LUX EDMUNDI: REFLECTION: SEPTEMBER, 2021
The OECD has insisted for some time that, if schools are to be effective, teachers must be accountable for their work in the classroom. This insistence has resulted here in Ireland in the system of Whole-School Evaluation (WSE), incorporating School Self- Evaluation (SSE), now well-embedded in our schools, primary and post-primary. In some respects, WSE/SSE is another Irish solution to an Irish problem: In the public sector in Ireland, we are deeply suspicious of anything that smacks of official appraisal of individual performance. In recognised schools, a few more or less exceptional circumstances apart, inspection “with live ammunition”, so to speak, is, rightly and thankfully, rare. In fact, though the word “inspection” itself was used in some of the official ur-texts introducing what became WSE/SSE, it was re-placed by “evaluation” almost immediately and it quickly emerged that “evaluation” would focus on teachers, not individually, but collectively. This “soft” approach seems odd to many working in the private sector, for whom appraisal, real, regular and promotion- and pay-related, is standard. It was, though, probably as much as could have been successfully asked of teachers at the time and, pragmatically, the Inspectorate settled for it.
It is worth noting that our students perform more or less satisfactorily in international tests of scholastic achievement, suggesting, on the face of it, that, left to their own professional devices, most of our teachers will do off their own bat what they might never do “under the lash”, so to speak. Forced labour seldom delivers. It is, it seems, personal commitment that ensures that men and women deliver the kind and level of goods and services required of them. It is this that motivates very many of our teachers in their drive for professional excellence. It is this willingness to keep raising their game in the classroom, so to speak, that ensures a child in one of our smallest and least-visited schools has still a very good chance of receiving a world-class education, or, at least, an education as world-class as can be delivered in schools as under-resourced as ours.
SSE that takes this apparent predisposition of the majority of us to do right by our students as a given, will, more likely than not, confirm that majority in its commitment to the pursuit of excellence in all to do with teaching and learning and may well supply an effective, case-appropriate and acceptable way of helping those who may not do as well as they might “at the chalk-face”.
There are, of course, faith-based beliefs and practices that can help us excel. What we do in school, we do for God and for the neighbour, the latter, in this instance, being the students committed by Providence to our professional care. Nothing less than the best is good enough for them. Day in, day out, therefore, we give only and unstintingly of our best in the class-room. We review our practice regularly to discern if this, in fact, is what we have done. We acknowledge our shortcomings, repent of them and remedy them. Because we are driven by conscience and drawn by the Two-fold Law of Charity, we are our own first and most exacting “inspectors”, demanding always of ourselves, not just “Sásúil”, but Magis, the more, the better, in teaching our students and helping them learn. For us, teaching is more than a job, more, even than a profession. It is our God-given vocation. Our drive for professional excellence is, therefore, constant and indefatigable because it is our sacred duty. We refuse to settle for anything second-rate. That would be “rapine in the holocaust”, an unworthy attempt, personally and professionally unbecoming, to swindle God and our students, to cheat them of their respective entitlements. Cigire or no cigire, with the help of God – which may come to us through our colleagues, as we work with them on WSE/SSE - we will have no truck with mediocrity – “Ah, sure, ‘twill do” - not on our patch; not on our watch; not now; not ever. Amen, A Thiarna!
The OECD has insisted for some time that, if schools are to be effective, teachers must be accountable for their work in the classroom. This insistence has resulted here in Ireland in the system of Whole-School Evaluation (WSE), incorporating School Self- Evaluation (SSE), now well-embedded in our schools, primary and post-primary. In some respects, WSE/SSE is another Irish solution to an Irish problem: In the public sector in Ireland, we are deeply suspicious of anything that smacks of official appraisal of individual performance. In recognised schools, a few more or less exceptional circumstances apart, inspection “with live ammunition”, so to speak, is, rightly and thankfully, rare. In fact, though the word “inspection” itself was used in some of the official ur-texts introducing what became WSE/SSE, it was re-placed by “evaluation” almost immediately and it quickly emerged that “evaluation” would focus on teachers, not individually, but collectively. This “soft” approach seems odd to many working in the private sector, for whom appraisal, real, regular and promotion- and pay-related, is standard. It was, though, probably as much as could have been successfully asked of teachers at the time and, pragmatically, the Inspectorate settled for it.
It is worth noting that our students perform more or less satisfactorily in international tests of scholastic achievement, suggesting, on the face of it, that, left to their own professional devices, most of our teachers will do off their own bat what they might never do “under the lash”, so to speak. Forced labour seldom delivers. It is, it seems, personal commitment that ensures that men and women deliver the kind and level of goods and services required of them. It is this that motivates very many of our teachers in their drive for professional excellence. It is this willingness to keep raising their game in the classroom, so to speak, that ensures a child in one of our smallest and least-visited schools has still a very good chance of receiving a world-class education, or, at least, an education as world-class as can be delivered in schools as under-resourced as ours.
SSE that takes this apparent predisposition of the majority of us to do right by our students as a given, will, more likely than not, confirm that majority in its commitment to the pursuit of excellence in all to do with teaching and learning and may well supply an effective, case-appropriate and acceptable way of helping those who may not do as well as they might “at the chalk-face”.
There are, of course, faith-based beliefs and practices that can help us excel. What we do in school, we do for God and for the neighbour, the latter, in this instance, being the students committed by Providence to our professional care. Nothing less than the best is good enough for them. Day in, day out, therefore, we give only and unstintingly of our best in the class-room. We review our practice regularly to discern if this, in fact, is what we have done. We acknowledge our shortcomings, repent of them and remedy them. Because we are driven by conscience and drawn by the Two-fold Law of Charity, we are our own first and most exacting “inspectors”, demanding always of ourselves, not just “Sásúil”, but Magis, the more, the better, in teaching our students and helping them learn. For us, teaching is more than a job, more, even than a profession. It is our God-given vocation. Our drive for professional excellence is, therefore, constant and indefatigable because it is our sacred duty. We refuse to settle for anything second-rate. That would be “rapine in the holocaust”, an unworthy attempt, personally and professionally unbecoming, to swindle God and our students, to cheat them of their respective entitlements. Cigire or no cigire, with the help of God – which may come to us through our colleagues, as we work with them on WSE/SSE - we will have no truck with mediocrity – “Ah, sure, ‘twill do” - not on our patch; not on our watch; not now; not ever. Amen, A Thiarna!
LUX EDMUNDI: REFLECTION: OCTOBER, 2019
On Sunday, 13th October, 2019, Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman (1801-1890) was canonised in Rome. As he himself acknowledged, the new Saint was involved in education throughout his life, both as an Anglican and as a Catholic. The Idea of a University, based on a series of lectures he delivered as first Rector of the Catholic University in Dublin, is accepted to this day as a major contribution to the debate on the nature and purpose of tertiary education.
Though he was closely involved in the establishment and conduct of a public school for Catholic boys under the auspices of the Birmingham Oratory, he published no corresponding tract on either primary or secondary education. The huge corpus of his writings, however, constitutes a virtually inexhaustible source of pertinent observations.
His letters on “The Tamworth Reading Room” are especially relevant in this regard. The occasion of their publication was this: In January 1841, at the opening of a new library and reading-room at Tamworth, a market town in Staffordshire, England, Sir Robert Peel, twice Prime Minister of the UK, twice Home Secretary, then MP for the area, had made a speech advocating human knowledge as an effective means towards moral reform. Such essentially liberal – and, thus, as Newman saw it, secular and humanistic - sentiments were always anathema to Newman. At the urging of friends in the Church of England – of which he was then still a member - under the pen-name Catholicus, he responded to Peel in February, 1841, in a series of letters to the editor of the Times of London. The third of those letters includes the following emphatic and unambiguous statement:
“Christianity, and nothing short of it, must be made the element and principle of all education. Where it has been laid as the first stone, and acknowledged as the governing spirit, it will take up into itself, assimilate, and give a character to literature and science. Where Revealed Truth has given the aim and direction to Knowledge, Knowledge of all kinds will minister to Revealed Truth. The evidences of Religion, natural theology, metaphysics, - or, again, poetry, history, and the classics, - or physics and mathematics, may all be grafted into the mind of a Christian, and give and take by the grafting. But if in education we begin with nature before grace, with evidence before faith, with science before conscience, with poetry before practice, we shall be doing much the same as if we were to indulge the appetites and passions, and turn a deaf ear to reason”.
This, in fact, is ethical basis for Catholic schools in the Republic of Ireland, for those under exclusively Catholic patronage and for those community schools, comprehensive schools and designated community colleges established and conducted in a partnership including a Catholic diocese or religious institute. Christ is “the element and principle of all education” in those schools. The Gospel, the Good News proclaimed in, and by, Christ Jesus, interpreted in accordance with Tradition and with the Magisterium of the Church, is the “element” – the native and natural environment in which alone it can survive - and the “principle” – the source, the foundation, the definitive and essential characteristic, the first beginning and the last end – of each of these schools and of our service in and for those schools, as patrons, trustees, governors, managers, leaders, staff.
Through the prayers, and at the example, of St. John Henry, Cardinal Newman, may we always have the light to see, and the strength to do, God’s Holy Will in the apostolate of the Catholic school.
On Sunday, 13th October, 2019, Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman (1801-1890) was canonised in Rome. As he himself acknowledged, the new Saint was involved in education throughout his life, both as an Anglican and as a Catholic. The Idea of a University, based on a series of lectures he delivered as first Rector of the Catholic University in Dublin, is accepted to this day as a major contribution to the debate on the nature and purpose of tertiary education.
Though he was closely involved in the establishment and conduct of a public school for Catholic boys under the auspices of the Birmingham Oratory, he published no corresponding tract on either primary or secondary education. The huge corpus of his writings, however, constitutes a virtually inexhaustible source of pertinent observations.
His letters on “The Tamworth Reading Room” are especially relevant in this regard. The occasion of their publication was this: In January 1841, at the opening of a new library and reading-room at Tamworth, a market town in Staffordshire, England, Sir Robert Peel, twice Prime Minister of the UK, twice Home Secretary, then MP for the area, had made a speech advocating human knowledge as an effective means towards moral reform. Such essentially liberal – and, thus, as Newman saw it, secular and humanistic - sentiments were always anathema to Newman. At the urging of friends in the Church of England – of which he was then still a member - under the pen-name Catholicus, he responded to Peel in February, 1841, in a series of letters to the editor of the Times of London. The third of those letters includes the following emphatic and unambiguous statement:
“Christianity, and nothing short of it, must be made the element and principle of all education. Where it has been laid as the first stone, and acknowledged as the governing spirit, it will take up into itself, assimilate, and give a character to literature and science. Where Revealed Truth has given the aim and direction to Knowledge, Knowledge of all kinds will minister to Revealed Truth. The evidences of Religion, natural theology, metaphysics, - or, again, poetry, history, and the classics, - or physics and mathematics, may all be grafted into the mind of a Christian, and give and take by the grafting. But if in education we begin with nature before grace, with evidence before faith, with science before conscience, with poetry before practice, we shall be doing much the same as if we were to indulge the appetites and passions, and turn a deaf ear to reason”.
This, in fact, is ethical basis for Catholic schools in the Republic of Ireland, for those under exclusively Catholic patronage and for those community schools, comprehensive schools and designated community colleges established and conducted in a partnership including a Catholic diocese or religious institute. Christ is “the element and principle of all education” in those schools. The Gospel, the Good News proclaimed in, and by, Christ Jesus, interpreted in accordance with Tradition and with the Magisterium of the Church, is the “element” – the native and natural environment in which alone it can survive - and the “principle” – the source, the foundation, the definitive and essential characteristic, the first beginning and the last end – of each of these schools and of our service in and for those schools, as patrons, trustees, governors, managers, leaders, staff.
Through the prayers, and at the example, of St. John Henry, Cardinal Newman, may we always have the light to see, and the strength to do, God’s Holy Will in the apostolate of the Catholic school.
LUX EDMUNDI: REFLECTION: SEPTEMBER, 2019
In his letter of 22 October, 2017, to Fernando, Cardinal Filoni, Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples, Pope Francis called for an Extraordinary Missionary Month to be celebrated in October 2019, stating emphatically that evangelisation “is not an option for the Church: in the words of the Second Vatican Council, it is her ‘essential task’, for the Church is “‘missionary by nature’. ‘Evangelising is in fact the grace and the vocation proper to the Church, her deepest identity; she exists in order to evangelise’”.
Those of us called to serve God and the neighbour in the Catholic school – patrons, trustees, governors, managers, leaders, staff – cannot remind ourselves often enough that the Catholic school remains one of the privileged instruments by means of which the People of God responds to the Great Commission to teach all nations. We must never forget that, as it is for the Universal Church, to “make disciples of all nations” (cf. Mt 28:20) is also an ontological imperative for the Catholic school, a sine qua non of its identity, essential to its integrity.
As articles and advertisements in the various media amply demonstrate, at this time of year, post-primary schools in the Republic of Ireland - Catholic schools not infrequently at their head - are inviting people, especially prospective pupils and parents, to visit them, to meet the staff and students, to view facilities, note resources, consider whatever special features in which the school takes special pride, and – the centre-piece of the occasion - to hear principals explain the aims and objectives of the school, its programmes, curricular, pastoral, co-/extra-curricular, and – sometimes modestly, sometimes not – the reasons why this particular school will help mind and grow the children committed to its care just that (little) bit better than any of the others can manage.
At these presentations, the principals of Catholic schools will indicate that the school in question is under Catholic patronage, that its characteristic spirit, its ethos, is, therefore, Catholic. Where that patronage is exercised by one or other of the modern trustee bodies for Catholic schools, that will be indicated and the related historical association of the school with this religious congregation or that will be acknowledged and, often, celebrated
As on many of their respective websites, so at these open sessions, virtually all Catholic schools will emphasise that, though they are indeed Catholic, they are also inclusive; that, in effect, there is no need to produce a baptismal certificate as they are open to all comers, that, to the extent that it may be physically and otherwise possible for them to do so, they will enrol all applicants, refusing none, welcoming all, irrespective of religious, ethnic, linguistic, cultural origins, socio-economic backgrounds and/or special educational needs and many of them will hope and strive to do so.
This, of course, is entirely as it should be and such inclusivity is consonant, not just with the laws and regulations of the state but with the teachings of the Church, the respective founding charisms of the various institutes of religious men and of religious women by which so many of the schools were established, and, most especially, with the values of the Gospel and the example of Christ.
Even, however, when the main – perhaps even the over-riding - object is to increase enrolment, we must take the greatest care that we do not so emphasise our inclusivity that we de-emphasise our Catholicity. We cheat when we hide the Lord and we sin when we renounce him.
In his letter of 22 October, 2017, to Fernando, Cardinal Filoni, Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples, Pope Francis called for an Extraordinary Missionary Month to be celebrated in October 2019, stating emphatically that evangelisation “is not an option for the Church: in the words of the Second Vatican Council, it is her ‘essential task’, for the Church is “‘missionary by nature’. ‘Evangelising is in fact the grace and the vocation proper to the Church, her deepest identity; she exists in order to evangelise’”.
Those of us called to serve God and the neighbour in the Catholic school – patrons, trustees, governors, managers, leaders, staff – cannot remind ourselves often enough that the Catholic school remains one of the privileged instruments by means of which the People of God responds to the Great Commission to teach all nations. We must never forget that, as it is for the Universal Church, to “make disciples of all nations” (cf. Mt 28:20) is also an ontological imperative for the Catholic school, a sine qua non of its identity, essential to its integrity.
As articles and advertisements in the various media amply demonstrate, at this time of year, post-primary schools in the Republic of Ireland - Catholic schools not infrequently at their head - are inviting people, especially prospective pupils and parents, to visit them, to meet the staff and students, to view facilities, note resources, consider whatever special features in which the school takes special pride, and – the centre-piece of the occasion - to hear principals explain the aims and objectives of the school, its programmes, curricular, pastoral, co-/extra-curricular, and – sometimes modestly, sometimes not – the reasons why this particular school will help mind and grow the children committed to its care just that (little) bit better than any of the others can manage.
At these presentations, the principals of Catholic schools will indicate that the school in question is under Catholic patronage, that its characteristic spirit, its ethos, is, therefore, Catholic. Where that patronage is exercised by one or other of the modern trustee bodies for Catholic schools, that will be indicated and the related historical association of the school with this religious congregation or that will be acknowledged and, often, celebrated
As on many of their respective websites, so at these open sessions, virtually all Catholic schools will emphasise that, though they are indeed Catholic, they are also inclusive; that, in effect, there is no need to produce a baptismal certificate as they are open to all comers, that, to the extent that it may be physically and otherwise possible for them to do so, they will enrol all applicants, refusing none, welcoming all, irrespective of religious, ethnic, linguistic, cultural origins, socio-economic backgrounds and/or special educational needs and many of them will hope and strive to do so.
This, of course, is entirely as it should be and such inclusivity is consonant, not just with the laws and regulations of the state but with the teachings of the Church, the respective founding charisms of the various institutes of religious men and of religious women by which so many of the schools were established, and, most especially, with the values of the Gospel and the example of Christ.
Even, however, when the main – perhaps even the over-riding - object is to increase enrolment, we must take the greatest care that we do not so emphasise our inclusivity that we de-emphasise our Catholicity. We cheat when we hide the Lord and we sin when we renounce him.
LUX EDMUNDI: REFLECTION: AUGUST, 2019
Thursday, 29th August, 2019, is the 175th anniversary of the death of Blessed Edmund Ignatius Rice, Founder of the aboriginal Society of the Presentation from which derive the Christian Brothers and the Presentation Brothers and all initiatives and institutions deriving, in turn, from either or both of these religious congregations, including Lux Edmundi.
In virtually all recognised schools in the Republic of Ireland, primary and post-primary, staff will be already engaged in preparatory sessions for the 2019-2020 school year. Any such preparation nowadays will certainly involve close and collective attention to policies and procedures, not least to those relating to Child Protection, where negligence can be so devastating for so many.
Teachers, in general, principals, in particular, complain that the burden of implementing all the policies and procedures now required of recognised schools in the Republic of Ireland is intolerable. They insist that the time they must give to the associated administrative duties is eating into that they would prefer to give to their core responsibilities in respect of teaching and learning.
This crisis will be resolved only at national level and between the relevant stake-holders. In the meantime, people on the ground must proceed as best they can in the circumstances. Those who serve in faith-based schools will approach the inevitable challenges from a faith-based perspective. The example of Blessed Edmund Ignatius Rice is most useful here. Much of his work as a religious had to do with administration, especially with the administration of finances. He engaged in legal battles – often with the Commissioners of Charitable Donations and Bequests - to ensure that moneys left by wealthy Catholics went to the Catholic charities for which they were intended. Some of his confreres faulted him for his involvement in these worldly affairs but it was precisely such involvement that provided the funds on which they and their schools depended.
The fact is that Br. Edmund Ignatius Rice was declared Blessed, not in spite, but because, of his “secular” activities. He did what he did to the very best of his abilities, conscientiously, with great integrity and complete honesty. He made and managed money in his service of youth for the sake of the Gospel. He reminds us that the “stuff” of our everyday lives, the “stuff” of our work in school, including the time-consuming and soul-destroying work of returns and reports, is the “stuff” of our sanctification. It is in filling the forms and ticking the boxes to the very best of our abilities that we become “good and faithful servants” of our Divine Master (cf. Mt 25:23).
Besides, policies and procedures safe-guard the rights of everyone involved in schools in whatever capacity. They are often the means by which staff, parents and students can “speak truth unto power”. They help keep us all honest. They help ensure that we do what we should and avoid doing what we shouldn’t in respect of those over whom we are set. As, sadly, we know only too well, even in schools “the least” suffer most when those over them abuse their position. The teaching of Christ is clear and unmistakeable: If we are given authority amongst the People of God, we are given it, not to lord it over anyone, but to wash their feet, to serve them as if they were the masters and we the slaves (cf Jn 13:1-12). Policies and procedures constitute actual graces. They are instruments of the Holy Spirit, the means by which the Father gives us opportunity after opportunity to become more and more like Christ, the Good Shepherd, in guarding and guiding the flock entrusted to us.
LUX EDMUNDI: THE SEVEN GIFTS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT: JULY, 2019
Teaching is one of what may be called the people professions. These require of their practitioners that they give, not just of their time, knowledge and skills, but something of their very selves to those they serve. To do this with any degree of effectiveness is always demanding. To do it over any length of time is draining. Come the end of any given school-year, one can often feel that one is running on empty. It is, therefore, imperative that the summer vacation be dedicated to rest and recuperation, to “re-creation”, including, most particularly, the “re-creation” of the inner self.
People find “re-creation” in all kinds of places and in all kinds of ways. There is now a massive popular literature advising us how to achieve and maintain well-being, how to refresh ourselves in mind and body when the exigencies of our personal and/or of our professional lives have tested our resilience, have, perhaps, pressed us more close to our limits than we would ever wish to be.
We must, of course, use all the resources available to us to manage our lives effectively. We who are called to serve in faith-based schools must, however, bear in mind that we have from God a superabundance of gifts to help us be what we are meant to be, and do what we are meant to do, in the particular and concrete circumstances in which Providence has set us.
The Holy Spirit is “‘the gift of God par excellence (cf. Jn 4:10)”, literally the Gift that keeps on giving, not least by means the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit, which, following Isaiah (11:1-3), are traditionally listed as follows: Wisdom, Understanding, Counsel, Fortitude, Knowledge, Piety and the Fear of the Lord. These are supernatural capacities given us by God, initially in the Sacrament of Baptism, but more especially and more fully in that of Confirmation. They are not once-off blessings. They help us throughout our lives, and in all aspects of our lives, to live and proclaim the Gospel. They help ensure that, in the discharge of our respective functions in school, we facilitate the formation of the young in Christ, guiding our students “to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ (cf. Ephes 4:12-13)”.
The first Gift is WISDOM, i.e., “the grace of being able to see the world, to see situations, circumstances, problems, everything, through God’s eyes”. We who serve in Catholic schools must be, as it were, “bi-focal”. We must look at people and things from both an earthly and a heavenly perspective. The constant temptation is to valorise the earthly over the heavenly. Wisdom helps us see our students “holistically”, composed of body and soul, called to live in time, indeed, but to live, ultimately and definitively, with God in eternity, and needing to be taught and trained for both.
The second Gift is UNDERSTANDING, i.e., that “which awakens in a Christian the ability to go beyond the outward appearance of reality and to probe the depths of the thoughts of God and his plan of salvation”. We are only too prone to judge by appearances and to accept or reject people on that utterly flimsy basis. Understanding helps us to discern Christ in each of those committed to our care, especially in those we might be tempted to dismiss as beyond even our best efforts to help them.
The third Gift is COUNSEL, i.e., that “through which the Holy Spirit enables our conscience to make a concrete choice in communion with God, according to the logic of Jesus and his Gospel”. One can attend sessions of all kinds - including those organised by, and for, those who govern, manage, lead and serve in Catholic schools - and never hear anyone use the word “conscience”. We can, indeed, be warned at such gatherings of those deeds of omission or commission for which we can go to jail. Seldom if ever, though, will we be warned of those for which we can go to hell. There is incontrovertible evidence now, from Ireland and beyond, that those who govern, manage, lead and/or serve Catholic schools can be guilty of appalling sins and crimes against children. Counsel helps us “test everything; hold fast to what is good; abstain from every form of evil (I Thess 5:21-22)”. It helps us to see things as God sees them and to deal with them in accordance with his Will.
The fourth Gift is FORTITUDE, i.e., that by which “the Holy Spirit liberates the soil of our heart [see, e.g., Mt 13:3-9] he frees it from sluggishness, from uncertainty and from all the fears that can hinder it”. In times past, we taught our students that the Sacrament of Confirmation made each of them a strong and perfect Christian, a soldier of Christ, obliged and resolved never to deny the Lord, no matter what. We are uncomfortable now with such words and images. We would not dare suggest that anyone, let alone a child, should die for anything and certainly not for the Catholic Faith. Fortitude helps us recognise the universal value of, and the perennial necessity for, moral courage and to commend it to our students, so that they will be men and women of integrity and honesty, bold enough to take a stand where a stand is what is needed if right is to prevail.
The fifth Gift is KNOWLEDGE, i.e., that “which leads us to grasp, through creation, the greatness and love of God and his profound relationship with every creature”. This is a relatively new interpretation of this particular Gift. It is deemed to protect us against two common and fundamental misunderstandings, viz., that which sees humans as the masters of creation and that which sees creation itself as all there is. Knowledge keeps us focussed on God as the Alpha and Omega, of “all things visible and invisible”, of all humanity, in all its forms, on us – teachers and students - as his stewards, who will one day be required to give an account of our stewardship before the Judgement Seat of God (cf. Luke 16:1-13).
The sixth Gift is PIETY, i.e., that which “indicates our belonging to God and our profound relationship with Him, a bond that gives meaning to our life and keeps us sound, in communion with Him, even during the most difficult and tormenting moments … [I]t is synonymous with the genuine religious spirit, with filial trust in God, with the capacity to pray to him with love and simplicity that belongs to those who are humble of heart”. There are times when, if we are both to “do the right thing” and “do the thing right”, we simply must think things through. Piety ensures we must also pray things through, so to speak. Many of our schools have oratories, prayer rooms,” sacred spaces”. If used at all, these are often used by chaplains and RE teachers as occasional locations of their respective ministries. They must be used, too, by staff, in general, by principals, in particular, as first port of call each morning, as last port of call each evening, to beg God for the light to see, and the strength to do, his will and to thank him for the good we’ve done, to ask forgiveness for that we’ve missed.
The seventh Gift is FEAR OF THE LORD, i.e., that by which “we are reminded of how small we are before God, [that reminds us, too] of his love and [reminds us, finally] that our good lies in humble, respectful and trusting self-abandonment into his hands”. No matter how exalted our role there-in, we are not, and never should be, the be-all and the end-all of any Catholic school. We are instruments in the hands of God, defective instruments as often as not, but, in his hands, still capable of effecting outcomes beyond our doing, beyond even our dreaming.
“Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me (Ps 50:10)”.
Teaching is one of what may be called the people professions. These require of their practitioners that they give, not just of their time, knowledge and skills, but something of their very selves to those they serve. To do this with any degree of effectiveness is always demanding. To do it over any length of time is draining. Come the end of any given school-year, one can often feel that one is running on empty. It is, therefore, imperative that the summer vacation be dedicated to rest and recuperation, to “re-creation”, including, most particularly, the “re-creation” of the inner self.
People find “re-creation” in all kinds of places and in all kinds of ways. There is now a massive popular literature advising us how to achieve and maintain well-being, how to refresh ourselves in mind and body when the exigencies of our personal and/or of our professional lives have tested our resilience, have, perhaps, pressed us more close to our limits than we would ever wish to be.
We must, of course, use all the resources available to us to manage our lives effectively. We who are called to serve in faith-based schools must, however, bear in mind that we have from God a superabundance of gifts to help us be what we are meant to be, and do what we are meant to do, in the particular and concrete circumstances in which Providence has set us.
The Holy Spirit is “‘the gift of God par excellence (cf. Jn 4:10)”, literally the Gift that keeps on giving, not least by means the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit, which, following Isaiah (11:1-3), are traditionally listed as follows: Wisdom, Understanding, Counsel, Fortitude, Knowledge, Piety and the Fear of the Lord. These are supernatural capacities given us by God, initially in the Sacrament of Baptism, but more especially and more fully in that of Confirmation. They are not once-off blessings. They help us throughout our lives, and in all aspects of our lives, to live and proclaim the Gospel. They help ensure that, in the discharge of our respective functions in school, we facilitate the formation of the young in Christ, guiding our students “to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ (cf. Ephes 4:12-13)”.
The first Gift is WISDOM, i.e., “the grace of being able to see the world, to see situations, circumstances, problems, everything, through God’s eyes”. We who serve in Catholic schools must be, as it were, “bi-focal”. We must look at people and things from both an earthly and a heavenly perspective. The constant temptation is to valorise the earthly over the heavenly. Wisdom helps us see our students “holistically”, composed of body and soul, called to live in time, indeed, but to live, ultimately and definitively, with God in eternity, and needing to be taught and trained for both.
The second Gift is UNDERSTANDING, i.e., that “which awakens in a Christian the ability to go beyond the outward appearance of reality and to probe the depths of the thoughts of God and his plan of salvation”. We are only too prone to judge by appearances and to accept or reject people on that utterly flimsy basis. Understanding helps us to discern Christ in each of those committed to our care, especially in those we might be tempted to dismiss as beyond even our best efforts to help them.
The third Gift is COUNSEL, i.e., that “through which the Holy Spirit enables our conscience to make a concrete choice in communion with God, according to the logic of Jesus and his Gospel”. One can attend sessions of all kinds - including those organised by, and for, those who govern, manage, lead and serve in Catholic schools - and never hear anyone use the word “conscience”. We can, indeed, be warned at such gatherings of those deeds of omission or commission for which we can go to jail. Seldom if ever, though, will we be warned of those for which we can go to hell. There is incontrovertible evidence now, from Ireland and beyond, that those who govern, manage, lead and/or serve Catholic schools can be guilty of appalling sins and crimes against children. Counsel helps us “test everything; hold fast to what is good; abstain from every form of evil (I Thess 5:21-22)”. It helps us to see things as God sees them and to deal with them in accordance with his Will.
The fourth Gift is FORTITUDE, i.e., that by which “the Holy Spirit liberates the soil of our heart [see, e.g., Mt 13:3-9] he frees it from sluggishness, from uncertainty and from all the fears that can hinder it”. In times past, we taught our students that the Sacrament of Confirmation made each of them a strong and perfect Christian, a soldier of Christ, obliged and resolved never to deny the Lord, no matter what. We are uncomfortable now with such words and images. We would not dare suggest that anyone, let alone a child, should die for anything and certainly not for the Catholic Faith. Fortitude helps us recognise the universal value of, and the perennial necessity for, moral courage and to commend it to our students, so that they will be men and women of integrity and honesty, bold enough to take a stand where a stand is what is needed if right is to prevail.
The fifth Gift is KNOWLEDGE, i.e., that “which leads us to grasp, through creation, the greatness and love of God and his profound relationship with every creature”. This is a relatively new interpretation of this particular Gift. It is deemed to protect us against two common and fundamental misunderstandings, viz., that which sees humans as the masters of creation and that which sees creation itself as all there is. Knowledge keeps us focussed on God as the Alpha and Omega, of “all things visible and invisible”, of all humanity, in all its forms, on us – teachers and students - as his stewards, who will one day be required to give an account of our stewardship before the Judgement Seat of God (cf. Luke 16:1-13).
The sixth Gift is PIETY, i.e., that which “indicates our belonging to God and our profound relationship with Him, a bond that gives meaning to our life and keeps us sound, in communion with Him, even during the most difficult and tormenting moments … [I]t is synonymous with the genuine religious spirit, with filial trust in God, with the capacity to pray to him with love and simplicity that belongs to those who are humble of heart”. There are times when, if we are both to “do the right thing” and “do the thing right”, we simply must think things through. Piety ensures we must also pray things through, so to speak. Many of our schools have oratories, prayer rooms,” sacred spaces”. If used at all, these are often used by chaplains and RE teachers as occasional locations of their respective ministries. They must be used, too, by staff, in general, by principals, in particular, as first port of call each morning, as last port of call each evening, to beg God for the light to see, and the strength to do, his will and to thank him for the good we’ve done, to ask forgiveness for that we’ve missed.
The seventh Gift is FEAR OF THE LORD, i.e., that by which “we are reminded of how small we are before God, [that reminds us, too] of his love and [reminds us, finally] that our good lies in humble, respectful and trusting self-abandonment into his hands”. No matter how exalted our role there-in, we are not, and never should be, the be-all and the end-all of any Catholic school. We are instruments in the hands of God, defective instruments as often as not, but, in his hands, still capable of effecting outcomes beyond our doing, beyond even our dreaming.
“Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me (Ps 50:10)”.
LUX EDMUNDI: REFLECTION: JUNE, 2019
The Dublin Diocese stated recently “that passing on the faith is primarily the responsibility of the home, with the support of the parish and the school” and that, consequently, preparation of children for the Sacraments of First Reconciliation, First Communion and Confirmation, must be moved, more and more, “in the direction of parent and parish responsibility” (Press Release: 15 May, 2019). In some of the media, this may well be presented as a “done deal” binding on the entire Catholic Church in Ireland. It is no such thing. It relates only to the Dublin diocese as such and carries no special weight outside it. Each bishop is head of his own diocese, subject only to the Pope. In this, therefore, Dublin speaks for itself. Other bishops, including those in other dioceses in the Ecclesiastical Province of Dublin, are free to make up their own minds on this or on any other issue.
As we have noted before, in the early decades of the nineteenth century, when the religious instruction of Catholic children – of the poor especially - was an urgent priority for the Hierarchy of the day, more and more bishops drew on the services of the men and women of the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine to ensure that boys and girls were taught their catechism in the chapels before and/or after Mass on Sundays. As the number of Catholic schools increased, responsibility for teaching the Faith to the young was moved from chapel to school. This, though, did not entail any “de-parochialisation” of catechesis. Most of the new Catholic schools were under the patronage of the Catholic clergy of the parishes in which they were situated. They were, in effect, parish schools and fast became the privileged means by which the Irish Catholic parish discharged its duties for the religious instruction of the young, including for their the preparation for the Sacraments.
In many parts of Ireland today, the local Catholic school is still very much the parish school. Church and school may be built quite close to each other and constitute the visible centre of the parish. Priest and teacher work together to evangelise/catechise parents and students as the circumstances require. It might, therefore, be difficult for the people on the ground to see the point of a re-arrangement such as that envisioned in Dublin. Indeed, precisely because they are the people on the ground, they may wonder whether their parish has the resources to establish and conduct the new Sacramental Preparation Programme (for which, of course, there would not be as much as a cent in support from the state) and, at the same time, continue – as they must - to subsidise the school.
Some appear to think that, in Dublin, all religious instruction and worship will be moved from school to parish. Strictly speaking, as things stand, this simply cannot happen. Religious education is one of the “seven curriculum areas” of the 1999 Primary School Curriculum and its development “remains the responsibility of the different church authorities”. Dublin is hardly going to insist that its schools will deliver Religious Education, its parishes, Religious Instruction. Besides, Dublin will still be bound by the terms of the Deed of Variation for Catholic Primary Schools, as well as by those of section 15.2.b of the Education Act 1998, which, in effect, oblige each board of management to uphold the Catholic ethos of the school and to prevent or correct anything contrary to that ethos.
