‘outsider’ come in and be brutally honest.”

Reece Larkins and Chris Quigley.

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