During the past 15 years there has been a great deal of debate in Australia about the nature and purpose of religious education in Catholic secondary schools. There has also been a move towards school based curriculum in religious education and the provision of general guidelines by diocesan authorities. This study examines the thinking of a representative group of teachers as they describe the processes by which they plan and teach a specific topic. The language used by the teachers is analysed and compared with the language of their own school documents and the formal statements in the diocesan guidelines and other official documents. It is also compared with the language used in the findings of research into teacher thinking and planning. This research is qualitative in nature and interpretive in design. It uses questionnaires, interviews and written documentation as sources of data. It does attempt to make some generalisations from the results. Seven schools, which had different approaches to curriculum development, were chosen and within these 25 teachers who reflected a range of age, experience, training and other areas of teaching were selected for further interview.