What Dublin will cease, it seems, is the preparation of boys and girls for Confession, Holy Communion and Confirmation in its own Catholic schools. All Catholic schools must, of course, ensure that home, school and parish work together in discharging their respective functions in preparing children for the Sacraments and in ensuring, too, that the focus is always on the Sacraments precisely qua Sacraments. They must also ensure that, however unintentionally, their policies and procedures here do not move another bit of God, so to speak, from the public square.
The Dublin Diocese stated recently “that passing on the faith is primarily the responsibility of the home, with the support of the parish and the school” and that, consequently, preparation of children for the Sacraments of First Reconciliation, First Communion and Confirmation, must be moved, more and more, “in the direction of parent and parish responsibility” (Press Release: 15 May, 2019). In some of the media, this may well be presented as a “done deal” binding on the entire Catholic Church in Ireland. It is no such thing. It relates only to the Dublin diocese as such and carries no special weight outside it. Each bishop is head of his own diocese, subject only to the Pope. In this, therefore, Dublin speaks for itself. Other bishops, including those in other dioceses in the Ecclesiastical Province of Dublin, are free to make up their own minds on this or on any other issue.
As we have noted before, in the early decades of the nineteenth century, when the religious instruction of Catholic children – of the poor especially - was an urgent priority for the Hierarchy of the day, more and more bishops drew on the services of the men and women of the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine to ensure that boys and girls were taught their catechism in the chapels before and/or after Mass on Sundays. As the number of Catholic schools increased, responsibility for teaching the Faith to the young was moved from chapel to school. This, though, did not entail any “de-parochialisation” of catechesis. Most of the new Catholic schools were under the patronage of the Catholic clergy of the parishes in which they were situated. They were, in effect, parish schools and fast became the privileged means by which the Irish Catholic parish discharged its duties for the religious instruction of the young, including for their the preparation for the Sacraments.
In many parts of Ireland today, the local Catholic school is still very much the parish school. Church and school may be built quite close to each other and constitute the visible centre of the parish. Priest and teacher work together to evangelise/catechise parents and students as the circumstances require. It might, therefore, be difficult for the people on the ground to see the point of a re-arrangement such as that envisioned in Dublin. Indeed, precisely because they are the people on the ground, they may wonder whether their parish has the resources to establish and conduct the new Sacramental Preparation Programme (for which, of course, there would not be as much as a cent in support from the state) and, at the same time, continue – as they must - to subsidise the school.
Some appear to think that, in Dublin, all religious instruction and worship will be moved from school to parish. Strictly speaking, as things stand, this simply cannot happen. Religious education is one of the “seven curriculum areas” of the 1999 Primary School Curriculum and its development “remains the responsibility of the different church authorities”. Dublin is hardly going to insist that its schools will deliver Religious Education, its parishes, Religious Instruction. Besides, Dublin will still be bound by the terms of the Deed of Variation for Catholic Primary Schools, as well as by those of section 15.2.b of the Education Act 1998, which, in effect, oblige each board of management to uphold the Catholic ethos of the school and to prevent or correct anything contrary to that ethos.
What Dublin will cease, it seems, is the preparation of boys and girls for Confession, Holy Communion and Confirmation in its own Catholic schools. All Catholic schools must, of course, ensure that home, school and parish work together in discharging their respective functions in preparing children for the Sacraments and in ensuring, too, that the focus is always on the Sacraments precisely qua Sacraments. They must also ensure that, however unintentionally, their policies and procedures here do not move another bit of God, so to speak, from the public square.
LUX EDMUNDI: REFLECTION: MAY, 2019
There are hundreds of Christian Brothers’ schools across the globe which include the Latin words “Facere et Docere” (“To do and to teach”) in their respective school crests. This, in fact, is the motto of the Congregation. It derives from the teaching of Christ on the Law in the Sermon of the Mount (Mt 5:17-20). He insists that he has come, not to abolish, but to fulfil the Law (v.19). He insists, furthermore, that it is s/he who “does” the Law and teaches others to “do” it, who “shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven (v. 6)” . Christ spoke of the Old Law. Exegetes applied his doctrine to the New. They understood the Lord to insist here that s/he who observes the Two-Fold Law of Charity, and teaches others to do likewise, will be the “evangelist” most highly acclaimed by God.
It is not hard to see why a religious congregation dedicated to the instruction of youth in Catholic doctrine and to their training in Christian piety would draw its motto from this passage. “Doing” and “teaching” the New Law is a succinct, but complete, statement of the vocation of men and women called to serve God and his People in the religious state and in the apostolate of the school. They must “do” the Gospel in accordance with their respective Constitutions, and they must “teach” their students to “do” it as well in whatever state in life in which Providence might set them.
Lay men and women who serve in Catholic schools, primary and post-primary, in whatever capacity, are also called by God “to do and to teach”, to live their own lives in accordance with the Two-fold Commandment of Charity and to inspire the young people entrusted to their care to do the same.
In fact, all Christian teachers are called to walk the walk as well as to talk the talk; to be witnesses to, as well as teachers of, the Faith; to be really effective teachers by being witnesses: “ Modern man listens more willingly to witnesses than to teachers, and, if he does listen to teachers, it is because they are witnesses (Pope St. Paul VI, Evangelii Nuntiandi, 1975, #41)”. Given that religion is caught rather than taught, the “walk” is always louder than the “talk”, always more cogent, more convincing, more compelling. Deeds touch and change hearts that words may not even reach. Where there is no real “doing”, “teaching” can never be as fruitful as it might, and should, be.
All who commit themselves to the apostolate of the Catholic school - most especially Principals, the Faith Leaders in those schools – must strive “to do and to teach”; must strive, day in, day out, to love God and the neighbour and go on to lead the entire school community to do so as well.
If only by way of reflective practice, all who teach in Catholic schools must ask themselves from time to time which of the following statements best describes their own situation: “I ‘do’ and I ‘teach’ ”. “I ‘do’ but I do not ‘teach’ ”. “I ‘teach’ but I do not ‘do’”. “I neither ‘teach’ nor ‘do’”. They must consider the implications of their respective findings for their work in school. If anyone – a Principal especially - were to find that s/he was behind in “doing” and/or in “teaching”, s/he must – purely as a responsible professional – take remedial action - as much, as least, as will ensure that any gap in “doing” and/or in “teaching” will not harm the ethos of the school. Of course, no matter how far we’ve gone from him, the Father watches, day in, day out, to welcome us back (Luke 15:11-32).
O Lord, our God,
You sent your Holy Spirit on the Apostles as they joined in prayer with Mary, the Mother of Jesus:
By the help of her prayers, keep us faithful in your service,
and may our words and works be so informed as to bring glory to your Name.
There are hundreds of Christian Brothers’ schools across the globe which include the Latin words “Facere et Docere” (“To do and to teach”) in their respective school crests. This, in fact, is the motto of the Congregation. It derives from the teaching of Christ on the Law in the Sermon of the Mount (Mt 5:17-20). He insists that he has come, not to abolish, but to fulfil the Law (v.19). He insists, furthermore, that it is s/he who “does” the Law and teaches others to “do” it, who “shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven (v. 6)” . Christ spoke of the Old Law. Exegetes applied his doctrine to the New. They understood the Lord to insist here that s/he who observes the Two-Fold Law of Charity, and teaches others to do likewise, will be the “evangelist” most highly acclaimed by God.
It is not hard to see why a religious congregation dedicated to the instruction of youth in Catholic doctrine and to their training in Christian piety would draw its motto from this passage. “Doing” and “teaching” the New Law is a succinct, but complete, statement of the vocation of men and women called to serve God and his People in the religious state and in the apostolate of the school. They must “do” the Gospel in accordance with their respective Constitutions, and they must “teach” their students to “do” it as well in whatever state in life in which Providence might set them.
Lay men and women who serve in Catholic schools, primary and post-primary, in whatever capacity, are also called by God “to do and to teach”, to live their own lives in accordance with the Two-fold Commandment of Charity and to inspire the young people entrusted to their care to do the same.
In fact, all Christian teachers are called to walk the walk as well as to talk the talk; to be witnesses to, as well as teachers of, the Faith; to be really effective teachers by being witnesses: “ Modern man listens more willingly to witnesses than to teachers, and, if he does listen to teachers, it is because they are witnesses (Pope St. Paul VI, Evangelii Nuntiandi, 1975, #41)”. Given that religion is caught rather than taught, the “walk” is always louder than the “talk”, always more cogent, more convincing, more compelling. Deeds touch and change hearts that words may not even reach. Where there is no real “doing”, “teaching” can never be as fruitful as it might, and should, be.
All who commit themselves to the apostolate of the Catholic school - most especially Principals, the Faith Leaders in those schools – must strive “to do and to teach”; must strive, day in, day out, to love God and the neighbour and go on to lead the entire school community to do so as well.
If only by way of reflective practice, all who teach in Catholic schools must ask themselves from time to time which of the following statements best describes their own situation: “I ‘do’ and I ‘teach’ ”. “I ‘do’ but I do not ‘teach’ ”. “I ‘teach’ but I do not ‘do’”. “I neither ‘teach’ nor ‘do’”. They must consider the implications of their respective findings for their work in school. If anyone – a Principal especially - were to find that s/he was behind in “doing” and/or in “teaching”, s/he must – purely as a responsible professional – take remedial action - as much, as least, as will ensure that any gap in “doing” and/or in “teaching” will not harm the ethos of the school. Of course, no matter how far we’ve gone from him, the Father watches, day in, day out, to welcome us back (Luke 15:11-32).
O Lord, our God,
You sent your Holy Spirit on the Apostles as they joined in prayer with Mary, the Mother of Jesus:
By the help of her prayers, keep us faithful in your service,
and may our words and works be so informed as to bring glory to your Name.
LUX EDMUNDI: REFLECTION ON BLESSED EDMUND IGNATIUS RICE: 5 MAY, 2019
On or around 5 May, 2019, the Christian Brothers and the Presentation Brothers will commemorate their Holy Founder, Blessed Edmund Ignatius, as will all who share in any way, to any degree, in his charism and his vocation to form the young in Christ.
1819 was a year of waiting for Blessed Edmund and the members of what was then still the Society of the Presentation. They had applied to Rome in 1817 for a papal brief along the lines of that previously granted what we now call the De la Salle Brothers. Such a brief would change the Society from one of diocesan right to one of papal right. As an institute of diocesan right, each individual community of the Society in any given diocese had the bishop of that diocese as its head. Houses in a diocese had no link with each other and those in one diocese had no link with those in another. As an institute of papal right the Society would be - to all intents and purposes - independent of the Bishops. Subject to rules and constitutions approved by the Holy See, it would be governed by a Superior General elected by its members from amongst their own number and thus, in effect, authorised to live its charism, and conduct its mission, as the congregation itself thought best. Most Brothers favoured this change but all of them must have found the delay in the response from Rome very trying.
These were the early years of what have been called “The Protestant Crusade” “The Second Reformation”, “The Bible Wars”, directed at converting Irish papists from the “trumperies” of Rome to the truth of the Bible and there-by civilising the Catholic poor, raising them to that self-respect, firmness of character and staunch reliance on one’s own endeavours, which, in the view of the Societies which drove these initiatives, were typical of the British Protestant, exemplified and vindicated in the still recent defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo.
The Congregation De Propaganda Fide, the Roman dicastery responsible for the Church in Ireland, was alert to, and hugely concerned at, the reported gains of the “Biblicals” and repeatedly urged the Catholic bishops to do all they could to reverse them. The bishops then invoked – and, maybe, to strengthen their case, exaggerated - Protestant successes in their appeals to the Holy See for help, especially in instructing poor Catholic children in the Faith. Blessed Edmund himself “played the Orange card”, as it were, in urging the Vatican to authorise the re-constitution of his Society, on the grounds that the Brothers would then be better placed to counter the efforts of the “proselytisers”. Now, both as business-man and as religious, the Founder engaged constructively with people of other Christian denominations and they, in turn, held him and his schools in high regard. However, no less an authority than Dáire Keogh argues that “The Christian Brothers played a vital role in this process [i.e. of resisting and reversing the influence of the “evangelicals”] in which they were the Jesuits of Ireland’s Counter-Reformation (2008,188)”.If the Brothers were the “Jesuits”, the Founder must have been the “Ignatius of Loyola” of the Church Militant in Ireland in the early 1800s.
Two highly respected educationalists, Michael Fullan and Andy Hargreaves, collaborated in writing What’s Worth Fighting for in Education (1998, Buckingham: Open University Press). They argue that it matters hugely to the effectiveness of a school that all involved be clear as to what that school is about and be ready to work hard together to protect and promote what the school values. Its ethos is the core and definitive value of any Catholic school. It is, surely, well worth fighting for. We are caught up, willy-nilly, in a Culture War in which those who oppose our schools want them gone. We can “not go gentle into that good night”. We must resist. We must, like Blessed Edmund before us, fight the good fight (cf. I Tim 6:11-14).
On or around 5 May, 2019, the Christian Brothers and the Presentation Brothers will commemorate their Holy Founder, Blessed Edmund Ignatius, as will all who share in any way, to any degree, in his charism and his vocation to form the young in Christ.
1819 was a year of waiting for Blessed Edmund and the members of what was then still the Society of the Presentation. They had applied to Rome in 1817 for a papal brief along the lines of that previously granted what we now call the De la Salle Brothers. Such a brief would change the Society from one of diocesan right to one of papal right. As an institute of diocesan right, each individual community of the Society in any given diocese had the bishop of that diocese as its head. Houses in a diocese had no link with each other and those in one diocese had no link with those in another. As an institute of papal right the Society would be - to all intents and purposes - independent of the Bishops. Subject to rules and constitutions approved by the Holy See, it would be governed by a Superior General elected by its members from amongst their own number and thus, in effect, authorised to live its charism, and conduct its mission, as the congregation itself thought best. Most Brothers favoured this change but all of them must have found the delay in the response from Rome very trying.
These were the early years of what have been called “The Protestant Crusade” “The Second Reformation”, “The Bible Wars”, directed at converting Irish papists from the “trumperies” of Rome to the truth of the Bible and there-by civilising the Catholic poor, raising them to that self-respect, firmness of character and staunch reliance on one’s own endeavours, which, in the view of the Societies which drove these initiatives, were typical of the British Protestant, exemplified and vindicated in the still recent defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo.
The Congregation De Propaganda Fide, the Roman dicastery responsible for the Church in Ireland, was alert to, and hugely concerned at, the reported gains of the “Biblicals” and repeatedly urged the Catholic bishops to do all they could to reverse them. The bishops then invoked – and, maybe, to strengthen their case, exaggerated - Protestant successes in their appeals to the Holy See for help, especially in instructing poor Catholic children in the Faith. Blessed Edmund himself “played the Orange card”, as it were, in urging the Vatican to authorise the re-constitution of his Society, on the grounds that the Brothers would then be better placed to counter the efforts of the “proselytisers”. Now, both as business-man and as religious, the Founder engaged constructively with people of other Christian denominations and they, in turn, held him and his schools in high regard. However, no less an authority than Dáire Keogh argues that “The Christian Brothers played a vital role in this process [i.e. of resisting and reversing the influence of the “evangelicals”] in which they were the Jesuits of Ireland’s Counter-Reformation (2008,188)”.If the Brothers were the “Jesuits”, the Founder must have been the “Ignatius of Loyola” of the Church Militant in Ireland in the early 1800s.
Two highly respected educationalists, Michael Fullan and Andy Hargreaves, collaborated in writing What’s Worth Fighting for in Education (1998, Buckingham: Open University Press). They argue that it matters hugely to the effectiveness of a school that all involved be clear as to what that school is about and be ready to work hard together to protect and promote what the school values. Its ethos is the core and definitive value of any Catholic school. It is, surely, well worth fighting for. We are caught up, willy-nilly, in a Culture War in which those who oppose our schools want them gone. We can “not go gentle into that good night”. We must resist. We must, like Blessed Edmund before us, fight the good fight (cf. I Tim 6:11-14).
LUX EDMUNDI: REFLECTION: APRIL, 2019
“Lord, God of Hosts, bring us back: Let your face shine on us and we shall be saved (Psalm 80:3)”. Lent is the season of metanoia, of repentance, of conversion, of turning our entire lives back towards God. It is the liturgical season in which we beg our Father in Heaven for all the help we need to open ourselves once again to his unconditional love, his abiding and unfailing mercy, his all-encompassing forgiveness, his immediate and uninhibited welcome to all who strive to find their way back to him in sincerity of heart. In this Holy Week of 2019, as we approach the Easter Triduum, the culmination of this time of grace, let us pray without ceasing: “Lord, God of Hosts, bring us back”.
This, however, is not “the time of God’s favour (see II Cor 6:2)” just for ourselves. It is also “the day of salvation (ibid.)” for all those committed by Providence to our professional care in school. We must pray that they, too, will be drawn back to God. Our students can often seem to us to be simply not interested in religion. In so far as we can judge, many “don’t go to Mass, church or meeting” with anything like the regularity we could have expected of their predecessors. The circumstances in this regard seem so dire that we have, even from some of ourselves, the gloomiest prognoses regarding the future of the Catholic Church in Ireland. As conversion is always a matter of grace; as, consequently, even our best endeavours at evangelisation will inevitably fail without the help of God; we must pray and work, better, harder and longer, that the Lord in his mercy will give us all the graces we need to be his effective instruments of evangelisation, conversion, catechesis.
The Psalmist does not ask that s/he be inspired and empowered to bring his People back to God. S/he asks, rather, that the Lord himself do so by letting his face shine on us. Now, our Father in heaven “makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good (Mt 5:45)”; lets his Face shine on all his children on earth. What the Psalmist would seem to ask, therefore, is that God would open the inner eyes of all of us that we might see his Face and see in it his love for each of us.
Holy Scripture tells us that, though we humans cannot see God in himself and live (Ex 33:20), we can see him perfectly in Jesus (see Jn.14:8-9), “the icon of the invisible God (Col 1:15)”. His is the human Face of God. He reveals to us the God who is truly our Father; who, like the father of the Prodigal (Lk 15:11-32), watches unceasingly for our return, recognises us even whilst we are “yet at a distance”, rushes to hug us and to restore us immediately to our place in his household.
In the economy of salvation, ours must be the Face of Christ - and thus the Face of God - for those we teach each day. We must be like living mirrors, reflecting the light and the love of God on all we serve. In what we are, what we say and what we do, we must be for each and all of our students an alter Christus, “another Christ”. There is, in fact, no other way for us to be of any use whatsoever in helping our students find their way back to God; who is, was and ever shall be, the Alpha and the Omega of every human being, because, to paraphrase St. Augustine, God has made us for himself alone and our hearts are ever restless until they rest in him.
We cannot just curse the darkness. We must light a candle. We cannot stop at emphasising and deploring the apparent lack of engagement with Christ of our students. “In season and out of season (II Tim 4:2)”, whether the time is right or not, we must – even if some insist we are closing our eyes to the realities all round us - “discipulise” them. We must let the light and love of Christ shine on them through us: There simply is no other way to bring Christ to the young and the young to Christ: “Lord, God of Hosts, bring us back: Let your face shine on us and we shall be saved”.
“Lord, God of Hosts, bring us back: Let your face shine on us and we shall be saved (Psalm 80:3)”. Lent is the season of metanoia, of repentance, of conversion, of turning our entire lives back towards God. It is the liturgical season in which we beg our Father in Heaven for all the help we need to open ourselves once again to his unconditional love, his abiding and unfailing mercy, his all-encompassing forgiveness, his immediate and uninhibited welcome to all who strive to find their way back to him in sincerity of heart. In this Holy Week of 2019, as we approach the Easter Triduum, the culmination of this time of grace, let us pray without ceasing: “Lord, God of Hosts, bring us back”.
This, however, is not “the time of God’s favour (see II Cor 6:2)” just for ourselves. It is also “the day of salvation (ibid.)” for all those committed by Providence to our professional care in school. We must pray that they, too, will be drawn back to God. Our students can often seem to us to be simply not interested in religion. In so far as we can judge, many “don’t go to Mass, church or meeting” with anything like the regularity we could have expected of their predecessors. The circumstances in this regard seem so dire that we have, even from some of ourselves, the gloomiest prognoses regarding the future of the Catholic Church in Ireland. As conversion is always a matter of grace; as, consequently, even our best endeavours at evangelisation will inevitably fail without the help of God; we must pray and work, better, harder and longer, that the Lord in his mercy will give us all the graces we need to be his effective instruments of evangelisation, conversion, catechesis.
The Psalmist does not ask that s/he be inspired and empowered to bring his People back to God. S/he asks, rather, that the Lord himself do so by letting his face shine on us. Now, our Father in heaven “makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good (Mt 5:45)”; lets his Face shine on all his children on earth. What the Psalmist would seem to ask, therefore, is that God would open the inner eyes of all of us that we might see his Face and see in it his love for each of us.
Holy Scripture tells us that, though we humans cannot see God in himself and live (Ex 33:20), we can see him perfectly in Jesus (see Jn.14:8-9), “the icon of the invisible God (Col 1:15)”. His is the human Face of God. He reveals to us the God who is truly our Father; who, like the father of the Prodigal (Lk 15:11-32), watches unceasingly for our return, recognises us even whilst we are “yet at a distance”, rushes to hug us and to restore us immediately to our place in his household.
In the economy of salvation, ours must be the Face of Christ - and thus the Face of God - for those we teach each day. We must be like living mirrors, reflecting the light and the love of God on all we serve. In what we are, what we say and what we do, we must be for each and all of our students an alter Christus, “another Christ”. There is, in fact, no other way for us to be of any use whatsoever in helping our students find their way back to God; who is, was and ever shall be, the Alpha and the Omega of every human being, because, to paraphrase St. Augustine, God has made us for himself alone and our hearts are ever restless until they rest in him.
We cannot just curse the darkness. We must light a candle. We cannot stop at emphasising and deploring the apparent lack of engagement with Christ of our students. “In season and out of season (II Tim 4:2)”, whether the time is right or not, we must – even if some insist we are closing our eyes to the realities all round us - “discipulise” them. We must let the light and love of Christ shine on them through us: There simply is no other way to bring Christ to the young and the young to Christ: “Lord, God of Hosts, bring us back: Let your face shine on us and we shall be saved”.
LUX EMUNDI: REFLECTION: MARCH, 2019
The Code of Canon Law provides that teachers in a Catholic school “are to be outstanding in correct doctrine and integrity of life (canon 803.2)”. It requires, too, that those involved in the Religious Instruction of Catholic students be “outstanding in correct doctrine, the witness of a Christian life, and teaching skill (canon 804.2)”. Vatican documents on the Catholic School emphasise that those who teach in Catholic schools must be Catholic in fact as well as in name. There is, besides, research indicating that those Catholic schools are more effective as Catholic which are led and staffed by people who are committed to the Faith and strive to live by the teachings of the Church.
Catholic school authorities in the Republic of Ireland do insist that, to be eligible for employment, all teachers in primary schools, and teachers of RE in post-primary schools, must be duly qualified in respect of the teaching of religion. In the advance information now usually sent to those who apply for teaching posts in Catholic schools, there will be a statement of one kind or another to the effect that the school is Catholic in patronage/trusteeship and ethos. There will be a similar statement in application forms. At interviews, candidates are likely to be reminded again, orally or otherwise, of the ethos of the school and candidates for principalship will be questioned to assess their professional competence in respect of faith leadership. It would be most unusual, however, for a candidate for any post in a Catholic school in Ireland today to be asked about her/his own religious beliefs and/or practices. In fact, all the indications are that Catholic school authorities in the Republic of Ireland do not insist that boards of management comply with the official policy of the Church in relation to hiring teachers. There are countries where the demographics mean it would be impossible to comply with this policy. Ireland, though, is not yet one of them and some who serve our schools do not see how the identity and integrity of any Catholic school qua Catholic can be preserved if those who lead and staff such schools are not themselves living the faith they profess.
That, of course, is a matter for Catholic patrons/trustees. A basic matter for us who work in Catholic schools is this: Whether we believe or not, are we appropriately professional in respect of the ethos of our schools. Purely on these grounds and on no other, we must accept that, whilst our employers have their duties to us, we, too, have our duties to them. We owe them a duty of loyalty. This, on the face of it, would seem to entail a further duty to respect the “characteristic spirit” of the school; to ensure, at the very, very least, that, neither by action nor by inaction will we knowingly and wilfully disrespect or disregard the school “ethos” in the actual discharge of our various contractual functions in the school. As “reflective practitioners”, we must, by way of corollary, check from time to time whether, and to what extent, we meet our basic obligation to – putting it, again, in the most basic terms - do no harm to the “characteristic spirit” of the school that employs us.
“‘This people honours me with their lips, but their heart is far from me’ (Mt 15:7; Is 29:13)”. All of us who claim to be Catholic servants of Catholic schools, patrons/trustees, governors, managers, leaders, teachers, staff, must, this Lent, examine our hearts in the light of Christ, to discern whether our service is, indeed, faith-based, faith-driven, faith-serving; whether we ourselves are “good and faithful stewards” (cf. Luke 12:42-48) or whether, like the Pharisees here condemned by Jesus, we, too, are “hypokritai”, i.e., “play-actors”, “role-players”, “pretenders”, “dissemblers”, “whited sepulchres” (cf. Matthew 23:27), “anonymous pagans”, de facto humanists, crypto-secularists, or just out-and-out hypocrites.
The Code of Canon Law provides that teachers in a Catholic school “are to be outstanding in correct doctrine and integrity of life (canon 803.2)”. It requires, too, that those involved in the Religious Instruction of Catholic students be “outstanding in correct doctrine, the witness of a Christian life, and teaching skill (canon 804.2)”. Vatican documents on the Catholic School emphasise that those who teach in Catholic schools must be Catholic in fact as well as in name. There is, besides, research indicating that those Catholic schools are more effective as Catholic which are led and staffed by people who are committed to the Faith and strive to live by the teachings of the Church.
Catholic school authorities in the Republic of Ireland do insist that, to be eligible for employment, all teachers in primary schools, and teachers of RE in post-primary schools, must be duly qualified in respect of the teaching of religion. In the advance information now usually sent to those who apply for teaching posts in Catholic schools, there will be a statement of one kind or another to the effect that the school is Catholic in patronage/trusteeship and ethos. There will be a similar statement in application forms. At interviews, candidates are likely to be reminded again, orally or otherwise, of the ethos of the school and candidates for principalship will be questioned to assess their professional competence in respect of faith leadership. It would be most unusual, however, for a candidate for any post in a Catholic school in Ireland today to be asked about her/his own religious beliefs and/or practices. In fact, all the indications are that Catholic school authorities in the Republic of Ireland do not insist that boards of management comply with the official policy of the Church in relation to hiring teachers. There are countries where the demographics mean it would be impossible to comply with this policy. Ireland, though, is not yet one of them and some who serve our schools do not see how the identity and integrity of any Catholic school qua Catholic can be preserved if those who lead and staff such schools are not themselves living the faith they profess.
That, of course, is a matter for Catholic patrons/trustees. A basic matter for us who work in Catholic schools is this: Whether we believe or not, are we appropriately professional in respect of the ethos of our schools. Purely on these grounds and on no other, we must accept that, whilst our employers have their duties to us, we, too, have our duties to them. We owe them a duty of loyalty. This, on the face of it, would seem to entail a further duty to respect the “characteristic spirit” of the school; to ensure, at the very, very least, that, neither by action nor by inaction will we knowingly and wilfully disrespect or disregard the school “ethos” in the actual discharge of our various contractual functions in the school. As “reflective practitioners”, we must, by way of corollary, check from time to time whether, and to what extent, we meet our basic obligation to – putting it, again, in the most basic terms - do no harm to the “characteristic spirit” of the school that employs us.
“‘This people honours me with their lips, but their heart is far from me’ (Mt 15:7; Is 29:13)”. All of us who claim to be Catholic servants of Catholic schools, patrons/trustees, governors, managers, leaders, teachers, staff, must, this Lent, examine our hearts in the light of Christ, to discern whether our service is, indeed, faith-based, faith-driven, faith-serving; whether we ourselves are “good and faithful stewards” (cf. Luke 12:42-48) or whether, like the Pharisees here condemned by Jesus, we, too, are “hypokritai”, i.e., “play-actors”, “role-players”, “pretenders”, “dissemblers”, “whited sepulchres” (cf. Matthew 23:27), “anonymous pagans”, de facto humanists, crypto-secularists, or just out-and-out hypocrites.
LUX EDMUNDI: REFLECTION: FEBRUARY, 2019
On Thursday, 29th March, 2018, Deputy Paul Murphy moved a Private Member’s Bill designed to guarantee the right of students to receive factual and objective relationships and sexuality education without regard to the characteristic spirit of the school. Deputy Murphy informed the Dáil that the Bill – the Provision of Objective Sex Education Bill 2018 – “would remove school ethos from relationships and sexuality education. It would require the RSE curriculum not to be gender normative, which will benefit all students, in particular, trans- and inter-sex students. It would require RSE to cover all the various sexualities, which would mean that all young people would hear about more than heterosexual sexuality. It would require RSE to cover different genders so that young people know that not everyone is either male or female, that there are non-binary and gender-fluid people in society and, of course, in our schools. It would require that contraception would also be taught in a factual and objective way … and that options for those with crisis pregnancies would also be covered in an objective and factual way to counter some of the misinformation there is currently in some schools”.
The Bill amends certain sections of the Education Act of 1998 so that, in effect, the Minister will be obliged by law to determine, the board of management of a recognised school to deliver, a national curriculum for relationships and sexuality education with both Minister and board expressly directed to discharge their respective functions without regard to the characteristic spirit of the school.
Dr. Ann Nolan, Senior Parliamentary Researcher (Social Sciences) with the Oireachtas Library and Research Service, has prepared a Spotlight report entitled School-based relationships and sexuality education (RSE): lessons for policy and practice (24th September, 2018), the stated aim of which is to “consider the national and international policy architecture for school-based sex education, which favours a liberal and comprehensive approach, and to review current provision for sex education in post-primary schools in Ireland”.
This publication is intended to inform members of the Oireachtas in their deliberations on this Bill. It emphasises from the very outset that “sex education is not an unambiguous, value-neutral concept, but one that is contested. The enduring ‘problem’ of sex education in every jurisdiction is that it is underpinned by diametrically opposed philosophical positions and even in countries where sex education is widely supported in principle, the content is frequently contentious”. Given this, it might be expected that TDs and Senators would have evinced a diversity of views on this Bill as it moves through the Oireachtas. The fact that, at two stages of the process to date, notwithstanding the opposition of Fianna Fáil to some of its contents, it has been passed without a vote, suggests that, on this matter, our legislators may not be as open, as diverse, as multi-culturally aware, as their colleagues elsewhere - as, for that matter, many of them would hope and believe they were.
The Bill amends, inter alia, section 9 (d) of the Education Act of 1998 thus requiring a recognised school to “promote the moral, social and personal development of students and to provide health education for them, in consultation with their parents, having, with the exception of relationships and sexuality education, regard to the characteristic spirit of the school”. Health education, is seems, must, RSE must not, be taught with due regard for school ethos, obliging boards under law to have untaught in the one what they must have taught in the other. Yet another “dog’s dinner”?
On Thursday, 29th March, 2018, Deputy Paul Murphy moved a Private Member’s Bill designed to guarantee the right of students to receive factual and objective relationships and sexuality education without regard to the characteristic spirit of the school. Deputy Murphy informed the Dáil that the Bill – the Provision of Objective Sex Education Bill 2018 – “would remove school ethos from relationships and sexuality education. It would require the RSE curriculum not to be gender normative, which will benefit all students, in particular, trans- and inter-sex students. It would require RSE to cover all the various sexualities, which would mean that all young people would hear about more than heterosexual sexuality. It would require RSE to cover different genders so that young people know that not everyone is either male or female, that there are non-binary and gender-fluid people in society and, of course, in our schools. It would require that contraception would also be taught in a factual and objective way … and that options for those with crisis pregnancies would also be covered in an objective and factual way to counter some of the misinformation there is currently in some schools”.
The Bill amends certain sections of the Education Act of 1998 so that, in effect, the Minister will be obliged by law to determine, the board of management of a recognised school to deliver, a national curriculum for relationships and sexuality education with both Minister and board expressly directed to discharge their respective functions without regard to the characteristic spirit of the school.
Dr. Ann Nolan, Senior Parliamentary Researcher (Social Sciences) with the Oireachtas Library and Research Service, has prepared a Spotlight report entitled School-based relationships and sexuality education (RSE): lessons for policy and practice (24th September, 2018), the stated aim of which is to “consider the national and international policy architecture for school-based sex education, which favours a liberal and comprehensive approach, and to review current provision for sex education in post-primary schools in Ireland”.
This publication is intended to inform members of the Oireachtas in their deliberations on this Bill. It emphasises from the very outset that “sex education is not an unambiguous, value-neutral concept, but one that is contested. The enduring ‘problem’ of sex education in every jurisdiction is that it is underpinned by diametrically opposed philosophical positions and even in countries where sex education is widely supported in principle, the content is frequently contentious”. Given this, it might be expected that TDs and Senators would have evinced a diversity of views on this Bill as it moves through the Oireachtas. The fact that, at two stages of the process to date, notwithstanding the opposition of Fianna Fáil to some of its contents, it has been passed without a vote, suggests that, on this matter, our legislators may not be as open, as diverse, as multi-culturally aware, as their colleagues elsewhere - as, for that matter, many of them would hope and believe they were.
The Bill amends, inter alia, section 9 (d) of the Education Act of 1998 thus requiring a recognised school to “promote the moral, social and personal development of students and to provide health education for them, in consultation with their parents, having, with the exception of relationships and sexuality education, regard to the characteristic spirit of the school”. Health education, is seems, must, RSE must not, be taught with due regard for school ethos, obliging boards under law to have untaught in the one what they must have taught in the other. Yet another “dog’s dinner”?
LUX EDMUNDI: REFLECTION: JANUARY, 2019
Catholic Schools Week 2019 will run from Sunday, 27th January to Sunday, 3rd February. The general theme will be “Catholic Schools: Celebrating the Work of Our Local Catholic School”. The particular themes suggested for each day of CSW2019 are these: Day 1. Our Catholic School: Living Tradition; Day 2. Our Catholic School: Welcoming Diversity; Day 3. Our Catholic School: Grandparents Day/Intergenerational; Day 4. Our Catholic School: In the Service of Our Community; Day 5. Our Catholic School: Supporting Faith. There are resources available to help schools celebrate each of these days with understanding, conviction and, we may hope, enthusiasm (www.catholicschools.ie).
In describing our schools generally, we tend to focus on characteristics – e.g., “Welcoming Diversity” – that are not in any way unique to Catholic schools or that are required by law of all recognised schools or that are more or less moot if not supported by the findings of independent empirical research. CSW affords us an opportunity to reflect year on year on the nature and purpose of our schools and, perhaps more importantly, to find the necessary and appropriate language in which to share our conclusions with the world.
