Voicing the Longing of the “Adolescent Heart” through Photography and Film: Connecting Transcendence and Revelation in Catholic Religious Education

Abstract

This paper explores how through narrative pedagogies inspired simultaneously by divine pedagogy revealed in Scripture and the power of modern media to visually represent the human heart’s most profound longings, divine revelation can, through Catholic Religious Education (CRE), reach and transform adolescent hearts. Such a transformation is made possible through adolescents’ expression of transcendence in a communal context that is facilitated when metaphor’s power in helping adolescents tell stories about themselves is unlocked through photography and film. These media teach young people use their capacity for imagination and critical thinking more effectively and produce narratives of self through which they narrate who they are and would like to be. Such media impact identity through the process of merging words, imagery, music and movement, and can be so dynamic and effective in representing self. CRE can thus enable young people to become critical, even of their own past experiences, make them more integrated and coherent, empower them to meet life’s challenges, and afford them the opportunity to project their lives in the future as they wish them to be. All throughout such a process, adolescents learn more what God’s revelation entails and its potential to make human life more beautiful and meaningful.