A Guide for Teachers
Who the course is for
The Faith Explained is enrichment material for senior secondary students, roughly Years 10 to 12. It suits:
- an extension or enrichment group within a Catholic school;
- a lunchtime or after-school study group;
- a homeschooling family;
- a parish youth group or confirmation follow-up.
It is free, requires no registration, and collects nothing from students. Every page can be printed.
How it relates to the Religion curriculum
The course is designed to sit beside the school’s Religion program, not to compete with it. It deliberately leaves out moral theology, Scripture study, liturgy, Church history and social teaching, which are the core of most Religion curricula, and concentrates on doctrine as a system.
Every lesson cites the Catechism of the Catholic Church, so a Religion coordinator can check quickly that it agrees with what the school teaches. Where the course draws on older manuals, it states their teaching in plain modern language and gives the conciliar or papal source, not the manual, as the authority.
Structure and timing
| Units | Lessons | Suggested time | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Foundations | Unit 1 | 5 | 5 weeks |
| God and creation | Units 2–4 | 11 | 11 weeks |
| Christ and his work | Units 5–7 | 10 | 10 weeks |
| Grace, Church and sacraments | Units 8–10 | 13 | 13 weeks |
| The Last Things and capstone | Unit 11 + capstone | 5 | 5 weeks |
A lesson is planned for 45 to 50 minutes of class time, or 30 to 40 minutes of private reading. At two lessons a week the course fits into two terms.
Teach Unit 1 first. It introduces the theological notes (de fide, certain, common teaching, opinion) that every later lesson uses. Units 2 to 11 follow the order of the Creed and build on one another, so they work best in sequence.
The teacher notes
Each unit has a page of teacher notes with:
- the learning goals for each lesson;
- a suggested shape for a 50-minute lesson;
- discussion questions that go beyond the student questions;
- the answers to every Check your understanding question;
- the misconceptions students most often bring, and how to address them.
The answers also appear on the student pages, hidden behind a Show answer button. If you are using a question for assessment, ask students to answer before opening it.
Lessons that need particular care
A few lessons deal with teachings that a fifteen-year-old can easily hear wrongly. The teacher notes for these units give extra guidance:
- 4.4 Original sin: not a personal fault we committed.
- 9.4 “Outside the Church no salvation”: what it means and does not mean.
- 10.2 Baptism: the necessity of baptism, and the destiny of unbaptised infants.
- 11.3 Hell: real and eternal, alongside God’s will that all be saved.
In each case the lesson states the teaching honestly and then sets out what the Church does not claim. Please don’t soften the teaching or skip the second part: students need both.
Using the philosophy course
Several lessons depend on philosophical ideas such as substance and accident, nature and person, or act and potency. Where they do, the lesson includes a Philosophy bridge pointing to the Catholic Philosophy course. Students who have done the philosophy course will move faster through Units 2, 3, 5 and 10. Those who haven’t can manage with the short explanation each bridge gives and the glossary.
Assessment ideas
- The sorting exercise. Give students a list of statements and have them label each as de fide, certain, common teaching, opinion, or not Church teaching. The list of de fide teachings and its section on things often mistaken for dogma supply the material.
- Explain it to a friend. A 300-word explanation of one teaching, written for someone who has never heard it, including one thing the Church does not claim.
- The Creed map. The capstone lesson’s task, mapping each article of the Creed to the units that explain it, works well as an end-of-course project.