Canon Law defines a Catholic school thus: “A Catholic school is understood as one which a competent ecclesiastical authority or a public ecclesiastical juridic person directs or which ecclesiastical authority recognises as such through a written document (c. 803.1)”. There is actually no corresponding definition of a Catholic school in civil law in the Republic of Ireland but, in the light of various provisions of the Education Act 1998 and, especially, of their interaction, it may be concluded that a Catholic school is a recognised school under Catholic patronage.
There are many Vatican documents dealing with the Catholic school, all of which are freely available at www.vatican.va. Archbishop J. Michael Miller, CSB, formerly Secretary of the Congregation for Catholic Education, has distilled from these what he calls The Five Marks of the Catholic School: “1. Inspired by a Supernatural Vision: … Catholic schools have a straightforward goal: to foster the growth of good Catholic human beings who love God and neighbour and thus fulfil their destiny of becoming saints. 2. Founded on a Christian Anthropology: … Christ is not an after-thought or an add-on to Catholic educational philosophy but the centre and fulcrum of the entire enterprise… 3. Animated by Communion and Community: … a dimension rooted both in the social nature of the human person and the reality of the Church a ‘the home and the school of communion’ … 4. Imbued with a Catholic Worldview: Catholicism should permeate not just the class period of catechism or religious education, or the school’s pastoral activities, but the entire curriculum … 5. Sustained by the Witness of Teaching: The careful hiring of men and women who enthusiastically endorse a Catholic ethos is … the primary way to foster a school’s Catholicity …”.
We must mine this rich vein of Catholic thinking and teaching on the ends and means both of Catholic education, in general, and of the Catholic school, in particular, because, now more than ever, we must “be prepared to make a defence to anyone who calls [us] to account for the hope that is in [us] (I Pt 3:15)” about our schools. We must develop a specifically Catholic vision of what is specifically Catholic about our Catholic schools and we must find a Catholic language in which to articulate that vision. If we have much to say about our schools as schools, and little about those schools as Catholic, we run the risk of de-Catholicising our schools all on our very own.
Catholic Schools Week 2019 will run from Sunday, 27th January to Sunday, 3rd February. The general theme will be “Catholic Schools: Celebrating the Work of Our Local Catholic School”. The particular themes suggested for each day of CSW2019 are these: Day 1. Our Catholic School: Living Tradition; Day 2. Our Catholic School: Welcoming Diversity; Day 3. Our Catholic School: Grandparents Day/Intergenerational; Day 4. Our Catholic School: In the Service of Our Community; Day 5. Our Catholic School: Supporting Faith. There are resources available to help schools celebrate each of these days with understanding, conviction and, we may hope, enthusiasm (www.catholicschools.ie).
In describing our schools generally, we tend to focus on characteristics – e.g., “Welcoming Diversity” – that are not in any way unique to Catholic schools or that are required by law of all recognised schools or that are more or less moot if not supported by the findings of independent empirical research. CSW affords us an opportunity to reflect year on year on the nature and purpose of our schools and, perhaps more importantly, to find the necessary and appropriate language in which to share our conclusions with the world.
Canon Law defines a Catholic school thus: “A Catholic school is understood as one which a competent ecclesiastical authority or a public ecclesiastical juridic person directs or which ecclesiastical authority recognises as such through a written document (c. 803.1)”. There is actually no corresponding definition of a Catholic school in civil law in the Republic of Ireland but, in the light of various provisions of the Education Act 1998 and, especially, of their interaction, it may be concluded that a Catholic school is a recognised school under Catholic patronage.
There are many Vatican documents dealing with the Catholic school, all of which are freely available at www.vatican.va. Archbishop J. Michael Miller, CSB, formerly Secretary of the Congregation for Catholic Education, has distilled from these what he calls The Five Marks of the Catholic School: “1. Inspired by a Supernatural Vision: … Catholic schools have a straightforward goal: to foster the growth of good Catholic human beings who love God and neighbour and thus fulfil their destiny of becoming saints. 2. Founded on a Christian Anthropology: … Christ is not an after-thought or an add-on to Catholic educational philosophy but the centre and fulcrum of the entire enterprise… 3. Animated by Communion and Community: … a dimension rooted both in the social nature of the human person and the reality of the Church a ‘the home and the school of communion’ … 4. Imbued with a Catholic Worldview: Catholicism should permeate not just the class period of catechism or religious education, or the school’s pastoral activities, but the entire curriculum … 5. Sustained by the Witness of Teaching: The careful hiring of men and women who enthusiastically endorse a Catholic ethos is … the primary way to foster a school’s Catholicity …”.
We must mine this rich vein of Catholic thinking and teaching on the ends and means both of Catholic education, in general, and of the Catholic school, in particular, because, now more than ever, we must “be prepared to make a defence to anyone who calls [us] to account for the hope that is in [us] (I Pt 3:15)” about our schools. We must develop a specifically Catholic vision of what is specifically Catholic about our Catholic schools and we must find a Catholic language in which to articulate that vision. If we have much to say about our schools as schools, and little about those schools as Catholic, we run the risk of de-Catholicising our schools all on our very own.
LUX EDMUNDI: REFLECTION: DECEMBER, 2018
“For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government will be upon his shoulder, and his name will be called ‘Wonderful Counsellor’, ‘Mighty God’, ‘Everlasting Father’, ‘Prince of Peace’ (Isaiah 9:6)”. This verse is used in the Liturgy throughout the Christmas Season. It is understood by Christians to refer to Christ. He is the “child”, the “son”, in question. It is on his shoulders that ultimate and universal authority rests. His are the high Messianic titles listed. Venite adoremus!
As Catholics, we believe that the Infant Jesus is the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity, the Word of God, begotten of the Father before all ages, incarnate of the Virgin Mary and born of her “when the fullness of time had come(Col 4:4)”. He alone is Lord and Saviour of humankind, “for there is no other name given among men by which we must be saved (Acts 4:11-12)”.
As Catholic educators - and, necessarily, therefore, students of Christian anthropology – we believe with the Fathers of Vatican II that this Infant reveals God to us and reveals us to ourselves: “ [I]t is only in the mystery of the Word made flesh that the mystery of man truly becomes clear. For Adam, the first man, was a type of him who was to come. Christ the Lord, Christ the new Adam, in the very revelation of the mystery of the Father and of his love, fully reveals man to himself and brings to light his most high calling (Gaudium et Spes, The Church in the Modern World, para. 22)”.
As patrons/trustees, governors, managers, leaders, teachers, staff, of Catholic schools, we believe that this Infant is the model, the pattern, the paradigm, of humanity at its most authentic and complete and, therefore, the Alpha and the Omega of all teaching and learning in our schools, the raisin d’etre, the final and definitive purpose, of which is the formation of the young in Christ.
We ought, we must, we shall, make adequate time this Christmas to kneel before the Crib, to worship the Holy Infant; to meditate on his centrality to what we are, and to what we are about, in our work in school; to beg God to give us the light to see, and the love to serve, Jesus in every one of the students committed to our care, each of whom comes to us wrapped, not in swaddling clothes, but in what, for good or ill, nature and nurture have made of them up to that point.
Now, it can take remarkable faith to see, and even more remarkable love to serve, the Infant Jesus in some of those seeking admission to our schools. They may be “trouble”, un-cooperative, recalcitrant. Whether because they can’t, or they won’t, learn effectively, their academic prospects may not be bright. They may be disabled in one way or another. It may be clear from the outset that, if admitted, they will pose a real challenge to the school, its staff, its facilities and its resources, one which, in their heart of hearts, founding charisms and mission statements notwithstanding, Principal and Board would much prefer not to face at all if they could safely dodge having to do so.
Each such child, however, is made in the image and likeness of God; each is a “word” uttered by the Father in the Son from all eternity; each is a “take” on Christ found in no-one else. Gerard Manley Hopkins has put it well: “This jack, joke, poor potsherd, patch, matchwood, immortal diamond Is immortal diamond”; is, in fact, the Holy Infant, the Christ Child, the Lord himself, begging us for refuge, for a place in which to be born, survive and maybe even thrive. Will there be room for the Christ who thus comes to us, so unprepossessingly, so disagreeably, “wrapped”, in my “inn”? Will there be room for him in yours? Or will we adore, but not admit, him?
“Behold, I stand at the door and knock”: ”Lift up your gates, rulers… the King of glory shall enter”
“For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government will be upon his shoulder, and his name will be called ‘Wonderful Counsellor’, ‘Mighty God’, ‘Everlasting Father’, ‘Prince of Peace’ (Isaiah 9:6)”. This verse is used in the Liturgy throughout the Christmas Season. It is understood by Christians to refer to Christ. He is the “child”, the “son”, in question. It is on his shoulders that ultimate and universal authority rests. His are the high Messianic titles listed. Venite adoremus!
As Catholics, we believe that the Infant Jesus is the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity, the Word of God, begotten of the Father before all ages, incarnate of the Virgin Mary and born of her “when the fullness of time had come(Col 4:4)”. He alone is Lord and Saviour of humankind, “for there is no other name given among men by which we must be saved (Acts 4:11-12)”.
As Catholic educators - and, necessarily, therefore, students of Christian anthropology – we believe with the Fathers of Vatican II that this Infant reveals God to us and reveals us to ourselves: “ [I]t is only in the mystery of the Word made flesh that the mystery of man truly becomes clear. For Adam, the first man, was a type of him who was to come. Christ the Lord, Christ the new Adam, in the very revelation of the mystery of the Father and of his love, fully reveals man to himself and brings to light his most high calling (Gaudium et Spes, The Church in the Modern World, para. 22)”.
As patrons/trustees, governors, managers, leaders, teachers, staff, of Catholic schools, we believe that this Infant is the model, the pattern, the paradigm, of humanity at its most authentic and complete and, therefore, the Alpha and the Omega of all teaching and learning in our schools, the raisin d’etre, the final and definitive purpose, of which is the formation of the young in Christ.
We ought, we must, we shall, make adequate time this Christmas to kneel before the Crib, to worship the Holy Infant; to meditate on his centrality to what we are, and to what we are about, in our work in school; to beg God to give us the light to see, and the love to serve, Jesus in every one of the students committed to our care, each of whom comes to us wrapped, not in swaddling clothes, but in what, for good or ill, nature and nurture have made of them up to that point.
Now, it can take remarkable faith to see, and even more remarkable love to serve, the Infant Jesus in some of those seeking admission to our schools. They may be “trouble”, un-cooperative, recalcitrant. Whether because they can’t, or they won’t, learn effectively, their academic prospects may not be bright. They may be disabled in one way or another. It may be clear from the outset that, if admitted, they will pose a real challenge to the school, its staff, its facilities and its resources, one which, in their heart of hearts, founding charisms and mission statements notwithstanding, Principal and Board would much prefer not to face at all if they could safely dodge having to do so.
Each such child, however, is made in the image and likeness of God; each is a “word” uttered by the Father in the Son from all eternity; each is a “take” on Christ found in no-one else. Gerard Manley Hopkins has put it well: “This jack, joke, poor potsherd, patch, matchwood, immortal diamond Is immortal diamond”; is, in fact, the Holy Infant, the Christ Child, the Lord himself, begging us for refuge, for a place in which to be born, survive and maybe even thrive. Will there be room for the Christ who thus comes to us, so unprepossessingly, so disagreeably, “wrapped”, in my “inn”? Will there be room for him in yours? Or will we adore, but not admit, him?
“Behold, I stand at the door and knock”: ”Lift up your gates, rulers… the King of glory shall enter”
LUX EDMUNDI: REFLECTION: NOVEMBER, 2018
Famously, the late, great Christy Ring was once asked what would be his main advice to any young hurler. “Keep your eye on the ball”, he responded, “even when it’s in the ref’s pocket”. It would seem that the Department of Education and Skills did not keep an eye on the ball throughout the construction of a whole range of school buildings here in Ireland in the last number of years.
To date, 2018 has been an annus horribilis for the Department in respect of school building. In January, the UK-based firm, Carillion, was declared bankrupt. Unfortunately, it was involved at the time, directly and indirectly, building schools for the Department. The latter insisted that all would still be well. Months later, however, it is only too clear that all is not well; that, in fact, there is a lot in the Department’s oversight of school construction projects that is far from well. In September, 2018, the Department announced Project Ireland 2040 which, it said, would provide “a 70% increase in schools capital funding compared to the last decade (€4.9 billion to €8.4 billion)”. Any increase of funding in school building, especially one as large as this, must, of course, be welcomed. However, it now seems likely that that announcement needed clarification even as it was made. It needed to be clarified whether some of this apparently new money had already been spent, in effect, to complete the schools left unfinished on the demise of Carillon. It most certainly needs clarification now whether, and to what extent, the Department must draw again on these funds to meet the considerable expenditure required to repair and/or replace those school buildings - some of them comparatively new - recently evacuated on safety grounds. On the face of things, at least, it seems a lot of the Project Ireland 2040 monies allocated to school building will have to be used to re-do work already done and paid for. Bad as this is, incomparably worse is the fact that people could have been killed in these defective school buildings whilst the Department blinked. Clearly, in not keeping its eye on this particular construction ball, the Department squandered millions and endangered lives.
It may be, of course, that the Department’s eye has been elsewhere this past while. Circular letters 0009/2016, 0013/2018 and 0062/2018, and, especially, the Education (Admissions to Schools) Act 2018, suggest that the Department may have been focussed on what may be reasonably described as its campaign to de-Catholicise our schools. Undoubtedly, in PR terms, it would have been no bad thing for the Department that the attention of the public would be fixed on, say, baptismal, rather than on building, certificates, or, for that matter, on other initiatives that cost money, such as, for example, adequate educational provision for homeless children, Traveller children, migrant children, not to mention equal pay for equal work for teachers.
Maybe it is overly suspicious to think that the Department would throw PR dust in our eyes, but, unfortunately, we just cannot be sure. To be on the safe side, we simply must take Ringey’s advice: We must keep our eye on the ball. We must give the matter of schools admissions all the attention it so patently deserves, but, in so doing, we must not allow ourselves to be distracted from attending to other matters also important – e.g. risks to life - at the same time. Our attention to such matters seems especially necessary when some of our rights’ watchdogs appear reluctant to bark at anyone or anything they deem “sound” on the liberalisation – equated, for some reason, with secularisation, that, even more bizarrely, being almost exclusively equated with de-Catholicisation – of Irish society, including Irish schools, we may well be the only ones, not just to spot that the emperor has no clothes, but to bark, bark and bark again, until people notice that he is, in fact, stark naked.
Famously, the late, great Christy Ring was once asked what would be his main advice to any young hurler. “Keep your eye on the ball”, he responded, “even when it’s in the ref’s pocket”. It would seem that the Department of Education and Skills did not keep an eye on the ball throughout the construction of a whole range of school buildings here in Ireland in the last number of years.
To date, 2018 has been an annus horribilis for the Department in respect of school building. In January, the UK-based firm, Carillion, was declared bankrupt. Unfortunately, it was involved at the time, directly and indirectly, building schools for the Department. The latter insisted that all would still be well. Months later, however, it is only too clear that all is not well; that, in fact, there is a lot in the Department’s oversight of school construction projects that is far from well. In September, 2018, the Department announced Project Ireland 2040 which, it said, would provide “a 70% increase in schools capital funding compared to the last decade (€4.9 billion to €8.4 billion)”. Any increase of funding in school building, especially one as large as this, must, of course, be welcomed. However, it now seems likely that that announcement needed clarification even as it was made. It needed to be clarified whether some of this apparently new money had already been spent, in effect, to complete the schools left unfinished on the demise of Carillon. It most certainly needs clarification now whether, and to what extent, the Department must draw again on these funds to meet the considerable expenditure required to repair and/or replace those school buildings - some of them comparatively new - recently evacuated on safety grounds. On the face of things, at least, it seems a lot of the Project Ireland 2040 monies allocated to school building will have to be used to re-do work already done and paid for. Bad as this is, incomparably worse is the fact that people could have been killed in these defective school buildings whilst the Department blinked. Clearly, in not keeping its eye on this particular construction ball, the Department squandered millions and endangered lives.
It may be, of course, that the Department’s eye has been elsewhere this past while. Circular letters 0009/2016, 0013/2018 and 0062/2018, and, especially, the Education (Admissions to Schools) Act 2018, suggest that the Department may have been focussed on what may be reasonably described as its campaign to de-Catholicise our schools. Undoubtedly, in PR terms, it would have been no bad thing for the Department that the attention of the public would be fixed on, say, baptismal, rather than on building, certificates, or, for that matter, on other initiatives that cost money, such as, for example, adequate educational provision for homeless children, Traveller children, migrant children, not to mention equal pay for equal work for teachers.
Maybe it is overly suspicious to think that the Department would throw PR dust in our eyes, but, unfortunately, we just cannot be sure. To be on the safe side, we simply must take Ringey’s advice: We must keep our eye on the ball. We must give the matter of schools admissions all the attention it so patently deserves, but, in so doing, we must not allow ourselves to be distracted from attending to other matters also important – e.g. risks to life - at the same time. Our attention to such matters seems especially necessary when some of our rights’ watchdogs appear reluctant to bark at anyone or anything they deem “sound” on the liberalisation – equated, for some reason, with secularisation, that, even more bizarrely, being almost exclusively equated with de-Catholicisation – of Irish society, including Irish schools, we may well be the only ones, not just to spot that the emperor has no clothes, but to bark, bark and bark again, until people notice that he is, in fact, stark naked.
LUX EDMUNDI: REFLECTION: OCTOBER, 2018
Reports indicate that a matter of the greatest concern today to third-level institutes in many parts of the world – including Ireland – is the shockingly high proportion of students who indicate that they have experienced unwanted sexual attentions – up to and including rape – in their time at college. Mary Mitchell O’Connor, Minister of State with responsibility for higher education, is considering making classes on sexual consent obligatory at third-level. There have been calls, too, for lessons of a similar kind in schools in the Republic, some insisting that our RSE courses must be revised root and branch to meet the socio-cultural realities of today, others – inevitably - adding that this requires that the influence of Catholic moral doctrine in Irish schools must be curtailed and eradicated.
Subject to the statutory duty on every board of management of a recognised school in the Republic of Ireland to uphold the characteristic spirit of that school, initiatives of the kind and purpose envisaged here deserve our support. It must, indeed, be our common object to ensure our Catholic schools are places where all students feel secure in their own skins and learn that mutual respect is essential for life in any civilised society, a necessary and governing principle in all relationships.
In his appearance before the Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills in July, 2018, John Curtis, General Secretary of JMB/AMCSS, emphasised that, in the Catholic schools his organisation represented, RSE was understood and taught in the light of Familiaris Consortio, the Apostolic Exhortation of Pope St. John Paul II on the Role of the Christian Family in the Modern World, issued in November, 1981. Though it is, in fact, 33 years “younger” than, e.g., the UDHR, subsequent comment emphasised how “old” FC was. The great focus, though, was on its insistence that “education for chastity is absolutely essential, for it is a virtue that develops a person’s authentic maturity and makes him or her capable of respecting and fostering the ‘nuptial meaning’ of the body (paragraph 37)”. The Catechism of the Catholic Church presents chastity one of the Fruits of the Holy Spirit, a gift of God received in Baptism, to be cultivated thereafter in accordance with one’s state in life. It also presents it as a human virtue related to the Cardinal Virtue of Temperance, by which, as a rational being, the human person strives to ensure that s/he controls, and is not controlled by, the powerful appetites common to all. Chastity is the virtue that helps us control the sexual appetite.
Many scoff at even the mention of chastity and deride those schools which make provision for helping students understand, appreciate and practise it. In advocating chastity, schools, of course, follow a tradition of education in ethics inspired and guided by ancient Greek philosophy, on the one hand, and, on the other, by Judaeo-Christianity, the twin streams of thought and action that, for millennia, have permeated European culture, shaping and sustaining it right up to today.
Awareness of this history is not required for us to understand and accept the need for the inculcation of self-restraint in the young, especially in respect of their sexual drives. A glance at any day’s headlines will induce most thinking men and women to wonder how, precisely, without that mastery of one’s sexual urges many across the globe call “chastity”, any of us, including any student, second-level or third, may be taught to respect the right of another to say “No!” to sexual advances and, more importantly, to have that “No!” immediately and decisively heeded.
It is sometimes intimated that we must change our thinking the better to accommodate the New Irish. Many of the latter espouse traditional values and, though they may well have other ways of understanding and naming it, the majority of them have a very high regard for what we call chastity.
Reports indicate that a matter of the greatest concern today to third-level institutes in many parts of the world – including Ireland – is the shockingly high proportion of students who indicate that they have experienced unwanted sexual attentions – up to and including rape – in their time at college. Mary Mitchell O’Connor, Minister of State with responsibility for higher education, is considering making classes on sexual consent obligatory at third-level. There have been calls, too, for lessons of a similar kind in schools in the Republic, some insisting that our RSE courses must be revised root and branch to meet the socio-cultural realities of today, others – inevitably - adding that this requires that the influence of Catholic moral doctrine in Irish schools must be curtailed and eradicated.
Subject to the statutory duty on every board of management of a recognised school in the Republic of Ireland to uphold the characteristic spirit of that school, initiatives of the kind and purpose envisaged here deserve our support. It must, indeed, be our common object to ensure our Catholic schools are places where all students feel secure in their own skins and learn that mutual respect is essential for life in any civilised society, a necessary and governing principle in all relationships.
In his appearance before the Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills in July, 2018, John Curtis, General Secretary of JMB/AMCSS, emphasised that, in the Catholic schools his organisation represented, RSE was understood and taught in the light of Familiaris Consortio, the Apostolic Exhortation of Pope St. John Paul II on the Role of the Christian Family in the Modern World, issued in November, 1981. Though it is, in fact, 33 years “younger” than, e.g., the UDHR, subsequent comment emphasised how “old” FC was. The great focus, though, was on its insistence that “education for chastity is absolutely essential, for it is a virtue that develops a person’s authentic maturity and makes him or her capable of respecting and fostering the ‘nuptial meaning’ of the body (paragraph 37)”. The Catechism of the Catholic Church presents chastity one of the Fruits of the Holy Spirit, a gift of God received in Baptism, to be cultivated thereafter in accordance with one’s state in life. It also presents it as a human virtue related to the Cardinal Virtue of Temperance, by which, as a rational being, the human person strives to ensure that s/he controls, and is not controlled by, the powerful appetites common to all. Chastity is the virtue that helps us control the sexual appetite.
Many scoff at even the mention of chastity and deride those schools which make provision for helping students understand, appreciate and practise it. In advocating chastity, schools, of course, follow a tradition of education in ethics inspired and guided by ancient Greek philosophy, on the one hand, and, on the other, by Judaeo-Christianity, the twin streams of thought and action that, for millennia, have permeated European culture, shaping and sustaining it right up to today.
Awareness of this history is not required for us to understand and accept the need for the inculcation of self-restraint in the young, especially in respect of their sexual drives. A glance at any day’s headlines will induce most thinking men and women to wonder how, precisely, without that mastery of one’s sexual urges many across the globe call “chastity”, any of us, including any student, second-level or third, may be taught to respect the right of another to say “No!” to sexual advances and, more importantly, to have that “No!” immediately and decisively heeded.
It is sometimes intimated that we must change our thinking the better to accommodate the New Irish. Many of the latter espouse traditional values and, though they may well have other ways of understanding and naming it, the majority of them have a very high regard for what we call chastity.
LUX EDMUNDI: REFLECTION: SEPTEMBER, 2018
Prompted by Lumen Gentium and directed by Perfectae Caritatis and subsequent papal and Roman documents, religious – men and women consecrated to God “by the public profession of the evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity and obedience, in a stable state of life recognised by the Church (CCC 944)” – have worked these last fifty odd years to effect the renewal asked of them at Vatican II. They have focussed especially on retrieving and re-considering the respective founding charisms of their various institutes so that they might the better discern what God asks of them now.
A founding charism may be thought to comprise the particular gifts a man or woman receives from God to enable her/him and their followers provide a specific service for the People of God. Thus, for example, the founding charism of the aboriginal and undivided Society of the Presentation is constituted by the gifts of grace and of nature given Blessed Edmund for the purpose of establishing and developing a religious institute for “the instruction of poor boys in the principles of religion and Christian piety”.
A founding charism is, indeed, always rooted in its origins, in the founder who first embodied it, and in the time and place in which s/he tried with the help of God to do so. It is, though, never a fossil. It is, rather, a grace that lives, grows and evolves under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, a gift entrusted by each succeeding generation of religious to the next, that they, too, might have the light to see, and the strength to do, that which the Lord still asks of them, individually and collectively, in the service of hisChurch for the sake of the Gospel. The extraordinary thing in our own day, of course, is that the respective charisms of the many religious congregations engaged in the apostolate of the Catholic school in Ireland are now, in many instances, being handed on to lay-people, to men and women who are neither clerics nor religious, but who are engaged in the trusteeship, patronage, governance, management, leadership and service of schools, primary and post-primary, originally founded by men or women religious whose followers ran them for the succeeding two centuries.
There is, in fact, an emerging literature arguing that these lay people must be rehearsed in the nature and purpose of the founding charism in question if they are to discharge their functions effectively and thus safeguard the specific identity and integrity of the schools now in their charge. Familiarity with the founding charism may be, not just a moral, but a legal requirement. Virtually all formerly religious-run schools in the Republic of Ireland are recognised schools under the Education Act of 1998. Those who manage them are obliged to uphold, and to be accountable to the Patron for so upholding, the characteristic spirit, the ethos, of the school, which, under the Act, is constituted by, inter alia, the “traditions which inform and are characteristic of the objectives and conduct of the schools (s. 15.2.(b))”. The source of many of the most important of these “traditions” is, precisely, the founding charism of the institute which established those schools and conducted them up to yesterday, so to speak. Those lay-people responsible for those schools now must comprehend the founding charism, if, in their various capacities, they are to be at all fit for purpose.
It is imperative that we all accept that at the heart of every one of these founding charisms there is a commitment to the pursuit of holiness. There is, in fact, no preserving, no developing, no transmitting, any such founding charism if, for whatever reason, we baulk at striving, day in, day out, to love God above all for his own sake and the neighbour as ourselves for the love of God. This is the sine qua non of every founding charism. This, quite simply, is the unum necessarium, the one thing necessary, for the right and effective governance, management and leadership of our schools.
Prompted by Lumen Gentium and directed by Perfectae Caritatis and subsequent papal and Roman documents, religious – men and women consecrated to God “by the public profession of the evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity and obedience, in a stable state of life recognised by the Church (CCC 944)” – have worked these last fifty odd years to effect the renewal asked of them at Vatican II. They have focussed especially on retrieving and re-considering the respective founding charisms of their various institutes so that they might the better discern what God asks of them now.
A founding charism may be thought to comprise the particular gifts a man or woman receives from God to enable her/him and their followers provide a specific service for the People of God. Thus, for example, the founding charism of the aboriginal and undivided Society of the Presentation is constituted by the gifts of grace and of nature given Blessed Edmund for the purpose of establishing and developing a religious institute for “the instruction of poor boys in the principles of religion and Christian piety”.
A founding charism is, indeed, always rooted in its origins, in the founder who first embodied it, and in the time and place in which s/he tried with the help of God to do so. It is, though, never a fossil. It is, rather, a grace that lives, grows and evolves under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, a gift entrusted by each succeeding generation of religious to the next, that they, too, might have the light to see, and the strength to do, that which the Lord still asks of them, individually and collectively, in the service of hisChurch for the sake of the Gospel. The extraordinary thing in our own day, of course, is that the respective charisms of the many religious congregations engaged in the apostolate of the Catholic school in Ireland are now, in many instances, being handed on to lay-people, to men and women who are neither clerics nor religious, but who are engaged in the trusteeship, patronage, governance, management, leadership and service of schools, primary and post-primary, originally founded by men or women religious whose followers ran them for the succeeding two centuries.
There is, in fact, an emerging literature arguing that these lay people must be rehearsed in the nature and purpose of the founding charism in question if they are to discharge their functions effectively and thus safeguard the specific identity and integrity of the schools now in their charge. Familiarity with the founding charism may be, not just a moral, but a legal requirement. Virtually all formerly religious-run schools in the Republic of Ireland are recognised schools under the Education Act of 1998. Those who manage them are obliged to uphold, and to be accountable to the Patron for so upholding, the characteristic spirit, the ethos, of the school, which, under the Act, is constituted by, inter alia, the “traditions which inform and are characteristic of the objectives and conduct of the schools (s. 15.2.(b))”. The source of many of the most important of these “traditions” is, precisely, the founding charism of the institute which established those schools and conducted them up to yesterday, so to speak. Those lay-people responsible for those schools now must comprehend the founding charism, if, in their various capacities, they are to be at all fit for purpose.
It is imperative that we all accept that at the heart of every one of these founding charisms there is a commitment to the pursuit of holiness. There is, in fact, no preserving, no developing, no transmitting, any such founding charism if, for whatever reason, we baulk at striving, day in, day out, to love God above all for his own sake and the neighbour as ourselves for the love of God. This is the sine qua non of every founding charism. This, quite simply, is the unum necessarium, the one thing necessary, for the right and effective governance, management and leadership of our schools.
LUX EDMUNDI: REFLECTION: AUGUST, 2018
Wednesday, 29th August, 2018, is the 174th anniversary of the death in Waterford of Blessed Edmund Ignatius Rice, Founder of the aboriginal and undivided Society of the Presentation, from which derive both the Presentation Brothers and the Christian Brothers and all institutes and initiatives, educational or other, that spring from either or both of these bodies, including Lux Edmundi.
By that date, virtually all recognised schools in the Republic of Ireland, primary and post-primary, will have commenced the 2018-2019 school year. Catholic schools will do so this year in the immediate after-glow of WMOF2018 and, especially, of the associated visit to Ireland of His Holiness, Pope Francis, “bishop of the Church of Rome, successor to St. Peter … ‘head of the college of bishops, the Vicar of Christ and Pastor of the universal Church on earth’ (CIC, can. 331)’(CCC, para. 936)”.
Blessed Edmund lived under seven popes: Clement XIII, Clement XIV, Pius VI, Pius VII, Leo XII, Pius VIII and Gregory XVI. It was Pius VII who, in 1820, issued Ad pastoralis dignitatis fastigium, the papal brief which allowed the majority of the then Society of the Presentation – a congregation of diocesan right – to form the Society of Religious Brothers – a congregation of papal right – which entailed that they would be governed, not by the local bishop, but by a Superior General elected by themselves from amongst their own number. The first so elected was Blessed Edmund himself.
The papacy was, in fact, under severe attack in the early years of the Founder’s life. The Revolution of 1789 had shattered the Church in France and threatened it throughout Europe and beyond. Napoleon had occupied the Papal States and had imprisoned Pius VI and, for a time at least, Pius VII. More generally, the influence of the Enlightenment seemed in the ascendant everywhere and “liberals” rejoiced that the power of the Catholic Church was about to be broken forever.
That, of course, did not happen. In fact, the Catholic Church has now more adherents across the globe than it ever had. Those famous observations of Lord Macaulay’s – a strong advocate of “progress” and no lover of what he saw as benighted papal resistance to it – may be re-iterated here: “There is not, and there never was on this earth, a work of human policy so deserving of examination as the Roman Catholic Church. … No other institution is left standing which carries the mind back to the times when the smoke of sacrifice rose from the Parthenon, and when camelopards and tigers bounded in the Flavian amphitheatre. The proudest royal houses are but of yesterday, when compared with the line of the Supreme Pontiffs. That line we trace back in an unbroken series, from the Pope who crowned Napoleon in the nineteenth century to the Pope who crowned Pepin in the eight … She saw the commencement of all the governments and of all the ecclesiastical establishments that now exist in the world; and we feel no assurance that she is not destined to see the end of them all. She was great and respected before the Saxon had set foot in Britain, before the Frank had passed the Rhine, when Grecian eloquence still flourished at Antioch, when idols were still worshipped in the temple at Mecca. And she may still exist in undiminished vigour when some traveller from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul’s”.
What Nero failed to do in the first century, and Stalin in the twentieth, will not be done by anyone here in the twenty-first. We who are called anew by the Lord this August to make disciples of our students must respond with ever greater faith, courage and energy, in the utter conviction that Christ is with us always (cf. Mt 28:20); that, therefore, “the gates of hell will not prevail (ib. 16:18)”.
Wednesday, 29th August, 2018, is the 174th anniversary of the death in Waterford of Blessed Edmund Ignatius Rice, Founder of the aboriginal and undivided Society of the Presentation, from which derive both the Presentation Brothers and the Christian Brothers and all institutes and initiatives, educational or other, that spring from either or both of these bodies, including Lux Edmundi.
By that date, virtually all recognised schools in the Republic of Ireland, primary and post-primary, will have commenced the 2018-2019 school year. Catholic schools will do so this year in the immediate after-glow of WMOF2018 and, especially, of the associated visit to Ireland of His Holiness, Pope Francis, “bishop of the Church of Rome, successor to St. Peter … ‘head of the college of bishops, the Vicar of Christ and Pastor of the universal Church on earth’ (CIC, can. 331)’(CCC, para. 936)”.
Blessed Edmund lived under seven popes: Clement XIII, Clement XIV, Pius VI, Pius VII, Leo XII, Pius VIII and Gregory XVI. It was Pius VII who, in 1820, issued Ad pastoralis dignitatis fastigium, the papal brief which allowed the majority of the then Society of the Presentation – a congregation of diocesan right – to form the Society of Religious Brothers – a congregation of papal right – which entailed that they would be governed, not by the local bishop, but by a Superior General elected by themselves from amongst their own number. The first so elected was Blessed Edmund himself.
The papacy was, in fact, under severe attack in the early years of the Founder’s life. The Revolution of 1789 had shattered the Church in France and threatened it throughout Europe and beyond. Napoleon had occupied the Papal States and had imprisoned Pius VI and, for a time at least, Pius VII. More generally, the influence of the Enlightenment seemed in the ascendant everywhere and “liberals” rejoiced that the power of the Catholic Church was about to be broken forever.
That, of course, did not happen. In fact, the Catholic Church has now more adherents across the globe than it ever had. Those famous observations of Lord Macaulay’s – a strong advocate of “progress” and no lover of what he saw as benighted papal resistance to it – may be re-iterated here: “There is not, and there never was on this earth, a work of human policy so deserving of examination as the Roman Catholic Church. … No other institution is left standing which carries the mind back to the times when the smoke of sacrifice rose from the Parthenon, and when camelopards and tigers bounded in the Flavian amphitheatre. The proudest royal houses are but of yesterday, when compared with the line of the Supreme Pontiffs. That line we trace back in an unbroken series, from the Pope who crowned Napoleon in the nineteenth century to the Pope who crowned Pepin in the eight … She saw the commencement of all the governments and of all the ecclesiastical establishments that now exist in the world; and we feel no assurance that she is not destined to see the end of them all. She was great and respected before the Saxon had set foot in Britain, before the Frank had passed the Rhine, when Grecian eloquence still flourished at Antioch, when idols were still worshipped in the temple at Mecca. And she may still exist in undiminished vigour when some traveller from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul’s”.
