JCE Religious Education flashcards

33 cards. Read the term and the definition here. The deck at the top of this page is optional.

Religious education vs catechesis

Religious education teaches about religion and builds religious literacy for all students; catechesis forms faith within a believing community and presupposes commitment.

Four learning outcomes

Knowledge and understanding; discernment and interpretation skills; relating faith to life; and responding to religious experience and tradition.

Human dignity

The foundational Catholic social teaching principle holding that every person has inherent worth regardless of status or ability, grounding all other social principles.

Common good

The sum of social conditions allowing people and groups to reach fulfilment more fully and easily; it includes respect for persons and social well-being.

Subsidiarity

The principle that decisions should be made at the lowest competent level of authority, with higher bodies intervening only when local communities cannot act effectively.

Option for the poor

The principle that moral decisions and social structures are evaluated by their effect on the most vulnerable members of society.

Literal sense of Scripture

The meaning conveyed by the words of the text as understood by the human author and the inspired writer within their historical and literary context.

Allegorical sense

A spiritual sense that reads events and persons in Scripture as pointing toward Christ and the new covenant, especially in relation to the paschal mystery.

Moral sense

A spiritual sense of Scripture that draws from the text lessons about how believers should act justly and live well.

Anagogical sense

A spiritual sense reading Scripture in terms of eternal realities and the last things, pointing toward the fulfilment of hope in God.

Sacraments of initiation

Baptism, Confirmation, and Eucharist; together they establish a person in Christian life and are normally received before the other sacraments.

Sacraments of healing

Penance (Reconciliation) and Anointing of the Sick, which restore spiritual health and address sin and illness.

Paschal mystery

The passion, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ, the event celebrated across the liturgical year and central to Christian faith.

Easter Triduum

The three days from Holy Thursday evening through Easter Sunday, comprising the Mass of the Lord's Supper, Good Friday liturgy, and Easter Vigil.

Shared Christian praxis

A teaching model moving through naming present experience, reflecting on it, accessing the tradition, integrating both, and responding in new action.

Hermeneutical circle

The interpretive movement back and forth between students' life experience and the religious tradition, with each informing understanding of the other.

World behind the text

The historical, social, and cultural setting in which a biblical text was produced, studied through historical-critical methods.

World of the text

The literary structure, genre, and rhetoric of a biblical text considered as a crafted whole, studied through literary methods.

World in front of the text

The reception and interpretation of a biblical text by later communities and readers, including how it has been used and understood.

Essential question

An open, arguable question that frames a unit of study and recurs throughout it, such as how belief shapes ethical decisions.

Backward design in RE

Planning that starts with desired learning outcomes, then determines acceptable evidence of learning, then designs activities that build toward that evidence.

Five pillars of Islam

Shahada (declaration of faith), salat (daily prayer), zakat (almsgiving), sawm (fasting in Ramadan), and hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca).

Shema

The central Jewish confession of faith declaring the oneness of God; recited in daily prayer and found in Deuteronomy 6.

Four Noble Truths

Buddhist teaching that suffering exists, has a cause in craving, can cease, and has a path to cessation, namely the Eightfold Path.

Dharma, karma, samsara, moksha

Interlocking Hindu concepts: right order and duty, action and its consequences, the cycle of rebirth, and liberation from that cycle.

Three-source moral act

Catholic analysis of a moral act by its object, intention, and circumstances; the act is good only when all three are good.

Natural law

The view that moral norms are knowable through human reason reflecting on human nature and its goods, apart from special revelation.

Deontological ethics

An approach judging the morality of actions by whether they conform to duties or rules rather than by their outcomes.

Virtue ethics

An approach focused on the character of the agent and the habits that lead to flourishing, rather than on isolated acts or results.

Deuterocanonical books

Books of the Old Testament accepted in the Catholic canon but not in most Protestant canons, including Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, and Sirach.

Synoptic Gospels

Matthew, Mark, and Luke, so named because they share substantial material and can be compared side by side in parallel.

Deposit of faith

Catholic teaching that Scripture and Tradition together transmit the single revelation of God, entrusted to the Church and interpreted by the magisterium.

Scripture citation format

Book, chapter, and verse, such as John 3:16, with hyphens for ranges and commas or semicolons for multiple passages.