What Nero failed to do in the first century, and Stalin in the twentieth, will not be done by anyone here in the twenty-first. We who are called anew by the Lord this August to make disciples of our students must respond with ever greater faith, courage and energy, in the utter conviction that Christ is with us always (cf. Mt 28:20); that, therefore, “the gates of hell will not prevail (ib. 16:18)”.
LUX EDMUNDI: JULY, 2018
REFLECTION ON THE CATHOLIC SCHOOL - TOWARDS A FAITH-BASED VISION OF A FAITH-BASED SCHOOL:
First, last and always, the Catholic school is about Christ.
Christ is the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity, the Word of God made flesh. He both is, and proclaims, the euangelion, the Good News, the Gospel, to all peoples and for all times.
Christ is the eikon of the invisible God and the first-born of all creation (Col 1:15). He shows us what God is like and he also shows us what we ourselves are meant to be like as children of God.
Christ is God’s paradigm and plan for each and every human person who is, who was or ever will be. He is the means to, and the measure of, humanity at its most complete and most authentic. It is only through, with and in Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit, that we become truly, fully and authentically human, truly, fully and authentically ourselves, truly, fully and authentically the child of God each of us is meant to be.
The definitive purpose of the Catholic school is the formation of the young in Christ. All that a Catholic school is, and all that it does, its religious worship and instruction, its curricular, pastoral and its co- and extra-curricular activities, serve that end. In a manner of speaking, Christ is the real curriculum in a Catholic school, the programme, the course, the subject, the lesson, taught in, and through, the entire life of the school.
The Catholic school teaches Christ to the young with “a disciple’s tongue” (Is 50:4), i.e., The tongue of a speaker who is first a listener, of a teacher who is first a learner, of a leader who is first a follower, who hands on the Faith given to her/him by way of Scripture, Tradition and the Magisterium of the Church.
In the Catholic school, authority is always given, not for power, but for service, and the definitive representation of the exercise of authority in a Catholic school, the example that must be followed by all set over others there-in, is that of Christ washing the feet of his apostles (cf. Jn 13:12-15).
The Church itself is always both docens and discens, both “teaching” and “learning”, and, in the things that matter most, in all to do with the love of God and of the neighbour, the teacher is always a condiscipulus, a “co-disciple”, with the students, a fellow-pupil with them at the feet of Christ.
“[W]hoever causes one of these little ones who have faith in me to falter, it is better for him to have a millstone, of the kind turned by an ass, hung about his neck, and to be drowned in the depth of the sea (Mt 18:5-6)”[Though the phrase “little ones” embraces others besides them, it includes actual children]
I serve in this Catholic school, at this time, in this capacity, not by chance, but by Providence. From all eternity I have been meant by God to be here. No matter what the circumstances by which I may have arrived here, from all eternity it is here I am meant by God to be, here I am meant to make disciples of those committed to my care, and here, consequently, that I will grow in grace and favour before God and man (cf. Lk 2:52)
The Catholic school must be “primarily, fundamentally, definitively, not about ideas or disciplines or courses, but about people, and not about ideal people or about perfect people or about holy people, but about these people, as they are, right here and right now. [It is] not about some people, but about all people, about the son who strayed and about the son who stayed (Lk 15:11-32), about ‘the people of the land’, about ‘these little ones’ (cf. Mt 18:6). It would be open, inclusive and, if biased at all, would – like Christ himself … – be biased towards the poor, the powerless, the marginalised, the ‘lost’ (Steele, 1995, pp.162-163)”.
The Catholic school is called by Christ to educate the whole person, body, mind, soul: It must “see its fundamental and definitive role as the formation, not of artists or of scientists, not of producers or of consumers, not even of citizens, but, primarily, of people, of people gifted by God and obligated by that giftedness to become, in Christ, their own most authentic selves, at the service of God and the neighbour. … (ibid., p. 163)”.
The Catholic school is a koinonia, a communion, a kind of ecclesia, a community of believers gathered by, and in, Christ to serve the Gospel. It is, so to speak, a “church of the school”, a “scholastic church”, at the service of “the domestic church”, “the church of the home”. The Catholic school must be a real, a living part of the local church, especially in the evangelisation of the community they both serve, and must live and move and have its being (cf. Acts 17:28) as a “cell” of the Body of Christ, the People of God, the Church.
The Catholic school is always on its pilgrim way through time to eternity. It is “ever Christian but always in need of Christianisation, never content with what it is but unceasingly becoming what it is meant to be. The [Catholic] school will be a peregrinus, a ‘pilgrim’, a ‘resident alien’. It will be part of the things that are in time yet faithful witness to the things that matter in eternity. This, precisely, will be the ‘crisis’, the occasion of temptation, decision, judgement, for the [Catholic] school in its often all too earthly, mundane and, even, secular pilgrimage – to balance the urgent claims of the temporal against the ineluctable demands of the eternal; to be, and to teach others to be, both ‘resident’ and ‘alien’, ready for life here and fit for life hereafter … (Steele, 1995, pp. 164-165)”.
Because Christ is always the real Master it serves (cf. Col. 3:24), because he leads it to the heavenly city through the earthly, the Catholic school will be all that it is, and do all that it does - including those things which relate immediately to its specifically secular responsibilities - as perfectly and as is humanly possible. It will do the ordinary but do it extra-ordinarily well. In all the things required of it as a school, therefore, not least in all to do with teaching and learning, it will have no truck with mediocrity, no truce with the sloppy, the slip-shod, the second rate. It will require excellence from all and in all, so that its “light [will] shine before men, that they may see [its] good works and give glory to [the] Father who is in heaven (cf. Mt 5:16)”.
The Catholic school must protect and promote its Catholicity, zealously, unceasingly, now more than ever, but not to the point of self-absorption. “It will be other-orientated, concerned with and for the service of God and the neighbour. It will seek ‘to preach the good news to the poor … to proclaim release to the captives … to set at liberty those who are oppressed … (Lk 4:18-19)’. It will be at the service of that truth which, because it is grounded and vindicated in the absolute reality of ‘I am who I am (Ex 3:14)‘, offers to humanity liberation from the threat of ultimate unreality, unrealisation, annihilation (cf. Jn 8:32). In the [Catholic] school, education will be an Exodus, a going up to the fullness of life (cf. Jn 10:10), an enfranchisement in respect of human culture, an empowerment in respect of all that produces and protects the dignity of the of the children of the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ (ibid. pp. 165-166)”.
I can neither see the Catholic school as it is, nor serve it as I must, if I do not pray unceasingly for God’s help.
MORNING: “Dearest Jesus, teach me to be generous. Teach me to love and serve you as you deserve. To give, and not to count the cost; to fight and not to heed the wounds; to toil and not to seek for rest; to labour and to look for no reward, save that of knowing that I do thy will. Amen”. [Ignatius of Loyola, d. 1556]
NIGHT: “Thanks be to Thee, my Lord Jesus Christ, for all the benefits I have received from Thee this day; for all the pains Thou hast borne for me. O most merciful redeemer, friend and brother, may I know Thee more clearly, love Thee more dearly and follow Thee more nearly, day by day. Amen”[Richard of Chichester, d. 1253]
MORNING, NOON AND NIGHT: “Lord, I believe: Help my unbelief (Mk 9:24)”.
REFLECTION ON THE CATHOLIC SCHOOL - TOWARDS A FAITH-BASED VISION OF A FAITH-BASED SCHOOL:
First, last and always, the Catholic school is about Christ.
Christ is the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity, the Word of God made flesh. He both is, and proclaims, the euangelion, the Good News, the Gospel, to all peoples and for all times.
Christ is the eikon of the invisible God and the first-born of all creation (Col 1:15). He shows us what God is like and he also shows us what we ourselves are meant to be like as children of God.
Christ is God’s paradigm and plan for each and every human person who is, who was or ever will be. He is the means to, and the measure of, humanity at its most complete and most authentic. It is only through, with and in Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit, that we become truly, fully and authentically human, truly, fully and authentically ourselves, truly, fully and authentically the child of God each of us is meant to be.
The definitive purpose of the Catholic school is the formation of the young in Christ. All that a Catholic school is, and all that it does, its religious worship and instruction, its curricular, pastoral and its co- and extra-curricular activities, serve that end. In a manner of speaking, Christ is the real curriculum in a Catholic school, the programme, the course, the subject, the lesson, taught in, and through, the entire life of the school.
The Catholic school teaches Christ to the young with “a disciple’s tongue” (Is 50:4), i.e., The tongue of a speaker who is first a listener, of a teacher who is first a learner, of a leader who is first a follower, who hands on the Faith given to her/him by way of Scripture, Tradition and the Magisterium of the Church.
In the Catholic school, authority is always given, not for power, but for service, and the definitive representation of the exercise of authority in a Catholic school, the example that must be followed by all set over others there-in, is that of Christ washing the feet of his apostles (cf. Jn 13:12-15).
The Church itself is always both docens and discens, both “teaching” and “learning”, and, in the things that matter most, in all to do with the love of God and of the neighbour, the teacher is always a condiscipulus, a “co-disciple”, with the students, a fellow-pupil with them at the feet of Christ.
“[W]hoever causes one of these little ones who have faith in me to falter, it is better for him to have a millstone, of the kind turned by an ass, hung about his neck, and to be drowned in the depth of the sea (Mt 18:5-6)”[Though the phrase “little ones” embraces others besides them, it includes actual children]
I serve in this Catholic school, at this time, in this capacity, not by chance, but by Providence. From all eternity I have been meant by God to be here. No matter what the circumstances by which I may have arrived here, from all eternity it is here I am meant by God to be, here I am meant to make disciples of those committed to my care, and here, consequently, that I will grow in grace and favour before God and man (cf. Lk 2:52)
The Catholic school must be “primarily, fundamentally, definitively, not about ideas or disciplines or courses, but about people, and not about ideal people or about perfect people or about holy people, but about these people, as they are, right here and right now. [It is] not about some people, but about all people, about the son who strayed and about the son who stayed (Lk 15:11-32), about ‘the people of the land’, about ‘these little ones’ (cf. Mt 18:6). It would be open, inclusive and, if biased at all, would – like Christ himself … – be biased towards the poor, the powerless, the marginalised, the ‘lost’ (Steele, 1995, pp.162-163)”.
The Catholic school is called by Christ to educate the whole person, body, mind, soul: It must “see its fundamental and definitive role as the formation, not of artists or of scientists, not of producers or of consumers, not even of citizens, but, primarily, of people, of people gifted by God and obligated by that giftedness to become, in Christ, their own most authentic selves, at the service of God and the neighbour. … (ibid., p. 163)”.
The Catholic school is a koinonia, a communion, a kind of ecclesia, a community of believers gathered by, and in, Christ to serve the Gospel. It is, so to speak, a “church of the school”, a “scholastic church”, at the service of “the domestic church”, “the church of the home”. The Catholic school must be a real, a living part of the local church, especially in the evangelisation of the community they both serve, and must live and move and have its being (cf. Acts 17:28) as a “cell” of the Body of Christ, the People of God, the Church.
The Catholic school is always on its pilgrim way through time to eternity. It is “ever Christian but always in need of Christianisation, never content with what it is but unceasingly becoming what it is meant to be. The [Catholic] school will be a peregrinus, a ‘pilgrim’, a ‘resident alien’. It will be part of the things that are in time yet faithful witness to the things that matter in eternity. This, precisely, will be the ‘crisis’, the occasion of temptation, decision, judgement, for the [Catholic] school in its often all too earthly, mundane and, even, secular pilgrimage – to balance the urgent claims of the temporal against the ineluctable demands of the eternal; to be, and to teach others to be, both ‘resident’ and ‘alien’, ready for life here and fit for life hereafter … (Steele, 1995, pp. 164-165)”.
Because Christ is always the real Master it serves (cf. Col. 3:24), because he leads it to the heavenly city through the earthly, the Catholic school will be all that it is, and do all that it does - including those things which relate immediately to its specifically secular responsibilities - as perfectly and as is humanly possible. It will do the ordinary but do it extra-ordinarily well. In all the things required of it as a school, therefore, not least in all to do with teaching and learning, it will have no truck with mediocrity, no truce with the sloppy, the slip-shod, the second rate. It will require excellence from all and in all, so that its “light [will] shine before men, that they may see [its] good works and give glory to [the] Father who is in heaven (cf. Mt 5:16)”.
The Catholic school must protect and promote its Catholicity, zealously, unceasingly, now more than ever, but not to the point of self-absorption. “It will be other-orientated, concerned with and for the service of God and the neighbour. It will seek ‘to preach the good news to the poor … to proclaim release to the captives … to set at liberty those who are oppressed … (Lk 4:18-19)’. It will be at the service of that truth which, because it is grounded and vindicated in the absolute reality of ‘I am who I am (Ex 3:14)‘, offers to humanity liberation from the threat of ultimate unreality, unrealisation, annihilation (cf. Jn 8:32). In the [Catholic] school, education will be an Exodus, a going up to the fullness of life (cf. Jn 10:10), an enfranchisement in respect of human culture, an empowerment in respect of all that produces and protects the dignity of the of the children of the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ (ibid. pp. 165-166)”.
I can neither see the Catholic school as it is, nor serve it as I must, if I do not pray unceasingly for God’s help.
MORNING: “Dearest Jesus, teach me to be generous. Teach me to love and serve you as you deserve. To give, and not to count the cost; to fight and not to heed the wounds; to toil and not to seek for rest; to labour and to look for no reward, save that of knowing that I do thy will. Amen”. [Ignatius of Loyola, d. 1556]
NIGHT: “Thanks be to Thee, my Lord Jesus Christ, for all the benefits I have received from Thee this day; for all the pains Thou hast borne for me. O most merciful redeemer, friend and brother, may I know Thee more clearly, love Thee more dearly and follow Thee more nearly, day by day. Amen”[Richard of Chichester, d. 1253]
MORNING, NOON AND NIGHT: “Lord, I believe: Help my unbelief (Mk 9:24)”.
LUX EDMUNDI: JUNE, 2018
“When I retired as a primary school principal due to serious illness recently, I discovered a silver lining attached to my cancer cloud. As I drove out of the school grounds for the last time on August 30, I felt as if I was coming out of the Catholic closet. For the first time in nearly forty years I could openly admit that I did not believe in God (TheJournal.ie, 21 March, 2018: Accessed 29 May, 2018)”. Our retired colleague – to whom, in the circumstances of a very serious illness, we must extend our very best wishes – indicates that, back in the day, there would have been no question of teachers professing their atheism publicly because, quite simply, to do so could have cost them their jobs.
The boards of management of Catholic schools in the Republic of Ireland are aware that some, at least, of those they employ as teachers – even, perhaps, some they employ as principals – may be Catholic in name only. They may, in fact, be lapsed, agnostic, atheist, perhaps, even, Church-phobic. Catholic school authorities realise that the raison d’etre of the schools they govern is the formation of the young in Christ. They do not need reminding that this objective is all the harder to attain if the very agents on whom the school relies for its attainment have, themselves, little or no belief in Christ. Boards of management and principals of Catholic schools know that, in such circumstances, the integrity of the school qua Catholic is at risk. They may not, however, be at all sure as to how they might prevent this situation arising or how they might address it when it does.
In Ireland today it seems a given in public discourse that, in anything to do with the patronage of schools, the Catholic Church must be ipso facto wrong, anyone who opposes it, ipso facto right. This, really, is bigoted nonsense. There are judgements handed down by Irish and other courts upholding the right of Catholic school authorities to dismiss a teacher whose conduct was deemed contrary to the ethos of the school. Few want things to come to such a pass and, in any event, recourse to the courts is always a last resort. That said, it must be said too, however, that Catholic school authorities can neither surrender their right, nor neglect their duty, to protect and promote the Catholicity of the schools they serve. To do either would be morally and legally wrong.
The board of management of a Catholic school - and, by extension, the principal - has a statutory duty to manage the school on behalf of the patron and, in so doing, to uphold, and to be accountable to the patron for so upholding, the characteristic spirit of the school. Those employed to teach in a Catholic school have rights, of course, but these can hardly include anything like a right to deliberately undermine the Catholic ethos of the school in which they serve, most certainly not in the discharge of their duties in the course of the school day.
This must be stated, in writing - and in clear and unambiguous terms - to each applicant at the outset of every appointment process. Receipt of this statement must be acknowledged, in writing, by each applicant. (For the removal of doubt, what is in question here is not any statement of the candidate’s beliefs, but acknowledgement that s/he has received a statement of the school’s beliefs and, consequently, of what the board expects of its employees in respect of school ethos).
There is much more boards and principals must do to protect and promote the Catholic ethos of the school they serve. However, if they are to do what they must in this particular regard, and do it fairly and effectively, they urgently need patrons/trustees (collectively, it may be) to provide them with clear, well-researched, expertly-drafted and regularly up-dated guidelines on how to manage this most crucial, most complex, most vexed, aspect of school governance, management and leadership.
“When I retired as a primary school principal due to serious illness recently, I discovered a silver lining attached to my cancer cloud. As I drove out of the school grounds for the last time on August 30, I felt as if I was coming out of the Catholic closet. For the first time in nearly forty years I could openly admit that I did not believe in God (TheJournal.ie, 21 March, 2018: Accessed 29 May, 2018)”. Our retired colleague – to whom, in the circumstances of a very serious illness, we must extend our very best wishes – indicates that, back in the day, there would have been no question of teachers professing their atheism publicly because, quite simply, to do so could have cost them their jobs.
The boards of management of Catholic schools in the Republic of Ireland are aware that some, at least, of those they employ as teachers – even, perhaps, some they employ as principals – may be Catholic in name only. They may, in fact, be lapsed, agnostic, atheist, perhaps, even, Church-phobic. Catholic school authorities realise that the raison d’etre of the schools they govern is the formation of the young in Christ. They do not need reminding that this objective is all the harder to attain if the very agents on whom the school relies for its attainment have, themselves, little or no belief in Christ. Boards of management and principals of Catholic schools know that, in such circumstances, the integrity of the school qua Catholic is at risk. They may not, however, be at all sure as to how they might prevent this situation arising or how they might address it when it does.
In Ireland today it seems a given in public discourse that, in anything to do with the patronage of schools, the Catholic Church must be ipso facto wrong, anyone who opposes it, ipso facto right. This, really, is bigoted nonsense. There are judgements handed down by Irish and other courts upholding the right of Catholic school authorities to dismiss a teacher whose conduct was deemed contrary to the ethos of the school. Few want things to come to such a pass and, in any event, recourse to the courts is always a last resort. That said, it must be said too, however, that Catholic school authorities can neither surrender their right, nor neglect their duty, to protect and promote the Catholicity of the schools they serve. To do either would be morally and legally wrong.
The board of management of a Catholic school - and, by extension, the principal - has a statutory duty to manage the school on behalf of the patron and, in so doing, to uphold, and to be accountable to the patron for so upholding, the characteristic spirit of the school. Those employed to teach in a Catholic school have rights, of course, but these can hardly include anything like a right to deliberately undermine the Catholic ethos of the school in which they serve, most certainly not in the discharge of their duties in the course of the school day.
This must be stated, in writing - and in clear and unambiguous terms - to each applicant at the outset of every appointment process. Receipt of this statement must be acknowledged, in writing, by each applicant. (For the removal of doubt, what is in question here is not any statement of the candidate’s beliefs, but acknowledgement that s/he has received a statement of the school’s beliefs and, consequently, of what the board expects of its employees in respect of school ethos).
There is much more boards and principals must do to protect and promote the Catholic ethos of the school they serve. However, if they are to do what they must in this particular regard, and do it fairly and effectively, they urgently need patrons/trustees (collectively, it may be) to provide them with clear, well-researched, expertly-drafted and regularly up-dated guidelines on how to manage this most crucial, most complex, most vexed, aspect of school governance, management and leadership.
LUX EDMUNDI: MEMORIA OF BLESSED EDMUND IGNATIUS RICE: SATURDAY, 5 MAY, 2018
1818 was an annus horribilis for Blessed Edmund Ignatius Rice. His petition for a papal brief allowing the Society of the Presentation, a religious institute of diocesan right (i.e., under the oversight of the local Bishop) become one of papal right (i.e., like the de la Salle Brothers, under a Superior General elected by the Brothers from amongst their own number) was before the Roman authorities. This application had the pro-active support of Archbishop Daniel Murray of Dublin but was bitterly opposed by Dr. Robert Walsh, the new Bishop of Waterford and Lismore, whose appointment and early decisions occasioned vicious in-fighting amongst the priests of the Diocese - in which Edmund Rice sided with the anti-Walsh element. The Bishop’s supporters promptly complained the Founder to Rome as an “impertinent intruder in the affairs of the sanctuary”, who now, brazenly, “is to become a perpetual general of his institute in order to lord it over the priests and bishops”. Worse still - with reference, perhaps, to his motherless daughter, Mary, a “delicate” child - Blessed Edmund, tragically widowed in January, 1789, was further denounced as a “public fornicator”, “from [whose] loins issued many a bastard child, some of which breed and spurious progeny are still living”.
Br. Ignatius was sustained by God in this dark season. His institute continued to grow and that same year saw the opening of a second school in Dublin and the entrance to the Society of James Foley, a nineteen year old from Killarney. In fact, throughout these early years, Blessed Edmund was fortunate in the general calibre of those who joined him in his work for poor boys. These were, for the most part, men of adult years and proven ability in the world, “who”, as Daniel O’Connell observed, “after serving their time in trade [like Blessed Edmund himself] betook themselves to the Religious life, bringing into the general stock from £100 to £200’ (quoted in Keogh, 2008, p. 158)”.
It was, of course, their Catholic faith which impelled such men to dedicate themselves as religious Brothers “to the instruction of poor boys in the principles of religion and Christian piety”. They knew that “he that shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me (Mt 18:5)” and that – as the star in the institutional crests of teaching congregations such as the Ursulines, the De la Salle Brothers and, for over a century, the Irish Christian Brothers, attested - “they that instruct many to justice [shall shine] as stars for all eternity (Dan 12:3)”. They were utterly convinced that to teach the young the Faith was to help their charges towards eternal salvation and to help themselves towards that perfection of charity which was the definitive object of their religious state.
The faith-based motivation of these, our religious antecedents, is an essential constituent of the founding charisms of our schools. It is, therefore, an equally essential constituent of the characteristic spirit of those schools today, something to be studied, understood and accepted as such by all involved in these schools, especially by those who govern, manage and lead them.
However, to survive at all, a charism simply must be lived. To live our founding charism, we must, like our predecessors, strive above all to be holy as our Heavenly Father is holy. As insisted at Vatican II (Lumen Gentium), as repeated now by Pope Francis (Gaudete et Exultate), we are called to the holiness appropriate to our state in life and our mission in the Church. Each of us, therefore, is called to the holiness appropriate to a Catholic educator. The protection and promotion of our founding charism (and of our school ethos) require us to heed this call. In fact, our professional competence may help sustain our schools as schools. Only our personal holiness will sustain them as Catholic.
1818 was an annus horribilis for Blessed Edmund Ignatius Rice. His petition for a papal brief allowing the Society of the Presentation, a religious institute of diocesan right (i.e., under the oversight of the local Bishop) become one of papal right (i.e., like the de la Salle Brothers, under a Superior General elected by the Brothers from amongst their own number) was before the Roman authorities. This application had the pro-active support of Archbishop Daniel Murray of Dublin but was bitterly opposed by Dr. Robert Walsh, the new Bishop of Waterford and Lismore, whose appointment and early decisions occasioned vicious in-fighting amongst the priests of the Diocese - in which Edmund Rice sided with the anti-Walsh element. The Bishop’s supporters promptly complained the Founder to Rome as an “impertinent intruder in the affairs of the sanctuary”, who now, brazenly, “is to become a perpetual general of his institute in order to lord it over the priests and bishops”. Worse still - with reference, perhaps, to his motherless daughter, Mary, a “delicate” child - Blessed Edmund, tragically widowed in January, 1789, was further denounced as a “public fornicator”, “from [whose] loins issued many a bastard child, some of which breed and spurious progeny are still living”.
Br. Ignatius was sustained by God in this dark season. His institute continued to grow and that same year saw the opening of a second school in Dublin and the entrance to the Society of James Foley, a nineteen year old from Killarney. In fact, throughout these early years, Blessed Edmund was fortunate in the general calibre of those who joined him in his work for poor boys. These were, for the most part, men of adult years and proven ability in the world, “who”, as Daniel O’Connell observed, “after serving their time in trade [like Blessed Edmund himself] betook themselves to the Religious life, bringing into the general stock from £100 to £200’ (quoted in Keogh, 2008, p. 158)”.
It was, of course, their Catholic faith which impelled such men to dedicate themselves as religious Brothers “to the instruction of poor boys in the principles of religion and Christian piety”. They knew that “he that shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me (Mt 18:5)” and that – as the star in the institutional crests of teaching congregations such as the Ursulines, the De la Salle Brothers and, for over a century, the Irish Christian Brothers, attested - “they that instruct many to justice [shall shine] as stars for all eternity (Dan 12:3)”. They were utterly convinced that to teach the young the Faith was to help their charges towards eternal salvation and to help themselves towards that perfection of charity which was the definitive object of their religious state.
The faith-based motivation of these, our religious antecedents, is an essential constituent of the founding charisms of our schools. It is, therefore, an equally essential constituent of the characteristic spirit of those schools today, something to be studied, understood and accepted as such by all involved in these schools, especially by those who govern, manage and lead them.
However, to survive at all, a charism simply must be lived. To live our founding charism, we must, like our predecessors, strive above all to be holy as our Heavenly Father is holy. As insisted at Vatican II (Lumen Gentium), as repeated now by Pope Francis (Gaudete et Exultate), we are called to the holiness appropriate to our state in life and our mission in the Church. Each of us, therefore, is called to the holiness appropriate to a Catholic educator. The protection and promotion of our founding charism (and of our school ethos) require us to heed this call. In fact, our professional competence may help sustain our schools as schools. Only our personal holiness will sustain them as Catholic.
LUX EDMUNDI: APRIL, 2018
The XV Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops will take place in Rome in October 2018. The theme for this particular Meeting is: “Young People, the Faith and Vocational Discernment”. A Pre-Synodal Meeting was held recently in Rome. Its Final Document has just issued. It summarises and synthesises the views of the 300 young people who attended this gathering in person and those of a further 15,000 who participated on-line. It presents “the reflections of young people of the 21st century from various religious and cultural backgrounds”. Its purpose “is neither to compose a theological treatise, nor is it to establish new Church teaching. Rather it is a statement reflecting the specific realities, personalities, beliefs and experiences of the young people of the world. This document is destined … to give the Bishops a compass, pointing towards a clearer understanding of young people; a navigational aid for the upcoming Bishops’ Synod … “.
This document should, mutatis mutandis, serve as a “compass”, too, for those who govern, manage and/or lead our Catholic schools in the Republic of Ireland, second-level schools especially, particularly in respect of their efforts to discern and supply the Faith needs of Senior Cycle students
The very fact that young people have been invited to engage in these preparations is itself a lesson in one of the core principles of the New Evangelisation, viz., that those addressed must be regarded, not only as the objects, but as agents of the proclamation of the Gospel. We wonder how best to help our students grow in the Faith. This document says: “Ask them” - something which, if we do at all, we probably do not do as often – nor, maybe, as whole-heartedly - as we should.
Also by way of preparation for the Synod, a report entitled Europe’s Young Adults and Religion was launched in March 2018. It is a joint study conducted by the Benedict XVI Centre for Religion and Society of St. Mary’s University, Twickenham, London, and the Institut Catholique de Paris, under Professor Stephen Bullivant, Head of the Centre at St. Mary’s, and author of the report. He finds inter alia that 24% of young adults in Ireland attend Mass weekly, putting them amongst the most religious of their contemporaries in the countries examined, 90% plus of whom in some places reported themselves as never engaging in a religious activity of any kind whatsoever.
Now, 24% is far from the almost 100% of not all that long ago. It really constitutes little more than a “holy remnant”. However, it is, in all likelihood, a “remnant” to the existence and perseverance of which our Catholic schools have contributed. It prompts the question: If these have listened, may not more do so? Notwithstanding those – including some who should know better – who insist the Church in Ireland is dying and should leave its schools to the state, we may take at least some heart from these findings. They urge us, at the very least, to ”[t]ry again. Fail again. Fail better”.
We may, indeed, feel sometimes that our efforts at evangelisation are futile. We may – without, perhaps, even realising it - settle for being good schools rather than for striving to be truly Catholic schools. That, though, is to abandon our heritage, to betray our trust, to deny Christ, who, every single day of our working lives, commands us to “discipulise” the students in our care. “The gates of hell shall not prevail”. Wherever or however we serve, we must, in conscience, “be steady, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfil your ministry” (II Timothy 4:2). Amen! Amen! Amen!
The XV Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops will take place in Rome in October 2018. The theme for this particular Meeting is: “Young People, the Faith and Vocational Discernment”. A Pre-Synodal Meeting was held recently in Rome. Its Final Document has just issued. It summarises and synthesises the views of the 300 young people who attended this gathering in person and those of a further 15,000 who participated on-line. It presents “the reflections of young people of the 21st century from various religious and cultural backgrounds”. Its purpose “is neither to compose a theological treatise, nor is it to establish new Church teaching. Rather it is a statement reflecting the specific realities, personalities, beliefs and experiences of the young people of the world. This document is destined … to give the Bishops a compass, pointing towards a clearer understanding of young people; a navigational aid for the upcoming Bishops’ Synod … “.
This document should, mutatis mutandis, serve as a “compass”, too, for those who govern, manage and/or lead our Catholic schools in the Republic of Ireland, second-level schools especially, particularly in respect of their efforts to discern and supply the Faith needs of Senior Cycle students
The very fact that young people have been invited to engage in these preparations is itself a lesson in one of the core principles of the New Evangelisation, viz., that those addressed must be regarded, not only as the objects, but as agents of the proclamation of the Gospel. We wonder how best to help our students grow in the Faith. This document says: “Ask them” - something which, if we do at all, we probably do not do as often – nor, maybe, as whole-heartedly - as we should.
Also by way of preparation for the Synod, a report entitled Europe’s Young Adults and Religion was launched in March 2018. It is a joint study conducted by the Benedict XVI Centre for Religion and Society of St. Mary’s University, Twickenham, London, and the Institut Catholique de Paris, under Professor Stephen Bullivant, Head of the Centre at St. Mary’s, and author of the report. He finds inter alia that 24% of young adults in Ireland attend Mass weekly, putting them amongst the most religious of their contemporaries in the countries examined, 90% plus of whom in some places reported themselves as never engaging in a religious activity of any kind whatsoever.
Now, 24% is far from the almost 100% of not all that long ago. It really constitutes little more than a “holy remnant”. However, it is, in all likelihood, a “remnant” to the existence and perseverance of which our Catholic schools have contributed. It prompts the question: If these have listened, may not more do so? Notwithstanding those – including some who should know better – who insist the Church in Ireland is dying and should leave its schools to the state, we may take at least some heart from these findings. They urge us, at the very least, to ”[t]ry again. Fail again. Fail better”.
We may, indeed, feel sometimes that our efforts at evangelisation are futile. We may – without, perhaps, even realising it - settle for being good schools rather than for striving to be truly Catholic schools. That, though, is to abandon our heritage, to betray our trust, to deny Christ, who, every single day of our working lives, commands us to “discipulise” the students in our care. “The gates of hell shall not prevail”. Wherever or however we serve, we must, in conscience, “be steady, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfil your ministry” (II Timothy 4:2). Amen! Amen! Amen!
LUX EDMUNDI: MARCH, 2018
The statutory functions of a board of management of a recognised school in the Republic of Ireland are listed in section 15 of the Education Act, 1998. They include the obligation to “uphold, and be accountable to the patron for so upholding, the characteristic spirit of the school as determined by the cultural, educational, moral, religious, social, linguistic and spiritual values and traditions which inform and are characteristic of the objectives and conduct of the school and at all times to act in accordance with any Act of the Oireachtas or instrument made thereunder, deed, charter, articles of management or other such instrument relating to the establishment or operation of the school (15(2)(b))”. The phrase “characteristic spirit” is one of the senses given for the word “ethos” in the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. We may, therefore, take it that this particular section of the Act indicates the how the Irish courts would be likely to approach any explication of the word “ethos”.
In our statements about our respective schools, we tend to use the word “ethos” is used rather than the phrase “characteristic spirit”. We sometimes use it as if it were a synonym for “ideals”. There is, of course, as the Act indicates, a symbiotic relationship between “ethos”, and “ideals” but they differ in so far as “ideals” are aspirational (how things ought to be) , “ethos”, actual (how things are).
It is, perhaps, in the nature of things, that, even if unwittingly, we tend, first to assume, then to assert, that, with us, every “ought” is an “is”. Though, perhaps, not always justified by their respective originals, the English versions of some of the Roman documents on the Catholic School appear at times to suggest that every Catholic school is, ipso facto, perfect in every respect. Even if we never had the likes of the Ryan Report, we would still realise that, given Original Sin – which, remember, “darkens the understanding, weakens the will, and leaves in us a strong inclination to evil” - there is, at the very least, the possibility of a worm in every one of our roses.
Reflection - and, more importantly, prayer – on the implications of the word “conduct” in section 15(2(b) of the Education Act of 1998 may help us here. Though, to date, the courts have not given us the legal meaning of its use in this context, the fact that the word occurs at all clearly indicates that the “conduct” of a school and “the characteristic spirit”, the “ethos”, of that school have each to do with the other. In this particular context, “conduct” is most likely to mean: “Manage, carry on a business, transaction, process, etc. (SOED)”. It would follow, therefore, that how the Board, the Principal, the Staff, discharge their respective functions under the Act, how they adhere to the “values” set out in any Deed of Trust, articles of management, Charter, Missions Statement or iteration of the founding charism of the school, will be influenced by the “characteristic spirit”, the “ethos”, of the school. Equally, though, how they “conduct” the school influences its “characteristic spirit”, its “ethos”. The “conduct” of the school is, in fact, a necessary constituent of its “characteristic spirit”, its “ethos”. Thus, in the absence of objective, empirical investigation into its “conduct”, no school can rightly know, or claim to know, its own “characteristic spirit”, its “ethos”.
Self-evaluation is strongly urged on all schools in the Republic today. It is the process which commences and drives all others designed to ensure that a school is fit for purpose. Self-evaluation must embrace the “conduct” of the school. Lent is the time par excellence for self-evaluation; the time to analyse the “conduct” of the school so as to learn what its “ethos”, its “characteristic spirit”, really is; to establish, indeed, whether it is, both as school and as Catholic, truly fit for purpose.
The statutory functions of a board of management of a recognised school in the Republic of Ireland are listed in section 15 of the Education Act, 1998. They include the obligation to “uphold, and be accountable to the patron for so upholding, the characteristic spirit of the school as determined by the cultural, educational, moral, religious, social, linguistic and spiritual values and traditions which inform and are characteristic of the objectives and conduct of the school and at all times to act in accordance with any Act of the Oireachtas or instrument made thereunder, deed, charter, articles of management or other such instrument relating to the establishment or operation of the school (15(2)(b))”. The phrase “characteristic spirit” is one of the senses given for the word “ethos” in the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. We may, therefore, take it that this particular section of the Act indicates the how the Irish courts would be likely to approach any explication of the word “ethos”.
In our statements about our respective schools, we tend to use the word “ethos” is used rather than the phrase “characteristic spirit”. We sometimes use it as if it were a synonym for “ideals”. There is, of course, as the Act indicates, a symbiotic relationship between “ethos”, and “ideals” but they differ in so far as “ideals” are aspirational (how things ought to be) , “ethos”, actual (how things are).
It is, perhaps, in the nature of things, that, even if unwittingly, we tend, first to assume, then to assert, that, with us, every “ought” is an “is”. Though, perhaps, not always justified by their respective originals, the English versions of some of the Roman documents on the Catholic School appear at times to suggest that every Catholic school is, ipso facto, perfect in every respect. Even if we never had the likes of the Ryan Report, we would still realise that, given Original Sin – which, remember, “darkens the understanding, weakens the will, and leaves in us a strong inclination to evil” - there is, at the very least, the possibility of a worm in every one of our roses.
Reflection - and, more importantly, prayer – on the implications of the word “conduct” in section 15(2(b) of the Education Act of 1998 may help us here. Though, to date, the courts have not given us the legal meaning of its use in this context, the fact that the word occurs at all clearly indicates that the “conduct” of a school and “the characteristic spirit”, the “ethos”, of that school have each to do with the other. In this particular context, “conduct” is most likely to mean: “Manage, carry on a business, transaction, process, etc. (SOED)”. It would follow, therefore, that how the Board, the Principal, the Staff, discharge their respective functions under the Act, how they adhere to the “values” set out in any Deed of Trust, articles of management, Charter, Missions Statement or iteration of the founding charism of the school, will be influenced by the “characteristic spirit”, the “ethos”, of the school. Equally, though, how they “conduct” the school influences its “characteristic spirit”, its “ethos”. The “conduct” of the school is, in fact, a necessary constituent of its “characteristic spirit”, its “ethos”. Thus, in the absence of objective, empirical investigation into its “conduct”, no school can rightly know, or claim to know, its own “characteristic spirit”, its “ethos”.
Self-evaluation is strongly urged on all schools in the Republic today. It is the process which commences and drives all others designed to ensure that a school is fit for purpose. Self-evaluation must embrace the “conduct” of the school. Lent is the time par excellence for self-evaluation; the time to analyse the “conduct” of the school so as to learn what its “ethos”, its “characteristic spirit”, really is; to establish, indeed, whether it is, both as school and as Catholic, truly fit for purpose.
LUX EDMUNDI: REFLECTION: FEBRUARY, 2018: LENT
Tomorrow, Wednesday, 14th February, 2018, is Ash Wednesday, the first day of the Liturgical Season of Lent. Over the next forty days, by means of prayer, fasting and alms-deeds, the People of God prepares to celebrate the Paschal Mystery of the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Christ Jesus in its “re-presentation” in the Easter Triduum. These days are given us that, in the power of the Spirit, we might box again our inner compass, take our life bearings afresh from Christ, turn our entire lives back towards the Father. This is “the acceptable time (II Corinthians)”, the time to repent of our refusals, big and small, to love God above all for his own sake and the neighbour as ourselves for the love of God. This is the time to pray over and over again: “Have mercy on me, O God, according to thy steadfast love; according to thy abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions (Psalm 50:1)”.
The Parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke15:11-32) is an especially apt focus for prayer and meditation in Lent when, at every turn, the liturgy urges us to come back to God. Come back from where, though? The Prodigal went “into a far country (ib 13)”. Traditional exegesis suggested that this was, in fact, the “regio dissimilitudinis”, “the land of unlikeness”. By this they meant the circumstances in which, in its desire to be god-like, to be the centre and the circumference of its own being, the human heart “idolises” itself, worshipping a concept of itself that is, in fact, a cartoon, a caricature, a distortion, a hideous disfigurement of that image and likeness of Christ in which each of us was created and in which alone we can be re-created as our own most authentic, complete and fulfilled selves.
The masters of the spiritual life insist that, on the way to God, we either go forwards or backwards. We can never stop, never take time out. We end each day of our lives either nearer to God or further from him, either more like Christ or less. These masters also recommend that we regularly consider whether we have moved nearer to, or further from, God; whether we have become more Christ-like or less. Lent is the time par excellence for a process of discernment of this kind.
In the Apology, Plato reports Socrates telling the Athenian judges that “the unexamined life is not worth living”; that, in effect, he does not want them to spare his life if that were to mean that he would have to stop philosophising, stop that unending questioning by which alone the human mind can come to the ultimate truth at the heart of things. Surely amongst the most unexamined of unexamined lives – and, therefore, in Socratic terms, at least, amongst the most worthless - would be that of her/him who purports to teach the young how to live, never reflecting themselves on the What, the Why, the Wherefore, of life. Teachers should be above all others, therefore, “reflective practitioners” and there is never a better time to start reflecting than now.
For those of us who serve in faith-based schools the very ultimate in unexaminedness – the very ultimate, therefore, in worthlessness – would be to give little if any thought to the faith on which the school is based. There is some evidence to suggest that our knowledge of, and, more importantly, our commitment to, the faith publicly espoused by Catholic schools may be neither as deep nor as strong as it should be. Unbelief of any kind amongst teachers, leaders, managers, governors, trustees, patrons, constitutes the single most dangerous threat to Catholic education in Ireland. I can answer only for myself, but answer I must, and it would be of signal benefit to faith in our schools if, this Lent, I took my courage in my hands, examined my conscience, and came clean on this with God.
Tomorrow, Wednesday, 14th February, 2018, is Ash Wednesday, the first day of the Liturgical Season of Lent. Over the next forty days, by means of prayer, fasting and alms-deeds, the People of God prepares to celebrate the Paschal Mystery of the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Christ Jesus in its “re-presentation” in the Easter Triduum. These days are given us that, in the power of the Spirit, we might box again our inner compass, take our life bearings afresh from Christ, turn our entire lives back towards the Father. This is “the acceptable time (II Corinthians)”, the time to repent of our refusals, big and small, to love God above all for his own sake and the neighbour as ourselves for the love of God. This is the time to pray over and over again: “Have mercy on me, O God, according to thy steadfast love; according to thy abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions (Psalm 50:1)”.
The Parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke15:11-32) is an especially apt focus for prayer and meditation in Lent when, at every turn, the liturgy urges us to come back to God. Come back from where, though? The Prodigal went “into a far country (ib 13)”. Traditional exegesis suggested that this was, in fact, the “regio dissimilitudinis”, “the land of unlikeness”. By this they meant the circumstances in which, in its desire to be god-like, to be the centre and the circumference of its own being, the human heart “idolises” itself, worshipping a concept of itself that is, in fact, a cartoon, a caricature, a distortion, a hideous disfigurement of that image and likeness of Christ in which each of us was created and in which alone we can be re-created as our own most authentic, complete and fulfilled selves.
The masters of the spiritual life insist that, on the way to God, we either go forwards or backwards. We can never stop, never take time out. We end each day of our lives either nearer to God or further from him, either more like Christ or less. These masters also recommend that we regularly consider whether we have moved nearer to, or further from, God; whether we have become more Christ-like or less. Lent is the time par excellence for a process of discernment of this kind.
In the Apology, Plato reports Socrates telling the Athenian judges that “the unexamined life is not worth living”; that, in effect, he does not want them to spare his life if that were to mean that he would have to stop philosophising, stop that unending questioning by which alone the human mind can come to the ultimate truth at the heart of things. Surely amongst the most unexamined of unexamined lives – and, therefore, in Socratic terms, at least, amongst the most worthless - would be that of her/him who purports to teach the young how to live, never reflecting themselves on the What, the Why, the Wherefore, of life. Teachers should be above all others, therefore, “reflective practitioners” and there is never a better time to start reflecting than now.
For those of us who serve in faith-based schools the very ultimate in unexaminedness – the very ultimate, therefore, in worthlessness – would be to give little if any thought to the faith on which the school is based. There is some evidence to suggest that our knowledge of, and, more importantly, our commitment to, the faith publicly espoused by Catholic schools may be neither as deep nor as strong as it should be. Unbelief of any kind amongst teachers, leaders, managers, governors, trustees, patrons, constitutes the single most dangerous threat to Catholic education in Ireland. I can answer only for myself, but answer I must, and it would be of signal benefit to faith in our schools if, this Lent, I took my courage in my hands, examined my conscience, and came clean on this with God.
LUX EDMUNDI: THE FEAST OF THE PRESENTATION OF THE LORD: 02-02-18
Friday, 2nd February, 2018 is the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord in the Temple, the patronal feast of Lux Edmundi. In the Tridentine Rite, it is the Feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It is also known as Candlemas, when candles are blessed and carried by the faithful in procession, celebrating the Holy Infant as “a light for the revelation of the Gentiles (Luke 2:32)”.
This is, besides, the World Day for Consecrated Life. Inaugurated by Pope St. John Paul II in 1997, this Day “is intended to help the Church to esteem ever more greatly the witness of those persons who have chosen to follow Christ by means of the practice of the evangelical counsels and, at the same time, is intended as a suitable occasion for consecrated persons to renew their commitment and rekindle the fervour which should inspire their offering of themselves to the Lord”.
The evangelical counsels are Poverty, Chastity and Obedience. They are evangelical because they are rooted in the evangelium, the Good News, the Gospel, proclaimed in, and by, Christ Jesus. They are counsels because, whereas observance of the Ten Commandments is obligatory, observance of the Counsels is advisory only. In the traditional language of Ascetic and Mystical Theology, we must keep the Commandments if we are to be saved, keep the Counsels if we would be perfect.
For all involved in Catholic education, this will be a day of reflection on, and celebration of, those religious who committed themselves to the service of youth for the sake of the Gospel in the apostolate of the school, of those, especially, who gave all that they had and all that they were to founding the many and various congregations of men and women dedicated to the instruction of the young, especially the poor, “in the principles of religion and Christian piety”. We owe these founders our deep and abiding respect and we owe their followers, the religious men and women who preceded us in the schools, our highest regard, our enduring loyalty and, above all, our emulation.
One of the great insights of Lumen Gentium, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, formally promulgated at Vatican II on 21st November, 1964 – on, indeed, the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the Temple – was that the Call to Holiness is universal; that “all Christians in any walk of life are called to the fullness of Christian life and to the perfection of love (paragraph 40)”. In effect, in virtue of our baptism, each one of us is directly called by God to be holy as he is holy.
We become holy by observing the will of God. That is expressed most succinctly and most authoritatively in the Two-fold Law of Charity which requires us to love God above all for his own sake and to love the neighbour as ourselves for the love of God. We must live this Great Commandment in the state of life, and in the concrete circumstances in which the Lord has set us. The “stuff” of our everyday lives, therefore, is the “stuff” of our sanctification, the means by which the Holy Spirit will make each of us perfect in love, the most exact “icon” of Christ that we can be, the most complete and authentic version of ourselves possible.
We are what we are by the dispositions of Divine Providence. That we work in Catholic education is part of God’s plan for us from all eternity. The school is for us “the house of God”, “the Gate of Heaven”; the place where we meet God and the neighbour each and every day; where, by serving them, we climb ever higher towards our true homeland; where we become fully, truly, “us”.
God, though, never forces anyone. He stands at the door and knocks. It is for each of us to open to him or not. May each of us intentionally (re)open our hearts to Christ on this feast of Consecration.
Friday, 2nd February, 2018 is the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord in the Temple, the patronal feast of Lux Edmundi. In the Tridentine Rite, it is the Feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It is also known as Candlemas, when candles are blessed and carried by the faithful in procession, celebrating the Holy Infant as “a light for the revelation of the Gentiles (Luke 2:32)”.
This is, besides, the World Day for Consecrated Life. Inaugurated by Pope St. John Paul II in 1997, this Day “is intended to help the Church to esteem ever more greatly the witness of those persons who have chosen to follow Christ by means of the practice of the evangelical counsels and, at the same time, is intended as a suitable occasion for consecrated persons to renew their commitment and rekindle the fervour which should inspire their offering of themselves to the Lord”.
The evangelical counsels are Poverty, Chastity and Obedience. They are evangelical because they are rooted in the evangelium, the Good News, the Gospel, proclaimed in, and by, Christ Jesus. They are counsels because, whereas observance of the Ten Commandments is obligatory, observance of the Counsels is advisory only. In the traditional language of Ascetic and Mystical Theology, we must keep the Commandments if we are to be saved, keep the Counsels if we would be perfect.
For all involved in Catholic education, this will be a day of reflection on, and celebration of, those religious who committed themselves to the service of youth for the sake of the Gospel in the apostolate of the school, of those, especially, who gave all that they had and all that they were to founding the many and various congregations of men and women dedicated to the instruction of the young, especially the poor, “in the principles of religion and Christian piety”. We owe these founders our deep and abiding respect and we owe their followers, the religious men and women who preceded us in the schools, our highest regard, our enduring loyalty and, above all, our emulation.
One of the great insights of Lumen Gentium, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, formally promulgated at Vatican II on 21st November, 1964 – on, indeed, the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the Temple – was that the Call to Holiness is universal; that “all Christians in any walk of life are called to the fullness of Christian life and to the perfection of love (paragraph 40)”. In effect, in virtue of our baptism, each one of us is directly called by God to be holy as he is holy.
We become holy by observing the will of God. That is expressed most succinctly and most authoritatively in the Two-fold Law of Charity which requires us to love God above all for his own sake and to love the neighbour as ourselves for the love of God. We must live this Great Commandment in the state of life, and in the concrete circumstances in which the Lord has set us. The “stuff” of our everyday lives, therefore, is the “stuff” of our sanctification, the means by which the Holy Spirit will make each of us perfect in love, the most exact “icon” of Christ that we can be, the most complete and authentic version of ourselves possible.
We are what we are by the dispositions of Divine Providence. That we work in Catholic education is part of God’s plan for us from all eternity. The school is for us “the house of God”, “the Gate of Heaven”; the place where we meet God and the neighbour each and every day; where, by serving them, we climb ever higher towards our true homeland; where we become fully, truly, “us”.
God, though, never forces anyone. He stands at the door and knocks. It is for each of us to open to him or not. May each of us intentionally (re)open our hearts to Christ on this feast of Consecration.
LUX EDMUNDI: REFLECTION: JANUARY, 2018
Catholic Schools Week 2018 runs from Sunday, 28th January, to Saturday, 3rd February. The theme this year - “The Catholic School: Called to be a Family of Families” – looks forward to the World Meeting of Families in Dublin next August. The website of Catholic Schools Partnership (www.catholicschools.ie), and that of the World Meeting of Families (www.worldmeeting2018.ie), provide resources to help schools mark CSW and in such a way as to help them prepare for WMOF2018 with ever-increasing understanding and, it may be hoped, ever-growing conviction.
Bunreacht na hÉireann guarantees the rights of the Family (article 41), especially in relation to the education of its children (article 42). Our Constitution acknowledges, in effect, that primacy in all to do with the rearing of children lies with the Family and guarantees the rights of parents in that regard. Given that, in 1937, the year we adopted our Bunreacht, totalitarian regimes in Europe and beyond were insisting on the supremacy of the State in every aspect of the life of the citizen, this emphasis in our basic law on the prior rights of families, not least in the all-important sphere of education, is noteworthy. Equally noteworthy, though, is the fact that the State did so little thereafter to help parents exercise those rights in practice. In Education and the Law (2nd ed., 2012), Glendenning writes: “While the family/parents are at the apex of the constitutional structures upholding education, in practice they were excluded from responsibility for the direction of schools until 1975 when voluntary boards of management were introduced in primary schools (p. 94)”.
It is generally agreed that, in both thought and expression, these particular articles were influenced by the social doctrine of the Catholic Church, which, of course, is absolutely emphatic on the parent as the primary educator. However, like the State, the Church in Ireland was dilatory, to say the least, in according to Catholic parents any real opportunity to speak for themselves in relation to Catholic schools. In fact, the Hierarchy saw itself as the exclusive spokesperson for Catholic parents in virtually everything to do with the education of those parents’ children and took a very dim view indeed of any parent who did anything other than accept its instructions as right, final and binding.
Just over a year ago, the Minister for Education and Skills published the General Scheme of an Education (Parent and Student Charter) Bill, 2016. The National Parents’ Council, primary and post-primary, immediately welcomed the Bill. The fact that, 19 years after the enactment, 18 after the commencement, of s. 28 of the Education Act of 1998, parents will, finally, be given the necessary procedures by means of which they may exercise their statutory right to pursue a grievance with a school, may have contributed to the warmth of this welcome. School managerial authorities and teacher unions would seem to be reserving their respective positions. People at school level and their different professional associations have been equally reserved on this, up to now at least.
But, in its broad objectives, this Bill seems in accord with civil and canon law. As citizens and public servants, as patrons, trustees, governors, managers, leaders and staff in Catholic schools, we might, therefore, regard it, not just as a challenge, but as an opportunity. In Ireland, as in the West generally, the family - the basic cell of society, the domestic church, the aboriginal seminary – is, right now, more needed and more threatened than ever. We might, therefore, commit ourselves this CSW to making our schools, really, unmistakably, family-friendly. This, surely, would be an eminently useful service to both Church and State, a truly fitting memorial to WMOF2018.
Catholic Schools Week 2018 runs from Sunday, 28th January, to Saturday, 3rd February. The theme this year - “The Catholic School: Called to be a Family of Families” – looks forward to the World Meeting of Families in Dublin next August. The website of Catholic Schools Partnership (www.catholicschools.ie), and that of the World Meeting of Families (www.worldmeeting2018.ie), provide resources to help schools mark CSW and in such a way as to help them prepare for WMOF2018 with ever-increasing understanding and, it may be hoped, ever-growing conviction.
Bunreacht na hÉireann guarantees the rights of the Family (article 41), especially in relation to the education of its children (article 42). Our Constitution acknowledges, in effect, that primacy in all to do with the rearing of children lies with the Family and guarantees the rights of parents in that regard. Given that, in 1937, the year we adopted our Bunreacht, totalitarian regimes in Europe and beyond were insisting on the supremacy of the State in every aspect of the life of the citizen, this emphasis in our basic law on the prior rights of families, not least in the all-important sphere of education, is noteworthy. Equally noteworthy, though, is the fact that the State did so little thereafter to help parents exercise those rights in practice. In Education and the Law (2nd ed., 2012), Glendenning writes: “While the family/parents are at the apex of the constitutional structures upholding education, in practice they were excluded from responsibility for the direction of schools until 1975 when voluntary boards of management were introduced in primary schools (p. 94)”.
It is generally agreed that, in both thought and expression, these particular articles were influenced by the social doctrine of the Catholic Church, which, of course, is absolutely emphatic on the parent as the primary educator. However, like the State, the Church in Ireland was dilatory, to say the least, in according to Catholic parents any real opportunity to speak for themselves in relation to Catholic schools. In fact, the Hierarchy saw itself as the exclusive spokesperson for Catholic parents in virtually everything to do with the education of those parents’ children and took a very dim view indeed of any parent who did anything other than accept its instructions as right, final and binding.
Just over a year ago, the Minister for Education and Skills published the General Scheme of an Education (Parent and Student Charter) Bill, 2016. The National Parents’ Council, primary and post-primary, immediately welcomed the Bill. The fact that, 19 years after the enactment, 18 after the commencement, of s. 28 of the Education Act of 1998, parents will, finally, be given the necessary procedures by means of which they may exercise their statutory right to pursue a grievance with a school, may have contributed to the warmth of this welcome. School managerial authorities and teacher unions would seem to be reserving their respective positions. People at school level and their different professional associations have been equally reserved on this, up to now at least.
But, in its broad objectives, this Bill seems in accord with civil and canon law. As citizens and public servants, as patrons, trustees, governors, managers, leaders and staff in Catholic schools, we might, therefore, regard it, not just as a challenge, but as an opportunity. In Ireland, as in the West generally, the family - the basic cell of society, the domestic church, the aboriginal seminary – is, right now, more needed and more threatened than ever. We might, therefore, commit ourselves this CSW to making our schools, really, unmistakably, family-friendly. This, surely, would be an eminently useful service to both Church and State, a truly fitting memorial to WMOF2018.
LUX EDMUNDI: REFLECTION: DECEMBER 2017
On Monday, 25th December, 2017, we will celebrate the Solemnity of the Nativity of the Lord. We will have prepared throughout Advent to approach Christmas with ever-deepening faith and devotion. By means of the Crib, the Nativity Play, the Carols, we will have done all we can to focus attention on the Holy Infant whose coming alone gives meaning to this blessed season. By means of collections and donations for those in need, we will have welcomed Christ by being Christian.
Even non-believers sense that Christmas is a family occasion. As we get ready to host WMOF2018, this Christmas may be deemed an especially privileged time to think and pray on the Joy of Love, on the inexhaustible richness and sheer good sense of Catholic teaching on Marriage and the Family.
Christ was born into a family but into an extended family, with the multiplication and intensification of family links, rights and duties this entails. This latter reality may, in fact, be lost in the more or less standard arrangement of our Cribs. There we see – rightly - the Infant Jesus, Mary and Joseph, the Shepherds, the Angels, the ox and the ass, but no relatives whatsoever of the Holy Family. Modern scholarship insists that it would have been inconceivable (a) that Joseph would not have been accommodated by others “of the house and family of David (cf. Luke 2:4)” on any visit to his ancestral city of Bethlehem and (b) that, in her own condition, Mary would not have had female relatives with practical skills in midwifery to help her with the birth of her first – and only - child.
Experts suggest that we may have misunderstood and mistranslated kataluma, the word used at Luke 2:7 and traditionally rendered in English as “inn”. They argue that, in Luke, this word means, not an inn in the sense of a lodging house or a caravanserai of some kind, but an upper room, such as that used for the Last Supper (see Luke 22:11), that part of the traditional Palestinian village home of the time where a householder would accommodate guests. For whatever reason – maybe because people senior to Joseph in the family hierarchy were already in residence – there was no room for Mary and Joseph in that upper room. Instead, space was given them in the lower room, where, it seems, much of the domestic business of the day was conducted, and where, at night, livestock – such as the precious family ox or ass - would be put for safe-keeping (Hence the “manger”). More, perhaps, than we had ever thought, the birth of Christ was a huge family occasion, one that, rightly and appropriately, we, too, regard and celebrate as such.
We are, of course, properly aware that modern households come in all shapes and sizes and none of us involved in schools would be so insensitive to this sociological reality as to mark Christmas in a way that gave hurt – unintended, perhaps, but still all too real - to any child entrusted to our care.
We must, though, be equally aware lest, in our laudable desire to avoid giving offence, we empty Christmas of its religious, Christian and specifically Catholic meaning. We must not – in reality, as Catholic schools, we may not – take commercials as our template for the celebration of the Birth of Christ, allowing “Happy Holidays” and Santa Claus occlude or replace “Happy Christmas” and the Word of God, made flesh in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary and now born of her in Bethlehem.
There is no suggestion here that this balancing of charity and truth is easy. It is, most emphatically, anything but. Still, though, we must find ways and means of thinking, of speaking, and of doing, that help us open our hearts and our schools to people as we find them, without hiding, much less ditching, the Catholic understanding of Marriage and the Family, which is, in fact, an integral part of the Good News proclaimed in, and by, the Holy Infant and, for that reason, the focus of WMOF2018.
(Practices of the Faithful blessed by the Church have an authenticity no scholarship can gainsay).
On Monday, 25th December, 2017, we will celebrate the Solemnity of the Nativity of the Lord. We will have prepared throughout Advent to approach Christmas with ever-deepening faith and devotion. By means of the Crib, the Nativity Play, the Carols, we will have done all we can to focus attention on the Holy Infant whose coming alone gives meaning to this blessed season. By means of collections and donations for those in need, we will have welcomed Christ by being Christian.
Even non-believers sense that Christmas is a family occasion. As we get ready to host WMOF2018, this Christmas may be deemed an especially privileged time to think and pray on the Joy of Love, on the inexhaustible richness and sheer good sense of Catholic teaching on Marriage and the Family.
Christ was born into a family but into an extended family, with the multiplication and intensification of family links, rights and duties this entails. This latter reality may, in fact, be lost in the more or less standard arrangement of our Cribs. There we see – rightly - the Infant Jesus, Mary and Joseph, the Shepherds, the Angels, the ox and the ass, but no relatives whatsoever of the Holy Family. Modern scholarship insists that it would have been inconceivable (a) that Joseph would not have been accommodated by others “of the house and family of David (cf. Luke 2:4)” on any visit to his ancestral city of Bethlehem and (b) that, in her own condition, Mary would not have had female relatives with practical skills in midwifery to help her with the birth of her first – and only - child.
Experts suggest that we may have misunderstood and mistranslated kataluma, the word used at Luke 2:7 and traditionally rendered in English as “inn”. They argue that, in Luke, this word means, not an inn in the sense of a lodging house or a caravanserai of some kind, but an upper room, such as that used for the Last Supper (see Luke 22:11), that part of the traditional Palestinian village home of the time where a householder would accommodate guests. For whatever reason – maybe because people senior to Joseph in the family hierarchy were already in residence – there was no room for Mary and Joseph in that upper room. Instead, space was given them in the lower room, where, it seems, much of the domestic business of the day was conducted, and where, at night, livestock – such as the precious family ox or ass - would be put for safe-keeping (Hence the “manger”). More, perhaps, than we had ever thought, the birth of Christ was a huge family occasion, one that, rightly and appropriately, we, too, regard and celebrate as such.
We are, of course, properly aware that modern households come in all shapes and sizes and none of us involved in schools would be so insensitive to this sociological reality as to mark Christmas in a way that gave hurt – unintended, perhaps, but still all too real - to any child entrusted to our care.
We must, though, be equally aware lest, in our laudable desire to avoid giving offence, we empty Christmas of its religious, Christian and specifically Catholic meaning. We must not – in reality, as Catholic schools, we may not – take commercials as our template for the celebration of the Birth of Christ, allowing “Happy Holidays” and Santa Claus occlude or replace “Happy Christmas” and the Word of God, made flesh in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary and now born of her in Bethlehem.
There is no suggestion here that this balancing of charity and truth is easy. It is, most emphatically, anything but. Still, though, we must find ways and means of thinking, of speaking, and of doing, that help us open our hearts and our schools to people as we find them, without hiding, much less ditching, the Catholic understanding of Marriage and the Family, which is, in fact, an integral part of the Good News proclaimed in, and by, the Holy Infant and, for that reason, the focus of WMOF2018.
(Practices of the Faithful blessed by the Church have an authenticity no scholarship can gainsay).
LUX EDMUNDI: REFLECTION: NOVEMBER, 2017
One segment of the debate on the place of religion in recognised schools in the Republic of Ireland relates to the provision of Article 44.2.4 of Bunreacht na hÉireann which stipulates that: “Legislation providing State aid for schools shall not … be such as to affect prejudicially the right of any child to attend a school receiving public money without attending religious instruction at that school”.
For those responsible for the day-to-day management of Catholic schools this issue is likely to present itself, immediately, at least, in almost exclusively practical terms: “What arrangements should I/may I/can I make for this student in this academic year?” In more and more schools, primary and post-primary, the arrangements made will be guided by the provisions of the school policy on religion, religious instruction, religious education and religious worship. In virtually all primary schools, and in many post-primary schools, the resulting arrangement will involve presence without participation. The student will remain with the class; will not be required to take part in any direct way in the actual lesson; and will be permitted to engage in other school-work, often of the student’s own choosing and, thus, not infrequently, the completion of some item of homework.
Few principals regard an arrangement along these lines as anything other than ad hoc. Fewer regard it as satisfactory. Virtually none regard it as ideal. It is an arrangement made primarily with a view to facilitating the school in its discharge of its duty of care towards the student in question by ensuring s/he is under the supervision of a teacher for the duration of the period of “withdrawal”. It is likely, therefore, that Catholic authorities will welcome indications that schools will be required to ensure that students withdrawn from religious instruction and religious worship are actually withdrawn and that they will be taught rather than left more or less to their own academic devices.
As is often the case, there is, however, a “but”. As far back as 2015, John Walshe indicated that this development – not to mention any corresponding development arising from the implementation of s. 30(2)(e) of the Education Act of 1998 - “could cost the tax-payer millions”. It can, in fact, only work at all if the Minister provides schools with the additional monies to pay for the extra teaching hours this development will inevitably require. This, then, is, in the first place, a test for the Minister. Just how important for him is this right of “withdrawal” and the consequent right – as he himself appears to see it - to be taught the as yet unspecified alternative subject(s) for the duration of any period of withdrawal? If it really matters, he’ll fund it and, if its spin rather than substance, he won’t!
Those for whom this initiative – and the wider and over-arching project of secularising, and, in effect, de-Catholicising our schools - is a priority are, for the most part, “haves”. The “have nots” have other priorities. The homeless parent who must send her child to school from a hotel room, the young refugee in direct provision who is desperate to be educated, those children and vulnerable adults in the sometimes inadequate care of Tusla and/or of the HSE, have, indeed, the constitutional and statutory rights in focus here. It is, though, rather unlikely that it is the vindication of those rights that is their main or their most pressing concern. A society that listened to them would know this. It would prioritise their needs. It would, in fact, really cherish them, treat them now, and treat them better, so that it might – eventually - treat them equally. It would educate them that they might be free. So to do, of course, would be away more costly than sending the Catholic bishops packing. It is, it seems, OK to be liberal and radical - provided we don’t antagonise us early risers.
One segment of the debate on the place of religion in recognised schools in the Republic of Ireland relates to the provision of Article 44.2.4 of Bunreacht na hÉireann which stipulates that: “Legislation providing State aid for schools shall not … be such as to affect prejudicially the right of any child to attend a school receiving public money without attending religious instruction at that school”.
For those responsible for the day-to-day management of Catholic schools this issue is likely to present itself, immediately, at least, in almost exclusively practical terms: “What arrangements should I/may I/can I make for this student in this academic year?” In more and more schools, primary and post-primary, the arrangements made will be guided by the provisions of the school policy on religion, religious instruction, religious education and religious worship. In virtually all primary schools, and in many post-primary schools, the resulting arrangement will involve presence without participation. The student will remain with the class; will not be required to take part in any direct way in the actual lesson; and will be permitted to engage in other school-work, often of the student’s own choosing and, thus, not infrequently, the completion of some item of homework.
Few principals regard an arrangement along these lines as anything other than ad hoc. Fewer regard it as satisfactory. Virtually none regard it as ideal. It is an arrangement made primarily with a view to facilitating the school in its discharge of its duty of care towards the student in question by ensuring s/he is under the supervision of a teacher for the duration of the period of “withdrawal”. It is likely, therefore, that Catholic authorities will welcome indications that schools will be required to ensure that students withdrawn from religious instruction and religious worship are actually withdrawn and that they will be taught rather than left more or less to their own academic devices.
As is often the case, there is, however, a “but”. As far back as 2015, John Walshe indicated that this development – not to mention any corresponding development arising from the implementation of s. 30(2)(e) of the Education Act of 1998 - “could cost the tax-payer millions”. It can, in fact, only work at all if the Minister provides schools with the additional monies to pay for the extra teaching hours this development will inevitably require. This, then, is, in the first place, a test for the Minister. Just how important for him is this right of “withdrawal” and the consequent right – as he himself appears to see it - to be taught the as yet unspecified alternative subject(s) for the duration of any period of withdrawal? If it really matters, he’ll fund it and, if its spin rather than substance, he won’t!
Those for whom this initiative – and the wider and over-arching project of secularising, and, in effect, de-Catholicising our schools - is a priority are, for the most part, “haves”. The “have nots” have other priorities. The homeless parent who must send her child to school from a hotel room, the young refugee in direct provision who is desperate to be educated, those children and vulnerable adults in the sometimes inadequate care of Tusla and/or of the HSE, have, indeed, the constitutional and statutory rights in focus here. It is, though, rather unlikely that it is the vindication of those rights that is their main or their most pressing concern. A society that listened to them would know this. It would prioritise their needs. It would, in fact, really cherish them, treat them now, and treat them better, so that it might – eventually - treat them equally. It would educate them that they might be free. So to do, of course, would be away more costly than sending the Catholic bishops packing. It is, it seems, OK to be liberal and radical - provided we don’t antagonise us early risers.
LUX EDMUNDI: REFLECTION: OCTOBER, 2017
The phrase “Culture Wars” would suggest to many the on-going debates in the USA between those who support, respectively, traditional and liberal values. The phrase also calls to mind the Kulturkampf, the struggle - in the German states but also in other nineteenth-century European polities - to separate Church and State and to ensure that the Catholic Church, in particular, confined its activities to the sacristy, leaving governments in sole charge of the public square.
The Republic of Ireland is caught up in its own Kulturkampf right now. In the 1980s, the then Taoiseach, Garrett Fitzgerald, declared what he himself called a “constitutional crusade”. He did not specify the objectives of this particular struggle but it was understood that it would entail the implementation of a “liberal agenda”, including the removal from Bunreacht na hÉireann of the provision recognising the “special position” of the Catholic Church “as the guardian of the Faith professed by the great majority of the citizens”.
It was always on the cards that, as did the various Culture Wars before it, this “constitutional crusade” would come eventually to deal with the role of the Catholic Church in education in the Republic of Ireland. If truth be told, very few in the 1980s thought that that particular item would come up for consideration quite as soon as it did. The Church, it seemed, was just too embedded in the education system, too strongly rooted in virtually every single community in the land, for any Irish government to risk anything remotely like a real challenge to its place in the governance, management and leadership of Irish primary and post-primary schools. The universal disgust at revelation after revelation of the sexual abuse of children by priests and religious, the consequent efforts of too many authorities to conceal these sinful and criminal depredations, did, almost over-night, what centuries of persecution had failed to do, viz., dissolved the unwritten, but heretofore apparently unbreakable, covenant between Catholics and their pastors in all to do with schooling.
The immediate focus of this particular aspect of our “culture war” at the moment is the Education (Admission to School) Bill, which seeks, inter alia, to eliminate any kind of religious test as a criterion in the admission of students to recognised schools in the Republic of Ireland. In an answer to the Seanad on Thursday, 12th October, 2017, Minister Bruton said that he was working closely with the Attorney General to ensure that any such provision would be found “to be robust”. This response indicates, surely, that there is an increasing awareness – fostered, perhaps, by the new Attorney General - that it might not be easy to draft a form of words that would balance the right of a child to attend the school of its parents’ choice and the right of every religious denomination to manage its own affairs, so as to give any resulting Act a good chance of surviving the challenges to its constitutionality that are almost bound to come.
Seldom today do we mention the Church Militant, i.e., the People of God “wrestling” (cf. Eph 6:12) its pilgrim way towards Heaven. There are times, though, when, to protect what matters to us, we must “fight the good fight” (cf. I Tim 6:12). Now is such a time for all who think the rights of faith-based schools are worth fighting for. As citizens and as believers, we must now “speak truth to power”. We must, at the very least, alert our respective school communities to this threat and, in so doing, alert our political masters to our determination to bring our struggle to the highest courts in the land and, right of rights, into the polling-booth itself.
The phrase “Culture Wars” would suggest to many the on-going debates in the USA between those who support, respectively, traditional and liberal values. The phrase also calls to mind the Kulturkampf, the struggle - in the German states but also in other nineteenth-century European polities - to separate Church and State and to ensure that the Catholic Church, in particular, confined its activities to the sacristy, leaving governments in sole charge of the public square.
The Republic of Ireland is caught up in its own Kulturkampf right now. In the 1980s, the then Taoiseach, Garrett Fitzgerald, declared what he himself called a “constitutional crusade”. He did not specify the objectives of this particular struggle but it was understood that it would entail the implementation of a “liberal agenda”, including the removal from Bunreacht na hÉireann of the provision recognising the “special position” of the Catholic Church “as the guardian of the Faith professed by the great majority of the citizens”.
It was always on the cards that, as did the various Culture Wars before it, this “constitutional crusade” would come eventually to deal with the role of the Catholic Church in education in the Republic of Ireland. If truth be told, very few in the 1980s thought that that particular item would come up for consideration quite as soon as it did. The Church, it seemed, was just too embedded in the education system, too strongly rooted in virtually every single community in the land, for any Irish government to risk anything remotely like a real challenge to its place in the governance, management and leadership of Irish primary and post-primary schools. The universal disgust at revelation after revelation of the sexual abuse of children by priests and religious, the consequent efforts of too many authorities to conceal these sinful and criminal depredations, did, almost over-night, what centuries of persecution had failed to do, viz., dissolved the unwritten, but heretofore apparently unbreakable, covenant between Catholics and their pastors in all to do with schooling.
The immediate focus of this particular aspect of our “culture war” at the moment is the Education (Admission to School) Bill, which seeks, inter alia, to eliminate any kind of religious test as a criterion in the admission of students to recognised schools in the Republic of Ireland. In an answer to the Seanad on Thursday, 12th October, 2017, Minister Bruton said that he was working closely with the Attorney General to ensure that any such provision would be found “to be robust”. This response indicates, surely, that there is an increasing awareness – fostered, perhaps, by the new Attorney General - that it might not be easy to draft a form of words that would balance the right of a child to attend the school of its parents’ choice and the right of every religious denomination to manage its own affairs, so as to give any resulting Act a good chance of surviving the challenges to its constitutionality that are almost bound to come.
Seldom today do we mention the Church Militant, i.e., the People of God “wrestling” (cf. Eph 6:12) its pilgrim way towards Heaven. There are times, though, when, to protect what matters to us, we must “fight the good fight” (cf. I Tim 6:12). Now is such a time for all who think the rights of faith-based schools are worth fighting for. As citizens and as believers, we must now “speak truth to power”. We must, at the very least, alert our respective school communities to this threat and, in so doing, alert our political masters to our determination to bring our struggle to the highest courts in the land and, right of rights, into the polling-booth itself.
LUX EDMUNDI: REFLECTION: SEPTEMBER, 2017
A case (DEC-E2017-057) recently posted on the website of the Workplace Relations Commission concerned a teacher, a humanist, who had complained to the WRC that a Central Technical Institute had discriminated against him on grounds of religion by erecting a May altar in a prominent position in what was his place of work. The WRC did not uphold this complaint.
Any decision of the WRC is, of course, subject to appeal and, in any event, it falls to those with the requisite legal expertise to determine what, if any, implications this decision might have for others. That, however, need not preclude some lay observations on matters arising.
It may be noted, first, that the Institute in question is an ETB school. It is a post-primary school which also provides a wide range of PLC, FE and Adult and Community Education Courses. It has what it described to the WRC as a “primarily but not an exclusively Christian ethos” and insists that it is by way of expressing its ethos as thus defined that it has, inter alia, erected a May altar annually “for a period of decades rather than of years”. The WRC seems to have found this defence of its May altar acceptable. May we not conclude that, if a religious display of the kind in question was deemed acceptable in an ETB school with a “characteristic spirit” which, it seems, was, not just multi-denominational, but multi-religious and, indeed, multi-cultural, it would, a fortiori, be deemed acceptable in any recognised school in the Republic under Catholic patronage?
It may be noted, secondly, that it was not the Board of Management of the school but the ETB which responded to this complaint. This was probably because, under the relevant legislation, it is the ETB which is the employer of all personnel in any ETB school and the body, therefore, against which any complaint like that in question here would be made. It is, though, a fact that, rather than settling the issue in some other way, this ETB decided to defend the case; decided, in effect, to defend the right of one of its schools to have a May Altar – and, for that matter, as the evidence given attests, to celebrate Holy Mass to mark certain school occasions and to facilitate the celebration of the Sacrament of Reconciliation in the school for those who wished to go to Confession - in accordance with that school’s ethos and tradition. There is here, surely, a reminder to us all that, though the law can sometimes be an ass, litigation always exorbitantly costly, the protection of the ethos of any given school may, on occasion, necessitate recourse to the courts and those involved in the governance and management of schools, including faith-based schools, in general, Catholic schools, in particular, must not baulk at going to law to guard their ethos, their characteristic spirit, if that is what it takes and they have recourse to no other remedy in the circumstances.
It may be noted, finally, that this case serves as a very useful – and, it may be, a very necessary - reminder that the religious has rights as well as the secular. In Ireland today, it seems to be taken as given that, in any case involving the Catholic Church, the latter simply must be in the wrong. It seems to some either inconceivable or inadmissible that any Catholic institution could possibly have any rights at all. This is not how things are seen in international legislation and the various courts of human rights have, in effect, vindicated time and again the right of faith-based people and bodies to be, precisely, faith-based. Those of us involved in Catholic education in Ireland simply must not settle for less. Fear of backlash, or of offending, or of losing favour, must never induce or intimidate us into betraying our ethos. We will not interfere with their convictions but, first, last and always, we must be absolutely clear with staff, parents and students and with all to whom it may concern, that ours is an expressly Catholic school, providing an expressly Catholic education to all who want it.
A case (DEC-E2017-057) recently posted on the website of the Workplace Relations Commission concerned a teacher, a humanist, who had complained to the WRC that a Central Technical Institute had discriminated against him on grounds of religion by erecting a May altar in a prominent position in what was his place of work. The WRC did not uphold this complaint.
Any decision of the WRC is, of course, subject to appeal and, in any event, it falls to those with the requisite legal expertise to determine what, if any, implications this decision might have for others. That, however, need not preclude some lay observations on matters arising.
It may be noted, first, that the Institute in question is an ETB school. It is a post-primary school which also provides a wide range of PLC, FE and Adult and Community Education Courses. It has what it described to the WRC as a “primarily but not an exclusively Christian ethos” and insists that it is by way of expressing its ethos as thus defined that it has, inter alia, erected a May altar annually “for a period of decades rather than of years”. The WRC seems to have found this defence of its May altar acceptable. May we not conclude that, if a religious display of the kind in question was deemed acceptable in an ETB school with a “characteristic spirit” which, it seems, was, not just multi-denominational, but multi-religious and, indeed, multi-cultural, it would, a fortiori, be deemed acceptable in any recognised school in the Republic under Catholic patronage?
It may be noted, secondly, that it was not the Board of Management of the school but the ETB which responded to this complaint. This was probably because, under the relevant legislation, it is the ETB which is the employer of all personnel in any ETB school and the body, therefore, against which any complaint like that in question here would be made. It is, though, a fact that, rather than settling the issue in some other way, this ETB decided to defend the case; decided, in effect, to defend the right of one of its schools to have a May Altar – and, for that matter, as the evidence given attests, to celebrate Holy Mass to mark certain school occasions and to facilitate the celebration of the Sacrament of Reconciliation in the school for those who wished to go to Confession - in accordance with that school’s ethos and tradition. There is here, surely, a reminder to us all that, though the law can sometimes be an ass, litigation always exorbitantly costly, the protection of the ethos of any given school may, on occasion, necessitate recourse to the courts and those involved in the governance and management of schools, including faith-based schools, in general, Catholic schools, in particular, must not baulk at going to law to guard their ethos, their characteristic spirit, if that is what it takes and they have recourse to no other remedy in the circumstances.
It may be noted, finally, that this case serves as a very useful – and, it may be, a very necessary - reminder that the religious has rights as well as the secular. In Ireland today, it seems to be taken as given that, in any case involving the Catholic Church, the latter simply must be in the wrong. It seems to some either inconceivable or inadmissible that any Catholic institution could possibly have any rights at all. This is not how things are seen in international legislation and the various courts of human rights have, in effect, vindicated time and again the right of faith-based people and bodies to be, precisely, faith-based. Those of us involved in Catholic education in Ireland simply must not settle for less. Fear of backlash, or of offending, or of losing favour, must never induce or intimidate us into betraying our ethos. We will not interfere with their convictions but, first, last and always, we must be absolutely clear with staff, parents and students and with all to whom it may concern, that ours is an expressly Catholic school, providing an expressly Catholic education to all who want it.
LUX EDMUNDI: REFLECTION: AUGUST, 2017
Tuesday, 29th August, 2017, is the 173rd anniversary of the death in Waterford of Blessed Edmund Ignatius Rice, Founder of the aboriginal and undivided Society of the Presentation, from which derive the Christian Brothers and the Presentation Brothers and all institutes and initiatives, educational or other, that spring from either or both of those bodies, including Lux Edmundi.
By that date, virtually all recognised schools in the Republic of Ireland, primary and post-primary, will have commenced the 2017-2018 school year. Schools under Catholic patronage will be aware that, throughout that year, the Church in Ireland will be preparing to host the World Meeting of Families in Dublin, from the 21st to the 26th August, 2018. This is a truly global event, interest in which will be hugely increased by the prospect of Pope Francis himself participating there-in.
Irish Church authorities have indicated that WMOF 2018 will include “an engaging and exciting programme for young people as well as fun activities for children” and Catholic Schools Week, 28 January to 3 February, 2018, will focus on “Catholic Schools: Called to be a Family of Families”.
Amoris Laetitiae, The Joy of Love, the Post-Synodal Exhortation of Pope Francis on Love in the Family, supplies the frame of reference for WMOF2018. It would be well for all involved in Catholic education in Ireland to re-familiarise themselves with the contents of this pastoral reflection on Church teaching on Marriage and the Family. To do so will assist us towards a more complete appreciation of what WMOF2018 is about. It will also help us make our own contribution towards this great occasion by undertaking an evaluation of whether, and to what extent, what is actually taught in our schools - in, say, RE or SPHE/RSE – on pertinent topics accords with Catholic teaching.
Beyond that, for each Catholic school community in Ireland, WMOF2018 constitutes an implicit invitation to look again at the teaching of the Church on the role of parents in the education of their children and, even more pertinently, to examine its own exemplification of this body of doctrine. The social doctrine of the Catholic Church insists that, under God, the parent is the primary educator of the child and, by way of corollary, indicates that all the rest of us who work in, with or for schools, Catholic schools especially, do so at the service of the family, and, specifically, of those parents who entrust the school-based education of their children to our professional care.
Throughout 2017-2018, the Catholic teacher in Ireland will take from her store “new things and old” (cf. Mt 13:52). Amongst the “old things” will be those policies, procedures and structures already in place to help parents discharge their various functions in respect of the school. Amongst the “new things”, we may include the General Scheme of an Education (Parent and Student Charter) Bill, 2016. This – like, indeed, its companion piece, the Education (Admissions) Bill, 2016 – contains provisions to which we may very well object. However, as we are the successors of Nano, Edmund, Catherine, Mary and Margaret, we may - we must - make our own the social purposes of these items of proposed legislation, to the end that, as far as the social doctrine of the Church on the rights of parents is concerned, we “walk the walk” as well as “talk the talk”. If WMOF2018 is to mean anything, if each of our schools is to be a “Family of Families”, then we must ensure no homeless parent, no homeless child, will get on our doorsteps just another kick in the teeth.
Tuesday, 29th August, 2017, is the 173rd anniversary of the death in Waterford of Blessed Edmund Ignatius Rice, Founder of the aboriginal and undivided Society of the Presentation, from which derive the Christian Brothers and the Presentation Brothers and all institutes and initiatives, educational or other, that spring from either or both of those bodies, including Lux Edmundi.
By that date, virtually all recognised schools in the Republic of Ireland, primary and post-primary, will have commenced the 2017-2018 school year. Schools under Catholic patronage will be aware that, throughout that year, the Church in Ireland will be preparing to host the World Meeting of Families in Dublin, from the 21st to the 26th August, 2018. This is a truly global event, interest in which will be hugely increased by the prospect of Pope Francis himself participating there-in.
Irish Church authorities have indicated that WMOF 2018 will include “an engaging and exciting programme for young people as well as fun activities for children” and Catholic Schools Week, 28 January to 3 February, 2018, will focus on “Catholic Schools: Called to be a Family of Families”.
Amoris Laetitiae, The Joy of Love, the Post-Synodal Exhortation of Pope Francis on Love in the Family, supplies the frame of reference for WMOF2018. It would be well for all involved in Catholic education in Ireland to re-familiarise themselves with the contents of this pastoral reflection on Church teaching on Marriage and the Family. To do so will assist us towards a more complete appreciation of what WMOF2018 is about. It will also help us make our own contribution towards this great occasion by undertaking an evaluation of whether, and to what extent, what is actually taught in our schools - in, say, RE or SPHE/RSE – on pertinent topics accords with Catholic teaching.
Beyond that, for each Catholic school community in Ireland, WMOF2018 constitutes an implicit invitation to look again at the teaching of the Church on the role of parents in the education of their children and, even more pertinently, to examine its own exemplification of this body of doctrine. The social doctrine of the Catholic Church insists that, under God, the parent is the primary educator of the child and, by way of corollary, indicates that all the rest of us who work in, with or for schools, Catholic schools especially, do so at the service of the family, and, specifically, of those parents who entrust the school-based education of their children to our professional care.
Throughout 2017-2018, the Catholic teacher in Ireland will take from her store “new things and old” (cf. Mt 13:52). Amongst the “old things” will be those policies, procedures and structures already in place to help parents discharge their various functions in respect of the school. Amongst the “new things”, we may include the General Scheme of an Education (Parent and Student Charter) Bill, 2016. This – like, indeed, its companion piece, the Education (Admissions) Bill, 2016 – contains provisions to which we may very well object. However, as we are the successors of Nano, Edmund, Catherine, Mary and Margaret, we may - we must - make our own the social purposes of these items of proposed legislation, to the end that, as far as the social doctrine of the Church on the rights of parents is concerned, we “walk the walk” as well as “talk the talk”. If WMOF2018 is to mean anything, if each of our schools is to be a “Family of Families”, then we must ensure no homeless parent, no homeless child, will get on our doorsteps just another kick in the teeth.
LUX EDMUNDI: JULY, 2017: THOUGHTS ON THE FIVE JOYFUL MYSTERIES FOR CATHOLIC TEACHERS
THE FIRST JOYFUL MYSTERY: THE ANNUNCIATION (SEE LK 1:26-38)
When the Blessed Virgin Mary agreed to be the Mother of God, then and there, by the power of the Holy Spirit, “the Word became flesh” in her womb. The Word is the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity, through whom, in whom and for whom, were made all things that were made, including the human race itself. In fact, Christ, the Logos, the Word of God, made flesh, is the paradigm and the template of humanity at its most authentic and complete. Au fond, education is all about teaching students how to be human. Catholic schools teach students how to be human through, with and in Christ. In faith and in fact, each one of our students is a “word” of God, uttered by the Father in the Son from all eternity, destined by divine Providence to be incarnate, as it were, as an alter Christus, another Christ, and we Catholic teachers are called by God to help shape each and every student committed to our professional care in the image and likeness of the Word made flesh.
THE SECOND JOYFUL MYSTERY: THE VISITATION (SEE LK 1:39-56)
In one of his sermons for the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, St. Augustine of Hippo reminds us that the Visitation has Mary, who is pregnant with Christ, the Word of God incarnate, coming to Elizabeth, her cousin, who is pregnant with John the Baptist, the voice crying in the wilderness. It is, says Augustine, wholly right and proper that the Voice should be given the Word it must proclaim; that, in effect, his People should hear the saving Truth of God and not some human message, which, however exalted or inspiring, simply cannot save. The implication for teachers is clear: We are neither the subject nor the object of our teaching. Christ, and Christ alone, is that. He, in fact, is the programme, the course, the curriculum, the syllabus, the subject, the lesson, we teach every day of our lives to those who sit before us. We are the Voice, not the Word. Ours, indeed, is a “disciple’s tongue” (see Is 50:4), that is, the tongue of one who listens to the Word before speaking it. We must learn before we teach. The day we stop learning is the day we become no longer fit for purpose as teachers. The day we stop learning Christ – the day we stop being and becoming Christ - is the day we become no longer fit for purpose as teachers of Christ; no longer really fit for purpose as teachers – much less as leaders – in any school under Catholic patronage.
THE THIRD JOYFUL MYSTERY: THE NATIVITY (SEE LK 2:1-20)
St.Luke tells us that the Infant Jesus, newly born, was laid in a manger, a crib, “a barred receptacle for fodder (SOED)”. From very early on, the Fathers and Doctors of the Church emphasised the appropriateness of him who is the Bread of Life being born in Bethlehem – a name they took to mean “House of Bread” - and being placed there in a feeding trough. They caught in the word “manger” an implicit but still unmistakable reference to the Eucharist, the Bread of Angels, the Bread come down from Heaven, Manna, the viaticum, the food sent his People on earth by their Father in heaven to sustain them on their pilgrim way through this world to the next. The “manger” may be thought to adumbrate especially the two-fold Liturgy of the Mass, where we are twice fed, as it were, first, by the Word of God, and, then, by the Body of Christ. To be genuine and effective as Catholic teachers and Catholic school leaders, we must be devoted to the Holy Mass. We must ourselves feed on the Word of God and on the Body of Christ if we, in turn, are to lead our charges to the “manger”, the “table” of the Lord in the “House of Bread”.
THE FOURTH JOYFUL MYSTERY: THE PRESENTATION OF THE LORD IN THE TEMPLE ( SEE LK 2:21-40)
It was because they were guided by the Holy Spirit that, in the hustle and bustle of the Temple in Jerusalem, Simeon and Anna recognised the infant Jesus as the Messiah, the Anointed One, the Christ, the Son of David, the King of Israel. As Catholic teachers, we must ever bear in mind that each one of those committed to our professional care is a child of our Heavenly Father, made in his image and likeness and re-made in the waters of Baptism in the image and likeness of his only-begotten Son, Christ Jesus, our Lord, born of the Father before time began, born in time of the Virgin Mary. We must ever bear in mind that, irrespective of appearances, of intelligence, of demeanour, every student we teach is, as we have noted, a “word” of God, an alter Christus, another Christ. Each is the Christ that we are meant to serve here and now; the living Christ whom, as he himself has assured us, is present especially in “the least”, the afflicted, the deprived, the repelled and the repulsive, the “leper”, the pariah, the in-your-face, insolent brat who couldn’t care less about you, me or anyone else, who puts us to the pin of our collar to hold our anger, but in whom we must still seek and see Christ. It’s not that there is no such thing as a bad child or that no child should have to face the consequences of her/his misconduct. It’s that, as he did to his disciples on the Sea of Galilee, Jesus sometimes comes to us as a “ghost” and it is only if we, too, are filled with, and guided by, the Holy Spirit that, like Anna and Simeon, we will recognise him present in some of our charges and in some of the difficult circumstances in which we and they encounter each other.
THE FIFTH JOYFUL MYSTERY: THE FINDING OF OUR LORD IN THE TEMPLE (LK 2:41-52)
The scene of Jesus amongst the Doctors has been represented in a variety of media and by artists of all kinds. Amongst the canonical writers, it is reported only by Luke. It is, though, treated, and more extensively, in a number of the Apocryphal Gospels. In these, the 12-year-old Jesus is clearly the master of his would-be teachers, in every respect, in every discipline, every time. A roughly similar approach is taken in later Christian readings of the episode, which go out of their way to emphasise the absolutely prodigious knowledge of this boy from Nazareth, probably because they do not want us to lose sight of his divinity. Luke has the boy Jesus “sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions”, astonishing them indeed, but by “his understanding and his answers” rather than by his omniscience. Here, in fact, the Rabbis may be thought to accept him as one of themselves, not in their right to sit in the seat of Moses, but in their abiding duty to engage, day in, day out, with the Torah, the Word of God, the Covenant, and, thus, with the God who gave it to them. We have noted before Augustine’s insistence that, irrespective of office in the Church or state in life, all Christians have only one Master, one Teacher, one Rabbi; that, in effect, all of us, bishop and flock, priest and people, teacher and pupils, are always students together at the feet of Christ. We are, Augustine says, “condiscipuli”, “co-disciples”, class-mates, fellow-students, swotting Christ together, distinguished, not so much by our respective and visible roles as tutor and tutee, as by our invisible and respective capacities to know, love and serve God; so that, in effect, whilst I am, and must remain, the adult in charge in the class-room, in another sense, in the presence of a child who loves God and neighbour more and better than I can, I may be the boss but I am not the star of the class, not the superior Christian, not necessarily the brightest and best in the eyes of God. I must, therefore, proceed always with respect, for I may well be in the presence of my moral betters.
THE FIRST JOYFUL MYSTERY: THE ANNUNCIATION (SEE LK 1:26-38)
When the Blessed Virgin Mary agreed to be the Mother of God, then and there, by the power of the Holy Spirit, “the Word became flesh” in her womb. The Word is the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity, through whom, in whom and for whom, were made all things that were made, including the human race itself. In fact, Christ, the Logos, the Word of God, made flesh, is the paradigm and the template of humanity at its most authentic and complete. Au fond, education is all about teaching students how to be human. Catholic schools teach students how to be human through, with and in Christ. In faith and in fact, each one of our students is a “word” of God, uttered by the Father in the Son from all eternity, destined by divine Providence to be incarnate, as it were, as an alter Christus, another Christ, and we Catholic teachers are called by God to help shape each and every student committed to our professional care in the image and likeness of the Word made flesh.
THE SECOND JOYFUL MYSTERY: THE VISITATION (SEE LK 1:39-56)
In one of his sermons for the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, St. Augustine of Hippo reminds us that the Visitation has Mary, who is pregnant with Christ, the Word of God incarnate, coming to Elizabeth, her cousin, who is pregnant with John the Baptist, the voice crying in the wilderness. It is, says Augustine, wholly right and proper that the Voice should be given the Word it must proclaim; that, in effect, his People should hear the saving Truth of God and not some human message, which, however exalted or inspiring, simply cannot save. The implication for teachers is clear: We are neither the subject nor the object of our teaching. Christ, and Christ alone, is that. He, in fact, is the programme, the course, the curriculum, the syllabus, the subject, the lesson, we teach every day of our lives to those who sit before us. We are the Voice, not the Word. Ours, indeed, is a “disciple’s tongue” (see Is 50:4), that is, the tongue of one who listens to the Word before speaking it. We must learn before we teach. The day we stop learning is the day we become no longer fit for purpose as teachers. The day we stop learning Christ – the day we stop being and becoming Christ - is the day we become no longer fit for purpose as teachers of Christ; no longer really fit for purpose as teachers – much less as leaders – in any school under Catholic patronage.
THE THIRD JOYFUL MYSTERY: THE NATIVITY (SEE LK 2:1-20)
St.Luke tells us that the Infant Jesus, newly born, was laid in a manger, a crib, “a barred receptacle for fodder (SOED)”. From very early on, the Fathers and Doctors of the Church emphasised the appropriateness of him who is the Bread of Life being born in Bethlehem – a name they took to mean “House of Bread” - and being placed there in a feeding trough. They caught in the word “manger” an implicit but still unmistakable reference to the Eucharist, the Bread of Angels, the Bread come down from Heaven, Manna, the viaticum, the food sent his People on earth by their Father in heaven to sustain them on their pilgrim way through this world to the next. The “manger” may be thought to adumbrate especially the two-fold Liturgy of the Mass, where we are twice fed, as it were, first, by the Word of God, and, then, by the Body of Christ. To be genuine and effective as Catholic teachers and Catholic school leaders, we must be devoted to the Holy Mass. We must ourselves feed on the Word of God and on the Body of Christ if we, in turn, are to lead our charges to the “manger”, the “table” of the Lord in the “House of Bread”.
THE FOURTH JOYFUL MYSTERY: THE PRESENTATION OF THE LORD IN THE TEMPLE ( SEE LK 2:21-40)
It was because they were guided by the Holy Spirit that, in the hustle and bustle of the Temple in Jerusalem, Simeon and Anna recognised the infant Jesus as the Messiah, the Anointed One, the Christ, the Son of David, the King of Israel. As Catholic teachers, we must ever bear in mind that each one of those committed to our professional care is a child of our Heavenly Father, made in his image and likeness and re-made in the waters of Baptism in the image and likeness of his only-begotten Son, Christ Jesus, our Lord, born of the Father before time began, born in time of the Virgin Mary. We must ever bear in mind that, irrespective of appearances, of intelligence, of demeanour, every student we teach is, as we have noted, a “word” of God, an alter Christus, another Christ. Each is the Christ that we are meant to serve here and now; the living Christ whom, as he himself has assured us, is present especially in “the least”, the afflicted, the deprived, the repelled and the repulsive, the “leper”, the pariah, the in-your-face, insolent brat who couldn’t care less about you, me or anyone else, who puts us to the pin of our collar to hold our anger, but in whom we must still seek and see Christ. It’s not that there is no such thing as a bad child or that no child should have to face the consequences of her/his misconduct. It’s that, as he did to his disciples on the Sea of Galilee, Jesus sometimes comes to us as a “ghost” and it is only if we, too, are filled with, and guided by, the Holy Spirit that, like Anna and Simeon, we will recognise him present in some of our charges and in some of the difficult circumstances in which we and they encounter each other.
THE FIFTH JOYFUL MYSTERY: THE FINDING OF OUR LORD IN THE TEMPLE (LK 2:41-52)
The scene of Jesus amongst the Doctors has been represented in a variety of media and by artists of all kinds. Amongst the canonical writers, it is reported only by Luke. It is, though, treated, and more extensively, in a number of the Apocryphal Gospels. In these, the 12-year-old Jesus is clearly the master of his would-be teachers, in every respect, in every discipline, every time. A roughly similar approach is taken in later Christian readings of the episode, which go out of their way to emphasise the absolutely prodigious knowledge of this boy from Nazareth, probably because they do not want us to lose sight of his divinity. Luke has the boy Jesus “sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions”, astonishing them indeed, but by “his understanding and his answers” rather than by his omniscience. Here, in fact, the Rabbis may be thought to accept him as one of themselves, not in their right to sit in the seat of Moses, but in their abiding duty to engage, day in, day out, with the Torah, the Word of God, the Covenant, and, thus, with the God who gave it to them. We have noted before Augustine’s insistence that, irrespective of office in the Church or state in life, all Christians have only one Master, one Teacher, one Rabbi; that, in effect, all of us, bishop and flock, priest and people, teacher and pupils, are always students together at the feet of Christ. We are, Augustine says, “condiscipuli”, “co-disciples”, class-mates, fellow-students, swotting Christ together, distinguished, not so much by our respective and visible roles as tutor and tutee, as by our invisible and respective capacities to know, love and serve God; so that, in effect, whilst I am, and must remain, the adult in charge in the class-room, in another sense, in the presence of a child who loves God and neighbour more and better than I can, I may be the boss but I am not the star of the class, not the superior Christian, not necessarily the brightest and best in the eyes of God. I must, therefore, proceed always with respect, for I may well be in the presence of my moral betters.
LUX EDMUNDI: REFLECTION: JUNE, 2017
There is ample evidence that Irish teachers, primary and post-primary, principals especially, consider themselves vulnerable to high levels of occupational stress. The months of May and June, the last stretch of the academic year, can be particularly stressful in schools. There is so much to be done, with young people who are tired, mentally and physically, by teachers who are themselves at least as tired, that, even in the best-ordered school, and in the normally most congenial staff-room, the tensions are palpable. The general public is likely to re-act sceptically at any time to teachers who talk about work-related stress. It is likely to re-act with some degree of annoyance to such complaints right now, just before, as they see it, we head off into the “long holidays” they can only dream of. Non-teachers will often confess that they would not do our job for twice the money but it will probably take a lot more time before they realise just how much their own children would be disadvantaged educationally were they taught by men and women drained by a lack of the recuperation, the “re-creation”, that is a desired outcome of our time off, especially during summer.
The research literature attempts to isolate and analyse the main occupational stressors reported by teachers. Though, of necessity, it must often do so provisionally, that literature indicates circumstances which, on the evidence, seem associated with the reduction of occupational stress amongst teachers. Some of the circumstances are external to the teacher and relate to, e.g., how well the school, the students especially, are conducted. Some, though, are internal to the teacher and relate, e.g., to personal factors which help or hinder one’s capacity to cope.
As to those which help, some may be nurtured. There are psycho-physical processes which, it seems, may assist even the most burdened of us manage, or manage better, the stressors in our lives in school. Amongst these is MBI (Mindfulness-Based Intervention). “Mindfulness” is, of course, one of the buzz-words of our time and there is on-going debate as to whether it is, or is not, just another fad. There are, though, authoritative studies which, on foot of empirical evidence, conclude that mindfulness training can indeed assist teachers in managing their emotions and thus help them experience a decrease in work-related stress and a concomitant increase in the confidence that they will respond better to whatever the job – or, indeed, life - may throw at them in the future.
Like TM, mindfulness is thought to derive from Buddhism. As they did in respect of TM, some insist that, given these origins, mindfulness must be - that, indeed, it is - incompatible with Christianity. The Letter of the CDF of 15 October, 1989, to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on Some Aspects of Christian Meditation, suggests that the official position of the Roman authorities on this is more nuanced, is, in fact, cautious rather than simply condemnatory. Besides, as it has done with the other practices it has taken from the religions of the East, the West is almost certain to secularise mindfulness, and commodify it, flogging it on the open market for whatever that market will bear.
We have, more than once, adverted to the tradition that Blessed Edmund brought “his letters and cares and difficulties and doubts” to Christ present in the Tabernacle in the Oratory at Mount Sion. The Lord had, after all, invited him: “Come to me, all you that labour and are burdened; and I will refresh you (Mt 11:28, Douay/Rheims)”. The Lord also invites each one of us to come into his Presence; to bring with us, and to lay down before him, our anxieties, our mistakes, even our despair. We need say or do no more. It is enough for us to be mindful that he is there in his Real Presence in the Tabernacle, his loving gaze fixed steadily upon us (cf. Mk 10:21), his healing power ready to touch us, to restore us, in the very depths of our being, if we but open our hearts to him.
There is ample evidence that Irish teachers, primary and post-primary, principals especially, consider themselves vulnerable to high levels of occupational stress. The months of May and June, the last stretch of the academic year, can be particularly stressful in schools. There is so much to be done, with young people who are tired, mentally and physically, by teachers who are themselves at least as tired, that, even in the best-ordered school, and in the normally most congenial staff-room, the tensions are palpable. The general public is likely to re-act sceptically at any time to teachers who talk about work-related stress. It is likely to re-act with some degree of annoyance to such complaints right now, just before, as they see it, we head off into the “long holidays” they can only dream of. Non-teachers will often confess that they would not do our job for twice the money but it will probably take a lot more time before they realise just how much their own children would be disadvantaged educationally were they taught by men and women drained by a lack of the recuperation, the “re-creation”, that is a desired outcome of our time off, especially during summer.
The research literature attempts to isolate and analyse the main occupational stressors reported by teachers. Though, of necessity, it must often do so provisionally, that literature indicates circumstances which, on the evidence, seem associated with the reduction of occupational stress amongst teachers. Some of the circumstances are external to the teacher and relate to, e.g., how well the school, the students especially, are conducted. Some, though, are internal to the teacher and relate, e.g., to personal factors which help or hinder one’s capacity to cope.
As to those which help, some may be nurtured. There are psycho-physical processes which, it seems, may assist even the most burdened of us manage, or manage better, the stressors in our lives in school. Amongst these is MBI (Mindfulness-Based Intervention). “Mindfulness” is, of course, one of the buzz-words of our time and there is on-going debate as to whether it is, or is not, just another fad. There are, though, authoritative studies which, on foot of empirical evidence, conclude that mindfulness training can indeed assist teachers in managing their emotions and thus help them experience a decrease in work-related stress and a concomitant increase in the confidence that they will respond better to whatever the job – or, indeed, life - may throw at them in the future.
Like TM, mindfulness is thought to derive from Buddhism. As they did in respect of TM, some insist that, given these origins, mindfulness must be - that, indeed, it is - incompatible with Christianity. The Letter of the CDF of 15 October, 1989, to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on Some Aspects of Christian Meditation, suggests that the official position of the Roman authorities on this is more nuanced, is, in fact, cautious rather than simply condemnatory. Besides, as it has done with the other practices it has taken from the religions of the East, the West is almost certain to secularise mindfulness, and commodify it, flogging it on the open market for whatever that market will bear.
We have, more than once, adverted to the tradition that Blessed Edmund brought “his letters and cares and difficulties and doubts” to Christ present in the Tabernacle in the Oratory at Mount Sion. The Lord had, after all, invited him: “Come to me, all you that labour and are burdened; and I will refresh you (Mt 11:28, Douay/Rheims)”. The Lord also invites each one of us to come into his Presence; to bring with us, and to lay down before him, our anxieties, our mistakes, even our despair. We need say or do no more. It is enough for us to be mindful that he is there in his Real Presence in the Tabernacle, his loving gaze fixed steadily upon us (cf. Mk 10:21), his healing power ready to touch us, to restore us, in the very depths of our being, if we but open our hearts to him.
LUX EDMUNDI: REFLECTION: MAY, 2017
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran pastor and theologian executed by the Nazis in Flossenburg concentration camp in 1945. One of his most influential books is The Cost of Discipleship (1937) in which he makes his famous distinction between “cheap grace” and “costly grace”, the one entailing a kind of belief that costs us nothing, the other, a kind that costs us everything. There are, it may be thought, “cheap” and “costly” versions of every one of the virtues: a version that requires us only to “talk the talk” and one that requires us “to walk the walk” and to do that at real risk to ourselves.
Thus one might postulate, e.g., a “cheap” and a “costly” courage. There is real courage, physical and moral, and there is what may be called a mar dhea courage, an ersatz courage, a kind of bravado we show when we attack where we know there is little if any chance of retaliation. The most cautious and cowardly of us will “speak truth unto power” once it is unmistakably clear that the “power” in question can be attacked with complete impunity.
The Catholic Church is the whipping boy of the day in Ireland right now. Though not quite out, it is, it seems, down, and those who would not have dared confront it when it was in its pomp, now put up the fists and challenge it to do its worst. For some, of course, this public Anti-Catholicism is a badge of their tribe, a membership requirement of their particular craft, the way to get in and to get on. Thus, for instance, no-one aspiring to join the commentariate, or to climb its greasy pole, can risk not belting a bishop, as it were. Besides, think of the delicious rush of self-righteousness we may enjoy, free, gratis and for nothing, when, knowing that, at least as an instrument of chastisement, the crozier is long de-commissioned, we can - as Newman wrote of Simpson, the controversy-prone editor of the Catholic periodical, the Rambler - “always be clever, amusing, brilliant and suggestive. He will always be flicking his whip at Bishops, cutting them in tender places, throwing stones at Sacred Congregations, and, as he rides by along the high road, discharging pea-shooters at Cardinals who happen by bad luck to look out of [a] window (Letter to Lord Acton, 5 July, 1861)”.
Education is, of course, one of the areas of Irish life in which the authority of the Catholic Church is contested nowadays almost as a matter of course. A Minister for Education in the past may have considered himself the“dungaree man”, obliged to ensure the machine was running smoothly, but in no wise desirous of driving it. More recent Ministers have evinced a more enlarged view of their powers, duties and functions. They are in charge, ready, willing and able to let all and sundry, Catholic authorities especially, know who is boss. Unfortunately, it seems that they are boss only of the easy bits. In the name of greater inclusivity they propose legislation on schools’ admissions but have not yet commenced all the provisions of the Education for Persons with Special Educational Needs Act. They insist (rightly) on the duty of Boards to protect children but still drag their heels on the judgement of the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights in O’Keeffe v. Ireland. They are daring, but only up to a point, and, maybe, our own Sir Humphreys know well that the best way to stop a Minister in her or his tracks is to intimate that what s/he proposes is “courageous”.
Fortitude is the Cardinal Virtue “that ensures firmness in difficulties and constancy in the pursuit of the good (CCC, 1808)”. It is also the name given that Gift of the Holy Spirit which “gives us a special strength … to spread and defend the faith by word and action as true witnesses of Christ, to confess the name of Christ boldly, and never to be ashamed of the Cross (ib., 1303)”. Fortitude, “costly courage”, is a prerequisite of effective leadership at all levels in the Catholic Church in Ireland today. It is a sine qua non of effective governance, management and leadership in Catholic schools.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran pastor and theologian executed by the Nazis in Flossenburg concentration camp in 1945. One of his most influential books is The Cost of Discipleship (1937) in which he makes his famous distinction between “cheap grace” and “costly grace”, the one entailing a kind of belief that costs us nothing, the other, a kind that costs us everything. There are, it may be thought, “cheap” and “costly” versions of every one of the virtues: a version that requires us only to “talk the talk” and one that requires us “to walk the walk” and to do that at real risk to ourselves.
Thus one might postulate, e.g., a “cheap” and a “costly” courage. There is real courage, physical and moral, and there is what may be called a mar dhea courage, an ersatz courage, a kind of bravado we show when we attack where we know there is little if any chance of retaliation. The most cautious and cowardly of us will “speak truth unto power” once it is unmistakably clear that the “power” in question can be attacked with complete impunity.
The Catholic Church is the whipping boy of the day in Ireland right now. Though not quite out, it is, it seems, down, and those who would not have dared confront it when it was in its pomp, now put up the fists and challenge it to do its worst. For some, of course, this public Anti-Catholicism is a badge of their tribe, a membership requirement of their particular craft, the way to get in and to get on. Thus, for instance, no-one aspiring to join the commentariate, or to climb its greasy pole, can risk not belting a bishop, as it were. Besides, think of the delicious rush of self-righteousness we may enjoy, free, gratis and for nothing, when, knowing that, at least as an instrument of chastisement, the crozier is long de-commissioned, we can - as Newman wrote of Simpson, the controversy-prone editor of the Catholic periodical, the Rambler - “always be clever, amusing, brilliant and suggestive. He will always be flicking his whip at Bishops, cutting them in tender places, throwing stones at Sacred Congregations, and, as he rides by along the high road, discharging pea-shooters at Cardinals who happen by bad luck to look out of [a] window (Letter to Lord Acton, 5 July, 1861)”.
Education is, of course, one of the areas of Irish life in which the authority of the Catholic Church is contested nowadays almost as a matter of course. A Minister for Education in the past may have considered himself the“dungaree man”, obliged to ensure the machine was running smoothly, but in no wise desirous of driving it. More recent Ministers have evinced a more enlarged view of their powers, duties and functions. They are in charge, ready, willing and able to let all and sundry, Catholic authorities especially, know who is boss. Unfortunately, it seems that they are boss only of the easy bits. In the name of greater inclusivity they propose legislation on schools’ admissions but have not yet commenced all the provisions of the Education for Persons with Special Educational Needs Act. They insist (rightly) on the duty of Boards to protect children but still drag their heels on the judgement of the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights in O’Keeffe v. Ireland. They are daring, but only up to a point, and, maybe, our own Sir Humphreys know well that the best way to stop a Minister in her or his tracks is to intimate that what s/he proposes is “courageous”.
Fortitude is the Cardinal Virtue “that ensures firmness in difficulties and constancy in the pursuit of the good (CCC, 1808)”. It is also the name given that Gift of the Holy Spirit which “gives us a special strength … to spread and defend the faith by word and action as true witnesses of Christ, to confess the name of Christ boldly, and never to be ashamed of the Cross (ib., 1303)”. Fortitude, “costly courage”, is a prerequisite of effective leadership at all levels in the Catholic Church in Ireland today. It is a sine qua non of effective governance, management and leadership in Catholic schools.
LUX EDMUNDI: REFLECTION: APRIL, 2017
Pope St. John Paul II took the command of Christ to Simon Peter “Duc in altum”, “Put out into the deep (Luke 5:4)”, as the motto for the Church on the eve of the Third Millennium. By reflecting on the account of the Miraculous Draughts of Fishes from which these words come, by praying about it, Catholic school authorities may find the light to see, and strength to do, what God asks of them in these undoubtedly challenging times.
The context is this: Christ had just used Simon’s boat as a pulpit and, his sermon over, he told Simon to go back out into the lake to fish. Simon is respectful, a little sceptical maybe, but, ultimately, compliant: “Master, the whole night we have been labouring and caught nothing – but at your word I shall let down the nets”. Extraordinarily, he landed his largest catch ever.
Those who manage Catholic schools in Ireland today will tell you that they cannot be sure any more that all those employed as teachers in those schools will be men and women of faith, much less that they will meet the canonical requirement that they be “outstanding in correct doctrine and integrity of life (can. 803.2)”. They cannot be sure, either, they say, that their Catholic students will engage in any kind of faith activity whatsoever outside school, or that the respective parents of those students will be at all equipped to hand on the faith in the home. This, they insist, is the reality they face day-in, day-out, and they can be at a loss as to know how, precisely, they can effectively discharge their responsibility for the faith formation of those in their care. Like Simon, they feel that they have exhausted themselves in what, as far as their admittedly human eyes can see, appears, more and more, to be a virtually impossible task.
These concerns must be heeded. They are a reading of “the signs of the times” in our schools by those best-placed to do just that; by people whose professional competence is beyond question and whose commitment to Catholic education is exemplary. It isn’t just that these men and women feel they have “caught nothing” but that, in purely human terms, they wonder if, given the circumstances, they ever will.
It is, of course, essential that we be realistic in our assessment of any situation we are asked to address. We must not, however, cede the ground to those who seem to believe that, once they have warned the rest of us to “get real”, they have exhausted all possible responses to the challenges we most undoubtedly face in seeking to form the young in Christ. We simply do not have the option of “fishing” no more. In purely civil terms, we remain obliged to discharge our statutory obligations for the day-to-day management of the schools in which we serve. In that context – and still in purely legal, contractual and professional terms – we are, and must operate as, the first and most crucial agents of the board of management in its endeavour to comply with its statutory obligation to uphold, and to be accountable to the patron for so up-holding, the characteristic spirit of the schools as, in effect, determined by the patron. We have no right to go easy on the Catholic side of things, so to speak, not even on the grounds that our efforts in that direction must inevitably fail.
However, we must not - we cannot - ever forget that we are employed to lead and manage faith-based schools; that, in fact, whilst it is the board which appoints us, it is, in the eyes of faith, Christ who commissions us to “make disciples of all … , teaching them to keep everything that I have commanded you (Mt 28:19-20)”. We are the instruments of Christ in evangelising all those with whose religious, moral and spiritual education we are charged. It is not, of course, all down to us. Paul plants, Apollos waters but it is always God – and, it must be remembered, only God - who gives the growth (cf. I Cor 3:6). Again and again, whether the time is right or not (cf. II Tim 4:2), we must put out into the deep and lay down our nets. This is our part. The “catch” is his. We must work as if everything depended on us but, at the same time, we must pray as if everything depended on him. The real lesson here may very well be that our nets are empty, not because others do not believe enough, but because we ourselves do not pray enough; do not pester God with our importunate demands, banging loud and long on his door, demanding on this occasion, not bread, but “fish” (cf. Lk 11:5-8).
Pope St. John Paul II took the command of Christ to Simon Peter “Duc in altum”, “Put out into the deep (Luke 5:4)”, as the motto for the Church on the eve of the Third Millennium. By reflecting on the account of the Miraculous Draughts of Fishes from which these words come, by praying about it, Catholic school authorities may find the light to see, and strength to do, what God asks of them in these undoubtedly challenging times.
The context is this: Christ had just used Simon’s boat as a pulpit and, his sermon over, he told Simon to go back out into the lake to fish. Simon is respectful, a little sceptical maybe, but, ultimately, compliant: “Master, the whole night we have been labouring and caught nothing – but at your word I shall let down the nets”. Extraordinarily, he landed his largest catch ever.
Those who manage Catholic schools in Ireland today will tell you that they cannot be sure any more that all those employed as teachers in those schools will be men and women of faith, much less that they will meet the canonical requirement that they be “outstanding in correct doctrine and integrity of life (can. 803.2)”. They cannot be sure, either, they say, that their Catholic students will engage in any kind of faith activity whatsoever outside school, or that the respective parents of those students will be at all equipped to hand on the faith in the home. This, they insist, is the reality they face day-in, day-out, and they can be at a loss as to know how, precisely, they can effectively discharge their responsibility for the faith formation of those in their care. Like Simon, they feel that they have exhausted themselves in what, as far as their admittedly human eyes can see, appears, more and more, to be a virtually impossible task.
These concerns must be heeded. They are a reading of “the signs of the times” in our schools by those best-placed to do just that; by people whose professional competence is beyond question and whose commitment to Catholic education is exemplary. It isn’t just that these men and women feel they have “caught nothing” but that, in purely human terms, they wonder if, given the circumstances, they ever will.
It is, of course, essential that we be realistic in our assessment of any situation we are asked to address. We must not, however, cede the ground to those who seem to believe that, once they have warned the rest of us to “get real”, they have exhausted all possible responses to the challenges we most undoubtedly face in seeking to form the young in Christ. We simply do not have the option of “fishing” no more. In purely civil terms, we remain obliged to discharge our statutory obligations for the day-to-day management of the schools in which we serve. In that context – and still in purely legal, contractual and professional terms – we are, and must operate as, the first and most crucial agents of the board of management in its endeavour to comply with its statutory obligation to uphold, and to be accountable to the patron for so up-holding, the characteristic spirit of the schools as, in effect, determined by the patron. We have no right to go easy on the Catholic side of things, so to speak, not even on the grounds that our efforts in that direction must inevitably fail.
However, we must not - we cannot - ever forget that we are employed to lead and manage faith-based schools; that, in fact, whilst it is the board which appoints us, it is, in the eyes of faith, Christ who commissions us to “make disciples of all … , teaching them to keep everything that I have commanded you (Mt 28:19-20)”. We are the instruments of Christ in evangelising all those with whose religious, moral and spiritual education we are charged. It is not, of course, all down to us. Paul plants, Apollos waters but it is always God – and, it must be remembered, only God - who gives the growth (cf. I Cor 3:6). Again and again, whether the time is right or not (cf. II Tim 4:2), we must put out into the deep and lay down our nets. This is our part. The “catch” is his. We must work as if everything depended on us but, at the same time, we must pray as if everything depended on him. The real lesson here may very well be that our nets are empty, not because others do not believe enough, but because we ourselves do not pray enough; do not pester God with our importunate demands, banging loud and long on his door, demanding on this occasion, not bread, but “fish” (cf. Lk 11:5-8).
LUX EDMUNDI: REFLECTION: MARCH, 2017
The Gospel for the First Sunday of Lent in Cycle A is Matthew’s account of the temptation of Christ (4:1-11). We find here food for thought and grounds for prayer for all involved in Catholic education in Ireland. Satan first urges Christ to turn stone into bread. Catholic schools in Ireland have sought to prepare the young people committed to their care, including – sometimes especially - those oppressed by poverty or injustice, “to earn a crust”, as the saying goes. They have helped them recognise and develop their God-given talents, acquire qualifications, and so make their way in the world. Admirable in itself as it undoubtedly is, this drive for “bread” has had, however, some unintended, but still deleterious, consequences for those meant to benefit from it. There is no doubt that pupils in some Catholic schools were driven with stick and strap towards academic success and the “bread” that accrued to them in life as a result was too often salted with a bitter resentment towards their former teachers and to all they stood for, religion included. Besides, the drive for “bread”, and for the examination results that eventually facilitated – for some at least - the purchase of that “bread” in large quantities, sometimes displaced the aboriginal drive to share with our charges “every word that proceeds from the mouth of God” and the past-pupils we commend as examples of success – if not, indeed, as templates of humanity – are those who have climbed highest, not necessarily on Jacob’s ladder, but on whatever greasy pole they sought to conquer.
Satan next urges Christ to chance it, to jump from a huge height, to test if God would send his angels to be, as it were, the wind beneath his wings. This may be read as a typically – Satan is “the father of lies” - distorted version of the biblical truth that, if God is with us, it hardly matters who may be against. The notion, in turn, that God is more or less automatically with us because we do his work has, arguably, caused incalculable damage to the standing and, even more disastrously, to the mission, of the Church in Ireland. When we were in our pomp, we assumed we could do no wrong and assumed, therefore, that our policies and our practices must, ipso facto, be beyond reproach and beyond challenge. There was no possibility that opponents could be right. Thus, there never was anything like a real process of discernment, or a genuine examen of conscience, to test our assumption of moral superiority and nothing, therefore, like contrition, confession or satisfaction for anything at all we did, no matter what. How could there be any question of repentance if we could do no wrong and why would we need conversion if we were, obviously, really good people? This sense of our own impeccability bore unspeakably sad and bitter fruit for many, especially “the least”, who had the utter misfortune to end up in our so-holy hands.
Satan finally urges Christ to bend the knee to him and so win supreme authority throughout the world to do all the good Christ had, in fact, come to do. In the first 50 years of our independence, the Church, first, in the Irish Free State, then, in the Republic of Ireland, expected and got full co-operation from the State in all to do with education. Ministers openly acknowledged that, as far as education was concerned, the State was at the service of the Church and Catholic school authorities seldom hesitated to press their advantage in this context. We brooked neither dissent nor disagreement in anything to do, not just with our schools, but with any schools. “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely”. We became authoritarian and used our authority, not for service, but for power. We could, and should, have washed the feet of those over whom we were set. We didn’t and we will answer for it at the Judgement. “Those were different times”, “We did our best”, “It was only a few of us”: These statements for the defence will not get us off. We need, this Lent, to open our eyes to God’s truth, our hearts to his justice, and we do need to repent.
The Gospel for the First Sunday of Lent in Cycle A is Matthew’s account of the temptation of Christ (4:1-11). We find here food for thought and grounds for prayer for all involved in Catholic education in Ireland. Satan first urges Christ to turn stone into bread. Catholic schools in Ireland have sought to prepare the young people committed to their care, including – sometimes especially - those oppressed by poverty or injustice, “to earn a crust”, as the saying goes. They have helped them recognise and develop their God-given talents, acquire qualifications, and so make their way in the world. Admirable in itself as it undoubtedly is, this drive for “bread” has had, however, some unintended, but still deleterious, consequences for those meant to benefit from it. There is no doubt that pupils in some Catholic schools were driven with stick and strap towards academic success and the “bread” that accrued to them in life as a result was too often salted with a bitter resentment towards their former teachers and to all they stood for, religion included. Besides, the drive for “bread”, and for the examination results that eventually facilitated – for some at least - the purchase of that “bread” in large quantities, sometimes displaced the aboriginal drive to share with our charges “every word that proceeds from the mouth of God” and the past-pupils we commend as examples of success – if not, indeed, as templates of humanity – are those who have climbed highest, not necessarily on Jacob’s ladder, but on whatever greasy pole they sought to conquer.
Satan next urges Christ to chance it, to jump from a huge height, to test if God would send his angels to be, as it were, the wind beneath his wings. This may be read as a typically – Satan is “the father of lies” - distorted version of the biblical truth that, if God is with us, it hardly matters who may be against. The notion, in turn, that God is more or less automatically with us because we do his work has, arguably, caused incalculable damage to the standing and, even more disastrously, to the mission, of the Church in Ireland. When we were in our pomp, we assumed we could do no wrong and assumed, therefore, that our policies and our practices must, ipso facto, be beyond reproach and beyond challenge. There was no possibility that opponents could be right. Thus, there never was anything like a real process of discernment, or a genuine examen of conscience, to test our assumption of moral superiority and nothing, therefore, like contrition, confession or satisfaction for anything at all we did, no matter what. How could there be any question of repentance if we could do no wrong and why would we need conversion if we were, obviously, really good people? This sense of our own impeccability bore unspeakably sad and bitter fruit for many, especially “the least”, who had the utter misfortune to end up in our so-holy hands.
Satan finally urges Christ to bend the knee to him and so win supreme authority throughout the world to do all the good Christ had, in fact, come to do. In the first 50 years of our independence, the Church, first, in the Irish Free State, then, in the Republic of Ireland, expected and got full co-operation from the State in all to do with education. Ministers openly acknowledged that, as far as education was concerned, the State was at the service of the Church and Catholic school authorities seldom hesitated to press their advantage in this context. We brooked neither dissent nor disagreement in anything to do, not just with our schools, but with any schools. “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely”. We became authoritarian and used our authority, not for service, but for power. We could, and should, have washed the feet of those over whom we were set. We didn’t and we will answer for it at the Judgement. “Those were different times”, “We did our best”, “It was only a few of us”: These statements for the defence will not get us off. We need, this Lent, to open our eyes to God’s truth, our hearts to his justice, and we do need to repent.
LUX EDMUNDI: REFLECTION: FEBRUARY – LENT, 2017
Wednesday, 1st March, 2017, is Ash Wednesday, the first day of the liturgical season of Lent which, as the Irish Catholic Catechism for Adults puts it, “is an annual period of forty days beginning on Ash Wednesday, which is set aside for penance, fasting and almsgiving in preparation for the coming celebration of Easter. It is modelled in part on the forty days that Jesus spent in the desert prior to beginning his public ministry. The penance, fasting and almsgiving are meant to help lead the believer to ongoing conversion and a deeper faith in the lord who redeemed us (pp. 559-560)”.
In the original Greek of the New Testament, the noun which recurs in the relevant passages is metanoia, which is often translated as “repentance”, “conversion”. To us, “repentance” may suggest “being sorry for one’s sins” and “conversion” is likely to suggest “changing from one religion or religious denomination to another”. Metanoia definitely requires that we have a genuine sorrow for our sins and that that sorrow be informed by a real purpose of amendment, by a real determination that, with the grace of God, we will not, in effect, fail God and/or the neighbour again. It is, in fact, this resolve to live hence-forth in Christ that indicates a more complete understanding of “conversion”. Metanoia entails a change of direction, a real, profound and enduring re-orientation of our thinking and saying and doing towards God and the neighbour. This may be, as in the case of St. Paul, an event. More often, though, it is a process, a gradual re-making by grace of our inner being in the image and likeness of the God by whom we were created, in the image and likeness of Christ in whom we have been re-created.
The Season of Lent is that in which we are especially called by grace to make time, to get back to basics, back to God, to look at ourselves in the light of his Face, to ascertain where, in fact, we stand with him, whether he is really and truly our Rising Sun, our True North.
For teachers, in general, for principals, in particular, the urgent too often takes precedence over the important. The urgent takes many forms: The teachers who rang in sick this morning, the student who has just been referred for an alleged act of gross misconduct, the one whose parents are right here in the office threatening to bring us to law if we do not get rid of this teacher or that. Each and all such circumstances must be addressed immediately. If, however, we are so immersed in the helter-skelter of everyday life in school that we take this to be the raison d’etre of our professional lives, if we never take time to think - and, as leaders of Catholic schools, to pray - about what we do and why we do it, our professional vision will become impaired, and, the research literature assures us, our effectiveness as governors, managers and leaders will be inhibited to one degree or another.
Those who govern, manage and lead Catholic schools must deal with the urgent and attend to the important. They must not regard prayer and reflection as necessary for others but not for them. They must, in fact, in this – as in so much else – lead by example. Otherwise, they will do what “the gates of Hell” have, thus far, tried but failed to do, viz., eviscerate our schools of their Catholicity.
“Come back to me with all your hearts”: This invitation is addressed this Lent to all who work in and for Catholic schools, most especially to those who govern, manage and lead them. It asks us to consider whether, in the cult of Know-How, we have, to the detriment of those we serve, neglected the Know-Why. “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me”.
Wednesday, 1st March, 2017, is Ash Wednesday, the first day of the liturgical season of Lent which, as the Irish Catholic Catechism for Adults puts it, “is an annual period of forty days beginning on Ash Wednesday, which is set aside for penance, fasting and almsgiving in preparation for the coming celebration of Easter. It is modelled in part on the forty days that Jesus spent in the desert prior to beginning his public ministry. The penance, fasting and almsgiving are meant to help lead the believer to ongoing conversion and a deeper faith in the lord who redeemed us (pp. 559-560)”.
In the original Greek of the New Testament, the noun which recurs in the relevant passages is metanoia, which is often translated as “repentance”, “conversion”. To us, “repentance” may suggest “being sorry for one’s sins” and “conversion” is likely to suggest “changing from one religion or religious denomination to another”. Metanoia definitely requires that we have a genuine sorrow for our sins and that that sorrow be informed by a real purpose of amendment, by a real determination that, with the grace of God, we will not, in effect, fail God and/or the neighbour again. It is, in fact, this resolve to live hence-forth in Christ that indicates a more complete understanding of “conversion”. Metanoia entails a change of direction, a real, profound and enduring re-orientation of our thinking and saying and doing towards God and the neighbour. This may be, as in the case of St. Paul, an event. More often, though, it is a process, a gradual re-making by grace of our inner being in the image and likeness of the God by whom we were created, in the image and likeness of Christ in whom we have been re-created.
The Season of Lent is that in which we are especially called by grace to make time, to get back to basics, back to God, to look at ourselves in the light of his Face, to ascertain where, in fact, we stand with him, whether he is really and truly our Rising Sun, our True North.
For teachers, in general, for principals, in particular, the urgent too often takes precedence over the important. The urgent takes many forms: The teachers who rang in sick this morning, the student who has just been referred for an alleged act of gross misconduct, the one whose parents are right here in the office threatening to bring us to law if we do not get rid of this teacher or that. Each and all such circumstances must be addressed immediately. If, however, we are so immersed in the helter-skelter of everyday life in school that we take this to be the raison d’etre of our professional lives, if we never take time to think - and, as leaders of Catholic schools, to pray - about what we do and why we do it, our professional vision will become impaired, and, the research literature assures us, our effectiveness as governors, managers and leaders will be inhibited to one degree or another.
Those who govern, manage and lead Catholic schools must deal with the urgent and attend to the important. They must not regard prayer and reflection as necessary for others but not for them. They must, in fact, in this – as in so much else – lead by example. Otherwise, they will do what “the gates of Hell” have, thus far, tried but failed to do, viz., eviscerate our schools of their Catholicity.
“Come back to me with all your hearts”: This invitation is addressed this Lent to all who work in and for Catholic schools, most especially to those who govern, manage and lead them. It asks us to consider whether, in the cult of Know-How, we have, to the detriment of those we serve, neglected the Know-Why. “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me”.
LUX EDMUNDI: REFLECTION FOR THE FEAST OF THE PRESENTATION OF THE LORD IN THE TEMPLE
The Feast of the Presentation of the Lord in the Temple, Candlemas, falls on Thursday, 2nd February. This is the patronal feast of Lux Edmundi, an occasion for each of us to re-new our personal commitment to the service of youth for the sake of the Gospel in the apostolate of the school, after the example, and in the charism, of Blessed Edmund Ignatius Rice.
This is the feast of Christ as Light for the nations and the glory of Israel. Jesus was presented in the Temple in accordance with the Law. We must never forget that Jesus himself, Mary, his Mother, Joseph, his legal father, the apostles and the earliest disciples, were Jews. Joseph was a “just man”, a man of the Law. “James the Just”, “brother of the Lord”, a son of Joseph by a previous marriage, according to one tradition, and, thus, to human eyes, an agnate sibling, a paternal half-brother, of Jesus, was a “pillar” of the Jerusalem Church, a participant in crucial meetings there with Peter and Paul, and also renowned for his zeal, first for the Old, then for the New Law. In human terms, respect for the Law, for being a Jew, was one of the gifts of Joseph to Jesus. Jesus, therefore, was reared in Nazareth as a Jew of his time and place and, though he challenged the religious authorities of the day in their reading of the Law, his mission was, not to destroy, but to fulfil, the Law.
This is, besides, an occasion when we might reflect, too, on the raison d’etre of Lux Edmundi, viz.,the proclamation of Christ Jesus, not alone as the image of the invisible God, but as the image also of humanity at its most authentic. In the words of Gaudium et Spes, the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, promulgated at the Second Vatican Council on 7th December, 1964 – and, with immediate reference to this specific passage, cited and quoted repeatedly thereafter by Pope St. John Paul II: “In reality it is only in the mystery of the Word made flesh that the mystery of man truly becomes clear. For Adam, the first man, was a type of him who was to come, Christ the Lord, the new Adam, in the very revelation of the mystery of the Father and of his love, fully reveals man to himself and brings to light his most high calling. … He who is the ‘image of the invisible God (Col 1:15)’, is himself the perfect man who has restored in the children of Adam that likeness to God which had been disfigured ever since the first sin. Human nature, by the very fact that it was assumed, not absorbed, in him, has been raised in us also to a dignity beyond compare (para. 22)”.
As, in effect, thus shown to be the pattern and paradigm of humanity at it is meant by God to be, as, indeed, the only means by which humanity can be rightly understood, interpreted and explained, Christ is the source and the summit, the centre and circumference, of Catholic formation, Catholic education, the Catholic school. He is what we are about and, whilst we must, of necessity, protect and promote Catholic doctrine and Catholic practice, ultimately, the sole and exclusive object of our dedication is not a creed or a dogma, not an institution or even a particular religious identity. First, last and always, we are committed to a person, to the person of Christ, in respect of whom each one of us must, in our moment in the region of Caesaria Philippi, answer him directly when he asks – when, indeed, he challenges - “What about you? Who do you say I am” (Cf. Matthew 16: 13-20).
We will, of course, think and pray at Candlemas and after about the Schools Admissions Bill, the Parents’ and Students’ Charter, Junior Certificate reform, strike ballots, and God alone knows what else. However, if we do not take time to get down to Christ, ever and always the real, the only, nitty gritty of what we are and of what we are about, it will be, not this Minister or that, not the media, but we ourselves who will, inevitably, eviscerate our Catholic schools of their very Catholicity.
The Feast of the Presentation of the Lord in the Temple, Candlemas, falls on Thursday, 2nd February. This is the patronal feast of Lux Edmundi, an occasion for each of us to re-new our personal commitment to the service of youth for the sake of the Gospel in the apostolate of the school, after the example, and in the charism, of Blessed Edmund Ignatius Rice.
This is the feast of Christ as Light for the nations and the glory of Israel. Jesus was presented in the Temple in accordance with the Law. We must never forget that Jesus himself, Mary, his Mother, Joseph, his legal father, the apostles and the earliest disciples, were Jews. Joseph was a “just man”, a man of the Law. “James the Just”, “brother of the Lord”, a son of Joseph by a previous marriage, according to one tradition, and, thus, to human eyes, an agnate sibling, a paternal half-brother, of Jesus, was a “pillar” of the Jerusalem Church, a participant in crucial meetings there with Peter and Paul, and also renowned for his zeal, first for the Old, then for the New Law. In human terms, respect for the Law, for being a Jew, was one of the gifts of Joseph to Jesus. Jesus, therefore, was reared in Nazareth as a Jew of his time and place and, though he challenged the religious authorities of the day in their reading of the Law, his mission was, not to destroy, but to fulfil, the Law.
This is, besides, an occasion when we might reflect, too, on the raison d’etre of Lux Edmundi, viz.,the proclamation of Christ Jesus, not alone as the image of the invisible God, but as the image also of humanity at its most authentic. In the words of Gaudium et Spes, the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, promulgated at the Second Vatican Council on 7th December, 1964 – and, with immediate reference to this specific passage, cited and quoted repeatedly thereafter by Pope St. John Paul II: “In reality it is only in the mystery of the Word made flesh that the mystery of man truly becomes clear. For Adam, the first man, was a type of him who was to come, Christ the Lord, the new Adam, in the very revelation of the mystery of the Father and of his love, fully reveals man to himself and brings to light his most high calling. … He who is the ‘image of the invisible God (Col 1:15)’, is himself the perfect man who has restored in the children of Adam that likeness to God which had been disfigured ever since the first sin. Human nature, by the very fact that it was assumed, not absorbed, in him, has been raised in us also to a dignity beyond compare (para. 22)”.
As, in effect, thus shown to be the pattern and paradigm of humanity at it is meant by God to be, as, indeed, the only means by which humanity can be rightly understood, interpreted and explained, Christ is the source and the summit, the centre and circumference, of Catholic formation, Catholic education, the Catholic school. He is what we are about and, whilst we must, of necessity, protect and promote Catholic doctrine and Catholic practice, ultimately, the sole and exclusive object of our dedication is not a creed or a dogma, not an institution or even a particular religious identity. First, last and always, we are committed to a person, to the person of Christ, in respect of whom each one of us must, in our moment in the region of Caesaria Philippi, answer him directly when he asks – when, indeed, he challenges - “What about you? Who do you say I am” (Cf. Matthew 16: 13-20).
We will, of course, think and pray at Candlemas and after about the Schools Admissions Bill, the Parents’ and Students’ Charter, Junior Certificate reform, strike ballots, and God alone knows what else. However, if we do not take time to get down to Christ, ever and always the real, the only, nitty gritty of what we are and of what we are about, it will be, not this Minister or that, not the media, but we ourselves who will, inevitably, eviscerate our Catholic schools of their very Catholicity.
LUX EDMUNDI: REFLECTION: JANUARY, 2017
On Monday, 5th December, 2016, the Minister for Education and Skills, Richard Bruton, TD, published the General Scheme of an Education (Parent and Student Charter) Bill and an associated Regulatory Impact Analysis Report (both readily available at the website of the Department of Education and Skills, www.education.ie). The CPSMA Newsletter for December 2016 described this as “by far the most significant piece of legislation to affect schools for some time”.
The various bodies representing school patrons, managers, teachers, principals/deputies, parents, students, will have their own internal discussions. They will feed their conclusions and recommendations into the national debate and seek by all lawful means to influence the legislation for – as they see it – its betterment. There will be concern on all sides, not least that those who manage our schools day-to-day, and who will inevitably carry the additional and heavy responsibility for operating the eventual Act, have all the supports they will need to implement the provisions of any such Act as effectively as possible.
It is worth emphasising, though, that both Church and State in Ireland may be deemed morally obliged by their own respective principles to support this Bill, to contribute to its formulation, to cooperate towards its enactment and towards its implementation once enacted. Bunreacht na hÉireann makes strong provision for the respective rights both of parents and of children. It is generally agreed that this Constitution, adopted by the citizens of the Republic of Ireland in 1937, was influenced in its drafting by the teaching of the Catholic Church, especially in those articles which deal with the family, education and religion and there can be no doubt whatsoever that the Magisterium of the Catholic Church has long insisted that the rights of parents in relation to the education of their children are God-given, sacrosanct and paramount, something for which popes and bishops will always “speak truth unto power”.
It may, therefore, be deemed nothing less than providential that a bill along these lines will be processed by the Oireachtas in 2017. This, it should be noted, is a year of preparation for two major Church events to be held in 2018, viz., The Ninth World Meeting of Families on the theme “The Gospel of the Family: Joy for the World” to be hosted by the Irish Church in Dublin in August, and the XVth Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops on the theme “Youth, Faith and Vocational Discernment” to be held in Rome in October.
The give a statutory basis to home-school relations, to enable parents and/or students vindicate their respective rights in their dealings with school authorities, would seem to accord very closely with the Social Doctrine of the Church and to constitute as such a fitting means, an actual grace, by which the People of God in Ireland ready itself, under God, to make its contribution to these events. When all is said and done, the objectives of the Bill in question here would seem to be such as Catholic schools might seek to achieve anyway. We must, of course, be unrelenting in challenging the powers that be lest they require us by law to make bricks without straw. We must, though, also challenge ourselves to acknowledge and accept our prior and abiding responsibility to treat all with whom we deal in our schools with the respect to which, as sons and daughters of our Father in heaven, brothers and sisters in Christ, they are entitled. The Catholic school should, in this, be an “upper room”, a place where we whose Master washes the feet of the disciples, always use our authority, not for power but for service, not for our own good but for that of those we are called by God to shepherd.
On Monday, 5th December, 2016, the Minister for Education and Skills, Richard Bruton, TD, published the General Scheme of an Education (Parent and Student Charter) Bill and an associated Regulatory Impact Analysis Report (both readily available at the website of the Department of Education and Skills, www.education.ie). The CPSMA Newsletter for December 2016 described this as “by far the most significant piece of legislation to affect schools for some time”.
The various bodies representing school patrons, managers, teachers, principals/deputies, parents, students, will have their own internal discussions. They will feed their conclusions and recommendations into the national debate and seek by all lawful means to influence the legislation for – as they see it – its betterment. There will be concern on all sides, not least that those who manage our schools day-to-day, and who will inevitably carry the additional and heavy responsibility for operating the eventual Act, have all the supports they will need to implement the provisions of any such Act as effectively as possible.
It is worth emphasising, though, that both Church and State in Ireland may be deemed morally obliged by their own respective principles to support this Bill, to contribute to its formulation, to cooperate towards its enactment and towards its implementation once enacted. Bunreacht na hÉireann makes strong provision for the respective rights both of parents and of children. It is generally agreed that this Constitution, adopted by the citizens of the Republic of Ireland in 1937, was influenced in its drafting by the teaching of the Catholic Church, especially in those articles which deal with the family, education and religion and there can be no doubt whatsoever that the Magisterium of the Catholic Church has long insisted that the rights of parents in relation to the education of their children are God-given, sacrosanct and paramount, something for which popes and bishops will always “speak truth unto power”.
It may, therefore, be deemed nothing less than providential that a bill along these lines will be processed by the Oireachtas in 2017. This, it should be noted, is a year of preparation for two major Church events to be held in 2018, viz., The Ninth World Meeting of Families on the theme “The Gospel of the Family: Joy for the World” to be hosted by the Irish Church in Dublin in August, and the XVth Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops on the theme “Youth, Faith and Vocational Discernment” to be held in Rome in October.
The give a statutory basis to home-school relations, to enable parents and/or students vindicate their respective rights in their dealings with school authorities, would seem to accord very closely with the Social Doctrine of the Church and to constitute as such a fitting means, an actual grace, by which the People of God in Ireland ready itself, under God, to make its contribution to these events. When all is said and done, the objectives of the Bill in question here would seem to be such as Catholic schools might seek to achieve anyway. We must, of course, be unrelenting in challenging the powers that be lest they require us by law to make bricks without straw. We must, though, also challenge ourselves to acknowledge and accept our prior and abiding responsibility to treat all with whom we deal in our schools with the respect to which, as sons and daughters of our Father in heaven, brothers and sisters in Christ, they are entitled. The Catholic school should, in this, be an “upper room”, a place where we whose Master washes the feet of the disciples, always use our authority, not for power but for service, not for our own good but for that of those we are called by God to shepherd.
LUX EDMUNDI: CHRISTMAS, 2016
Stalin described writers as “engineers of human souls”. Their function - the function, indeed, of all creative and cultural activities under the Soviet system – was to help the workers make and mend themselves in character and in commitment the better to serve the Revolution, the State, the Party. Schools, too, were required to contribute to the development of the “new Soviet man”. “We must”, wrote one theorist, “make the young into a generation of Communists. … We must nationalise them. From the earliest days of their little lives, they must find themselves under the beneficent influence of Communist schools. …”.
The Nazis were also dedicated to the creation of a new humanity, purified of all influences, genetic and other, emanating from those categorised as “untermenschen”, sub-humans, whether individuals or whole peoples. In this, the National Socialist German Workers’ Party followed its understanding of the philosophy of Friedrich William Nietzsche (1844-1900) and, especially, of his notion of the Ubermensch, the Overman, the Superman. For Hitler and his followers, the Superman would come from Aryan stock, from the brightest and best of the Nordic races, from the Germanic peoples especially. Their reading – some insist it is a misreading – of Nietzche conflated his concept of the Ubermensch and his image of “the blond beast”, a beast of prey, “a conqueror and master race which, organised for war … unhesitatingly lays its terrible claws upon a populace”. This mish-mash of philosophical and genetic lies, half-truths and misconceptions supplied the frame of reference for education throughout the Reich. As Bernhard Rust, Minister for Science, Education and Cultural Affairs in Hitler’s government, put it: “The whole function of education is to create NAZIs”.
Capitalism, of course, does not come before the court of history with clean hands. It, too, has a view of the kind of person the education system should endeavour to produce and, in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), it has what is, to all intents and purposes, its own “Department of Education”, whose influence conditions – maybe, indeed, determines – governmental thinking on education across the globe, including in the Republic of Ireland. The OECD takes it as given that governments invest in education to serve the market. The purpose of such investment, consequently, is ensure that boys and girls, men and women, are taught and trained – and, to deconstruct its advocacy of life-long learning, re-trained, as and when the market requires – to be a kind of economic homo habilis, a person ready, willing and able to generate a better and better return on whatever is invested by whomsoever in her or his educational development. Unintentionally it may be, but this understanding of the means and modes of teaching and learning still cultivates the Wolf of Wall Street, so to speak, who thinks greed is good and has no real moral or other problem with a world in which, in effect, the Haves have more and more, the Have Nots, less and less.
These “isms” see the human person as a means to an end. The value of this human or that is calculated with reference, not to any inherent dignity, but to the extent to which this person contributes to the achievement of a given objective. The inevitable result is the instrumentalisation, the dehumanisation, the reification, of men and women, and, in the case of the “non-producers”, their utter marginalisation and, even, elimination.
The answer, the antidote, to this utterly reductive process lies before us in the Crib, the Holy Infant Jesus, the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity, the Word of God, begotten of the Father before time began, born at the appointed time of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Light from Light, the Light of the Nations, the Light in which we see light. His is the only name given us under heaven by which we can be saved. He, and he alone, is the ground and the bulwark of human dignity. He is the means and the end of the (re)humanisation – of, indeed, the deification - of every single man and woman the world over. Let each and all of us involved in any way in Catholic education take time this Holy Season to kneel before the Crib, to acknowledge that this newborn Child is our raison d’etre, that it is he who makes sense of what we are, and of what we do, in the service of youth for the sake of the Gospel. Venite adoremus dominum!
Stalin described writers as “engineers of human souls”. Their function - the function, indeed, of all creative and cultural activities under the Soviet system – was to help the workers make and mend themselves in character and in commitment the better to serve the Revolution, the State, the Party. Schools, too, were required to contribute to the development of the “new Soviet man”. “We must”, wrote one theorist, “make the young into a generation of Communists. … We must nationalise them. From the earliest days of their little lives, they must find themselves under the beneficent influence of Communist schools. …”.
The Nazis were also dedicated to the creation of a new humanity, purified of all influences, genetic and other, emanating from those categorised as “untermenschen”, sub-humans, whether individuals or whole peoples. In this, the National Socialist German Workers’ Party followed its understanding of the philosophy of Friedrich William Nietzsche (1844-1900) and, especially, of his notion of the Ubermensch, the Overman, the Superman. For Hitler and his followers, the Superman would come from Aryan stock, from the brightest and best of the Nordic races, from the Germanic peoples especially. Their reading – some insist it is a misreading – of Nietzche conflated his concept of the Ubermensch and his image of “the blond beast”, a beast of prey, “a conqueror and master race which, organised for war … unhesitatingly lays its terrible claws upon a populace”. This mish-mash of philosophical and genetic lies, half-truths and misconceptions supplied the frame of reference for education throughout the Reich. As Bernhard Rust, Minister for Science, Education and Cultural Affairs in Hitler’s government, put it: “The whole function of education is to create NAZIs”.
Capitalism, of course, does not come before the court of history with clean hands. It, too, has a view of the kind of person the education system should endeavour to produce and, in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), it has what is, to all intents and purposes, its own “Department of Education”, whose influence conditions – maybe, indeed, determines – governmental thinking on education across the globe, including in the Republic of Ireland. The OECD takes it as given that governments invest in education to serve the market. The purpose of such investment, consequently, is ensure that boys and girls, men and women, are taught and trained – and, to deconstruct its advocacy of life-long learning, re-trained, as and when the market requires – to be a kind of economic homo habilis, a person ready, willing and able to generate a better and better return on whatever is invested by whomsoever in her or his educational development. Unintentionally it may be, but this understanding of the means and modes of teaching and learning still cultivates the Wolf of Wall Street, so to speak, who thinks greed is good and has no real moral or other problem with a world in which, in effect, the Haves have more and more, the Have Nots, less and less.
These “isms” see the human person as a means to an end. The value of this human or that is calculated with reference, not to any inherent dignity, but to the extent to which this person contributes to the achievement of a given objective. The inevitable result is the instrumentalisation, the dehumanisation, the reification, of men and women, and, in the case of the “non-producers”, their utter marginalisation and, even, elimination.
The answer, the antidote, to this utterly reductive process lies before us in the Crib, the Holy Infant Jesus, the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity, the Word of God, begotten of the Father before time began, born at the appointed time of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Light from Light, the Light of the Nations, the Light in which we see light. His is the only name given us under heaven by which we can be saved. He, and he alone, is the ground and the bulwark of human dignity. He is the means and the end of the (re)humanisation – of, indeed, the deification - of every single man and woman the world over. Let each and all of us involved in any way in Catholic education take time this Holy Season to kneel before the Crib, to acknowledge that this newborn Child is our raison d’etre, that it is he who makes sense of what we are, and of what we do, in the service of youth for the sake of the Gospel. Venite adoremus dominum!
LUX EDMUNDI: REFLECTION: NOVEMBER, 2016
The editors of Cherishing all the Children Equally? Children in Ireland 100 years on from the Easter Rising (2016, ESRI) conclude: “On the basis of the evidence presented throughout the book, it would appear, regrettably, that the answer must be “No”. Much progress has been made over the last 100 years (particularly since the late 1970s) in the ways in which we think about children and view them as holding rights. … Nonetheless, it is unfortunately the case that much of the evidence presented in the series of essays in this book indicates that a great deal remains to be done to address some marked inequalities in child outcomes. In many aspects of their lives (albeit different to those of 1916), the outcomes and wellbeing of children and young people continue to be shaped, and indeed limited, by the circumstances of the family into which they are born (pp. 294-5)”.
In this, in the studies emanating from Growing Up in Ireland, in research across the globe on children and childhood, the evidence for the negative effects of socio-economic disadvantage on virtually every aspect of child development, especially in education, is massive and incontrovertible: The children of the Haves learn more and learn better than the children of the Have Nots.
In many countries, education is deemed the best way to break this cycle of disadvantage. Thomas Davis (1814-1845) put it well: “Educate that you may be free”. Davis probably wrote and worked from a secular perspective. Like the Nano Nagle (1718-1784) before them, his contemporaries, Edmund Rice (1762-1844), Catherine McAuley (1778-1841), Mary Aikenhead (1787-1858), wrote and worked from a religious, specifically a Catholic, perspective. They committed themselves by vows of religion to “a most serious application to the instruction of poor [children] in the principles of religion and Christian piety”. Driven by the conviction that what is done to “the least” is done to Christ himself (Matthew 25:31-45), they performed the Works of Mercy, and, assured that those who did so would shine like stars for all eternity (cf. Daniel 12:3), they instructed many unto justice.
The different religious congregations established by these people ensured that the original charism would survive and thrive. They took steps to ensure that the vision and mission they had inherited would neither depart from their schools nor die with them. They set up bodies to succeed them as Patrons/Trustees, managers and leaders, of the schools. In effect, the likes of CEIST, ERST, Le Chéile and PBST are there to ensure that the educational faith of our Founders lives on, in, and through them. To that end, these bodies, in their turn, have established boards of management to conduct the schools on their behalf, and, especially, to uphold, and to be accountable to their respective patrons for so upholding, the “characteristic spirit” of each school, the definitive constituent of which must be the founding charism of the school in question, its “ethical” DNA, as it were.
We do not know how our Founders would read any publication of the ESRI. We do know, though, they gave their all “to instruct the ignorant”, to provide as many as they could with the emancipatory and empowering capacities of a Catholic education. It is impossible to think that they would rest easy with the findings of investigations such as those cited here at the outset. They would take time and thought to ascertain before the face of God whether they and their schools were part of the solution or part of the problem. If we are to retain any moral entitlement at all to their name and to their charism, we can do no less.
The editors of Cherishing all the Children Equally? Children in Ireland 100 years on from the Easter Rising (2016, ESRI) conclude: “On the basis of the evidence presented throughout the book, it would appear, regrettably, that the answer must be “No”. Much progress has been made over the last 100 years (particularly since the late 1970s) in the ways in which we think about children and view them as holding rights. … Nonetheless, it is unfortunately the case that much of the evidence presented in the series of essays in this book indicates that a great deal remains to be done to address some marked inequalities in child outcomes. In many aspects of their lives (albeit different to those of 1916), the outcomes and wellbeing of children and young people continue to be shaped, and indeed limited, by the circumstances of the family into which they are born (pp. 294-5)”.
In this, in the studies emanating from Growing Up in Ireland, in research across the globe on children and childhood, the evidence for the negative effects of socio-economic disadvantage on virtually every aspect of child development, especially in education, is massive and incontrovertible: The children of the Haves learn more and learn better than the children of the Have Nots.
In many countries, education is deemed the best way to break this cycle of disadvantage. Thomas Davis (1814-1845) put it well: “Educate that you may be free”. Davis probably wrote and worked from a secular perspective. Like the Nano Nagle (1718-1784) before them, his contemporaries, Edmund Rice (1762-1844), Catherine McAuley (1778-1841), Mary Aikenhead (1787-1858), wrote and worked from a religious, specifically a Catholic, perspective. They committed themselves by vows of religion to “a most serious application to the instruction of poor [children] in the principles of religion and Christian piety”. Driven by the conviction that what is done to “the least” is done to Christ himself (Matthew 25:31-45), they performed the Works of Mercy, and, assured that those who did so would shine like stars for all eternity (cf. Daniel 12:3), they instructed many unto justice.
The different religious congregations established by these people ensured that the original charism would survive and thrive. They took steps to ensure that the vision and mission they had inherited would neither depart from their schools nor die with them. They set up bodies to succeed them as Patrons/Trustees, managers and leaders, of the schools. In effect, the likes of CEIST, ERST, Le Chéile and PBST are there to ensure that the educational faith of our Founders lives on, in, and through them. To that end, these bodies, in their turn, have established boards of management to conduct the schools on their behalf, and, especially, to uphold, and to be accountable to their respective patrons for so upholding, the “characteristic spirit” of each school, the definitive constituent of which must be the founding charism of the school in question, its “ethical” DNA, as it were.
We do not know how our Founders would read any publication of the ESRI. We do know, though, they gave their all “to instruct the ignorant”, to provide as many as they could with the emancipatory and empowering capacities of a Catholic education. It is impossible to think that they would rest easy with the findings of investigations such as those cited here at the outset. They would take time and thought to ascertain before the face of God whether they and their schools were part of the solution or part of the problem. If we are to retain any moral entitlement at all to their name and to their charism, we can do no less.
LUX EDMUNDI: REFLECTION: OCTOBER, 2016
The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church gives “a concise but complete overview of the Church’s social teaching”. “The Church, the sign in history of God’s love for humankind and of the vocation of the whole human race to unity as children of the one Father, intends with this document on her social doctrine to propose to all men and women a humanism that is up to the standards of God’s plan of love in history, an integral and solidary humanism capable of creating a new social, economic and political order, founded on the dignity and freedom of every human person, to be brought about in peace, justice and solidarity. This humanism can become a reality if individual men and women and their communities are able to cultivate moral and social virtues in themselves and spread them in society. ‘Then, under the necessary help of divine grace, there will arise a generation of new men [and women], the moulders of a new humanity’ (para. 19)”.
It has been emphasised repeatedly in these reflections that all instruments of education arise from, and issue in, some understanding of humanity, of its origins, its nature, its destiny. All, therefore, are, in one way or another, to one degree or another, “moulders of a new humanity”. Catholic schools are, most definitely, “moulders of a new humanity”. Their raison d’etre is the formation of the young in Christ Jesus, the eikon of the invisible God, the first born of all creation (cf. Col 1:15), the template, the paradigm, the means to, and the end of, humanity at its most authentic.
A new Leaving Certificate subject, Politics and Society, was introduced in a number of recognised post-primary schools in the Republic of Ireland on 1st September, 2016. Its aim is “to develop the learner’s capacity to engage in reflective and active citizenship informed by the insights and skills of social and political sciences”. Like the proposed Education about Religions and Beliefs (ERB) and Ethics curriculum for primary schools – Politics and Society is, in fact, a “moulder of a new humanity”. It arises from, and issues in, an understanding of what the Minister and the Department consider young citizens of the Republic of Ireland should know about themselves, about themselves and others, about the political and social context in which they live.
There is, indeed, much to be learned about humanity “from the insights and skills of the political and social sciences” and Catholic schools must ensure that the young people committed to their care learn that “much”. However, not even the most ardent of their advocates, the ablest of their practitioners, would argue that these sciences tell us all that may be known, or should be known, about being human. Catholic schools will, therefore, help the young people in their care to keep the wider picture in view at all times. The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church will be an indispensable instrument in the attainment of this objective. Used to this end, its contents will enable us examine Politics and Society from the complementary perspectives of faith and reason.
The Compendium, of course, is not intended as a text-book and, like other Roman documents, does not always read well in its official English translation. Help, though, is to hand in the form of DoCat: What to do, which is to the Compendium what YouCat is to the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Pope Francis describes DoCat as a “magnificent little book”. It is all that and in many ways. It is well-produced, well-organised and well-written. It does not talk down to its audience. It does not harangue them. It engages them, rather, in real and open dialogue on the topics considered.
The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church gives “a concise but complete overview of the Church’s social teaching”. “The Church, the sign in history of God’s love for humankind and of the vocation of the whole human race to unity as children of the one Father, intends with this document on her social doctrine to propose to all men and women a humanism that is up to the standards of God’s plan of love in history, an integral and solidary humanism capable of creating a new social, economic and political order, founded on the dignity and freedom of every human person, to be brought about in peace, justice and solidarity. This humanism can become a reality if individual men and women and their communities are able to cultivate moral and social virtues in themselves and spread them in society. ‘Then, under the necessary help of divine grace, there will arise a generation of new men [and women], the moulders of a new humanity’ (para. 19)”.
It has been emphasised repeatedly in these reflections that all instruments of education arise from, and issue in, some understanding of humanity, of its origins, its nature, its destiny. All, therefore, are, in one way or another, to one degree or another, “moulders of a new humanity”. Catholic schools are, most definitely, “moulders of a new humanity”. Their raison d’etre is the formation of the young in Christ Jesus, the eikon of the invisible God, the first born of all creation (cf. Col 1:15), the template, the paradigm, the means to, and the end of, humanity at its most authentic.
A new Leaving Certificate subject, Politics and Society, was introduced in a number of recognised post-primary schools in the Republic of Ireland on 1st September, 2016. Its aim is “to develop the learner’s capacity to engage in reflective and active citizenship informed by the insights and skills of social and political sciences”. Like the proposed Education about Religions and Beliefs (ERB) and Ethics curriculum for primary schools – Politics and Society is, in fact, a “moulder of a new humanity”. It arises from, and issues in, an understanding of what the Minister and the Department consider young citizens of the Republic of Ireland should know about themselves, about themselves and others, about the political and social context in which they live.
There is, indeed, much to be learned about humanity “from the insights and skills of the political and social sciences” and Catholic schools must ensure that the young people committed to their care learn that “much”. However, not even the most ardent of their advocates, the ablest of their practitioners, would argue that these sciences tell us all that may be known, or should be known, about being human. Catholic schools will, therefore, help the young people in their care to keep the wider picture in view at all times. The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church will be an indispensable instrument in the attainment of this objective. Used to this end, its contents will enable us examine Politics and Society from the complementary perspectives of faith and reason.
The Compendium, of course, is not intended as a text-book and, like other Roman documents, does not always read well in its official English translation. Help, though, is to hand in the form of DoCat: What to do, which is to the Compendium what YouCat is to the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Pope Francis describes DoCat as a “magnificent little book”. It is all that and in many ways. It is well-produced, well-organised and well-written. It does not talk down to its audience. It does not harangue them. It engages them, rather, in real and open dialogue on the topics considered.
LUX EDMUNDI: REFLECTION: SEPTEMBER, 2016
There is in the Irish language a whole range of maxims advocating and celebrating community and cooperation and we make use of them regularly in our various communications. We invoke the idea of muintireas and we recommend the paradigm of the meitheal. Staff, pupils, and parents are not infrequently reminded of those communitarian values expressed in our proverbs: “Ní neart go cur le chéile”; “Ar scáth a chéile a mhaireann na daoine”, and we may have incorporated these fruits of traditional and popular wisdom in our crests, our logos, our stationery.
The notion of togetherness, of our being in this or that initiative together, of our pulling together to achieve what are always common objectives, is attractive in itself, re-assuring, energising and, most especially, consonant with the Good News proclaimed in and by Christ Jesus, who came that we might be one; who, in the waters of Baptism constituted us members of his Body, the Church, the People of God; whose disciples from the very outset lived and worked in koinonia, in communion, in fellowship each with the other, all walls between them razed by their Crucified Lord.
It may be wondered, though, whether, in practice, we are more like the church of Corinth than that of Jerusalem, at odds with each other rather than at peace, divided rather than united. There can be divisions in and between our school communities, systems and sectors. Our attitudes towards the educational “Other” – however defined – can be quite negative. When the “Other” is considered a threat to our interests, we quickly become defensive and even aggressive. We can be that to those we deem, as it were, not of “the household of the faith”, but, even within that “household”, we can, to say the least, be very wary of any other Catholic school that threatens us in any way. Our competition for, say, numbers, for the abled and abler pupils, the “better” students, can put paid to communion, collaboration and to all the nice things we highlight in our charters, our mission statements, our websites. Our interests trump our Catholicity and, if truth be told, Gospel values can get very short shrift if “they” are trespassing on “our” prerogatives, our prominence, putting our present and/or our future at risk, and we must act to stop them and protect ourselves.
The Education Act 1998 makes provision for an education system that is, inter alia, “conducted in a spirit of partnership between schools, patrons, students, parents, teachers and other school staff, the community served by the school, and the state (Long title)”. Such partnership is good in itself and its actualisation will serve the common good and our own good a well. Fairness in funding, for example, at the level of both the system and the school, can be sought and achieved – even if only incrementally – through partnership, which, in fact, is the means by which any such benefits are achieved in the Irish system of education. If we are to have, e.g., fair and equal capitation grants for students, it is likelier to come through negotiation and agreement, through cooperation, through partnership (social or other), between Minister, management and unions. Such improvements are more unlikely to come through any one interest going it alone, much less through each interest warring with the other and all warring with the state.
Catholic school authorities at national level are, it seems, working towards greater collaboration. This could result eventually in one consolidated authority to speak and act for, and on behalf of, Catholic schools. This, in turn, could be an instrument of koinonia amongst us all, seed and fruit of the Catholic social Gospel. This process will, surely, be all the more effective, all the more authentic, if conceived and pursued from the ground up as well as from the top down, if those at the chalk-face are invited and permitted to do a bit more than pay, pray, obey (“pray” being, perhaps, optional).
There is in the Irish language a whole range of maxims advocating and celebrating community and cooperation and we make use of them regularly in our various communications. We invoke the idea of muintireas and we recommend the paradigm of the meitheal. Staff, pupils, and parents are not infrequently reminded of those communitarian values expressed in our proverbs: “Ní neart go cur le chéile”; “Ar scáth a chéile a mhaireann na daoine”, and we may have incorporated these fruits of traditional and popular wisdom in our crests, our logos, our stationery.
The notion of togetherness, of our being in this or that initiative together, of our pulling together to achieve what are always common objectives, is attractive in itself, re-assuring, energising and, most especially, consonant with the Good News proclaimed in and by Christ Jesus, who came that we might be one; who, in the waters of Baptism constituted us members of his Body, the Church, the People of God; whose disciples from the very outset lived and worked in koinonia, in communion, in fellowship each with the other, all walls between them razed by their Crucified Lord.
It may be wondered, though, whether, in practice, we are more like the church of Corinth than that of Jerusalem, at odds with each other rather than at peace, divided rather than united. There can be divisions in and between our school communities, systems and sectors. Our attitudes towards the educational “Other” – however defined – can be quite negative. When the “Other” is considered a threat to our interests, we quickly become defensive and even aggressive. We can be that to those we deem, as it were, not of “the household of the faith”, but, even within that “household”, we can, to say the least, be very wary of any other Catholic school that threatens us in any way. Our competition for, say, numbers, for the abled and abler pupils, the “better” students, can put paid to communion, collaboration and to all the nice things we highlight in our charters, our mission statements, our websites. Our interests trump our Catholicity and, if truth be told, Gospel values can get very short shrift if “they” are trespassing on “our” prerogatives, our prominence, putting our present and/or our future at risk, and we must act to stop them and protect ourselves.
The Education Act 1998 makes provision for an education system that is, inter alia, “conducted in a spirit of partnership between schools, patrons, students, parents, teachers and other school staff, the community served by the school, and the state (Long title)”. Such partnership is good in itself and its actualisation will serve the common good and our own good a well. Fairness in funding, for example, at the level of both the system and the school, can be sought and achieved – even if only incrementally – through partnership, which, in fact, is the means by which any such benefits are achieved in the Irish system of education. If we are to have, e.g., fair and equal capitation grants for students, it is likelier to come through negotiation and agreement, through cooperation, through partnership (social or other), between Minister, management and unions. Such improvements are more unlikely to come through any one interest going it alone, much less through each interest warring with the other and all warring with the state.
Catholic school authorities at national level are, it seems, working towards greater collaboration. This could result eventually in one consolidated authority to speak and act for, and on behalf of, Catholic schools. This, in turn, could be an instrument of koinonia amongst us all, seed and fruit of the Catholic social Gospel. This process will, surely, be all the more effective, all the more authentic, if conceived and pursued from the ground up as well as from the top down, if those at the chalk-face are invited and permitted to do a bit more than pay, pray, obey (“pray” being, perhaps, optional).
LUX EDMUNDI: REFLECTION: AUGUST, 2016
Monday, 29th August, 2016, is the 172nd anniversary of the death of Blessed Edmund Ignatius Rice, Founder of the aboriginal and undivided Society of the Presentation, from which arose both the Congregation of Christian Brothers and of the Institution of Presentation Brothers, and, consequently, the fons et origo of all initiatives, educational and other, deriving from either or both of those bodies, Lux Edmundi included.
As is now customary, virtually all recognised schools in the Republic of Ireland, primary and post-primary, will have commenced the 2016-2017 school year by late August. Amongst these will be a range of new schools under a variety of patrons. These will include a new school under the patronage of the Edmund Rice Schools Trust. This we may deem a shoot new-sprung from the root of Edmund (cf. Is 11:1), clear proof that his charism is as vital now and as fertile as it ever was, well capable of putting forth new growth in new times and in new places.
Its particular founding charism is of fundamental importance to each religious congregation, including those engaged in the apostolate of education. It is, therefore, also of importance to all those who serve in schools established by these teaching congregations and, given their influence, should be at least of interest to all involved in Catholic education in Ireland.
The English word “charism” derives from the Greek word charisma (plural, charismata). In the New Testament, charisma is used to indicate a gift, a grace, given by God through the Holy Spirit. Some such gifts are given for one’s own spiritual benefit. Others are given for the benefit of the neighbour. The founding charism of a religious congregation comprises the special graces given to the Founder of that particular congregation to serve the People of God in the matter, and in the manner, the Lord requires. It gives a congregation a character peculiar to itself. A founding charism is not something preserved in some kind of historical amber. Like the mustard seed (cf. Mt 13:31-32), it grows and develops through the lives and works of the successive generations of religious. It is amongst “all these things” the religious – and, it bears emphasis, now their lay co-workers as well - must, like Mary, ponder in their hearts (cf. Lk 2:19), not least in times of change when, individually and institutionally, they may have need to re-discern what God is asking of them in the circumstances.
For teaching religious in Ireland, these are times of unparalleled change. In a few short years, they have passed the trusteeship of their schools to legal entities of various kinds, and, more significantly, perhaps, have passed the governance and management of those schools to lay men and women.
These new legal entities, especially those which arose from the collaboration of more than one religious congregation, emphasise that collaboration does not mean conflation. They urge schools to make their own the founding charism of the particular congregation from which they take their origins. It is absolutely crucial to the successful negotiation of these changes that all who succeed the religious accept that the founding charism of this school or that did not depart the scene with Br. A, or Fr. B or Sister C. With the keys of the school, as it were, their lay successors received charge of the founding charism; accepted that, what Br. A and Fr. B and Sr. C did yesterday in fidelity to that founding charism, Ms. D and Mr. E and Mrs. F must do today; must know it, digest it, appropriate it, live it, grow it, develop it, and, in their turn, hand it on in good nick to those who come after them.
Monday, 29th August, 2016, is the 172nd anniversary of the death of Blessed Edmund Ignatius Rice, Founder of the aboriginal and undivided Society of the Presentation, from which arose both the Congregation of Christian Brothers and of the Institution of Presentation Brothers, and, consequently, the fons et origo of all initiatives, educational and other, deriving from either or both of those bodies, Lux Edmundi included.
As is now customary, virtually all recognised schools in the Republic of Ireland, primary and post-primary, will have commenced the 2016-2017 school year by late August. Amongst these will be a range of new schools under a variety of patrons. These will include a new school under the patronage of the Edmund Rice Schools Trust. This we may deem a shoot new-sprung from the root of Edmund (cf. Is 11:1), clear proof that his charism is as vital now and as fertile as it ever was, well capable of putting forth new growth in new times and in new places.
Its particular founding charism is of fundamental importance to each religious congregation, including those engaged in the apostolate of education. It is, therefore, also of importance to all those who serve in schools established by these teaching congregations and, given their influence, should be at least of interest to all involved in Catholic education in Ireland.
The English word “charism” derives from the Greek word charisma (plural, charismata). In the New Testament, charisma is used to indicate a gift, a grace, given by God through the Holy Spirit. Some such gifts are given for one’s own spiritual benefit. Others are given for the benefit of the neighbour. The founding charism of a religious congregation comprises the special graces given to the Founder of that particular congregation to serve the People of God in the matter, and in the manner, the Lord requires. It gives a congregation a character peculiar to itself. A founding charism is not something preserved in some kind of historical amber. Like the mustard seed (cf. Mt 13:31-32), it grows and develops through the lives and works of the successive generations of religious. It is amongst “all these things” the religious – and, it bears emphasis, now their lay co-workers as well - must, like Mary, ponder in their hearts (cf. Lk 2:19), not least in times of change when, individually and institutionally, they may have need to re-discern what God is asking of them in the circumstances.
For teaching religious in Ireland, these are times of unparalleled change. In a few short years, they have passed the trusteeship of their schools to legal entities of various kinds, and, more significantly, perhaps, have passed the governance and management of those schools to lay men and women.
These new legal entities, especially those which arose from the collaboration of more than one religious congregation, emphasise that collaboration does not mean conflation. They urge schools to make their own the founding charism of the particular congregation from which they take their origins. It is absolutely crucial to the successful negotiation of these changes that all who succeed the religious accept that the founding charism of this school or that did not depart the scene with Br. A, or Fr. B or Sister C. With the keys of the school, as it were, their lay successors received charge of the founding charism; accepted that, what Br. A and Fr. B and Sr. C did yesterday in fidelity to that founding charism, Ms. D and Mr. E and Mrs. F must do today; must know it, digest it, appropriate it, live it, grow it, develop it, and, in their turn, hand it on in good nick to those who come after them.
LUX EDMUNDI: JULY, 2016: REFLECTIONS ON THE BEATITUDES FOR CATHOLIC EDUCATORS
1.BLESSED ARE THE POOR: From the very earliest days of the Church, interpretations of this word “poor” have been many and various. Always, though, there has been an insistence that any explication of the word as used in this particular context must have regard to those who live in actual poverty, the have-nots, the deprived, the oppressed, the marginalised, the voiceless, the unheard, the unheeded. Jesus says that they can be sure of a place in heaven. How sure, though, may they be of a place in this or that Catholic school in Ireland today?
2.BLESSED ARE THOSE WHO MOURN: Not a day passes without some reminder of the inner pain endured by so many of our young people and hardly a parish in the land has not experienced the especially poignant grief that occurs when the old bury the young, particularly the young who have died by suicide. In what is quite frequently the Responsorial Psalm at Funeral Masses on such occasions, we proclaim that the Lord is our Shepherd (Psalm 23), that, precisely when we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, he is there, with us and for us. Often, though, he is with us in, and through, those who respect, who care, who listen. For our students, for those especially “who labour and are heavily laden (cf. Matthew 11:28)”, if the Lord is not there for them in us, and through us, their teachers, their mentors, they may well be convinced that their deepest fears are well-grounded, that they must, in fact, suffer alone, and in a world that, quite simply, just couldn’t be bothered one way or the other. May we and our schools be instruments of the Good Shepherd in supporting our charges, affording them comfort, surrounding them with “goodness and mercy”, helping them find peace.
3.“BLESSED ARE THE MEEK”: Nietzsche thought the Beatitudes constituted proof positive for his thesis that Christianity is a religion of slaves, the means by which the weak might destroy the strong. Even we ourselves may wonder sometimes whether meekness is a quality we should inculcate in the young people committed to our professional care. That, of course, will depend on what we mean by “meek”. The word used in the Greek original is praeis, which means “the quality of not being overly impressed by a sense of one’s self-importance, gentleness, humility, courtesy, considerateness, meekness in the older favourable sense (BDAG, s.v.)”. This is, in fact, a quality which would enhance the exercise of authority in any community. It is, however, essential in Christian communities, schools included. Whoever is given authority amongst the Faithful, must exercise it, not for self, but for others; not for power, but for service. The Pope is Servus Servorum Dei, Servant of the Servants of God, and such must be all who share in the Shepherd-Kingship of Christ. Meekness in this sense is a quality that must characterise the dealings of school leaders with staff and of staff with children. We must wash each other’s feet.
4.BLESSED ARE THOSE WHO HUNGER AND THIRST FOR RIGHTEOUSNESSS: The primary reference here is to “God’s justice”, the kind of righteousness practised by St. Joseph, whom the evangelist characterises as “a just man”, a man faithful in all respects to the Torah, the Law of Moses, the Law of the Covenant (cf. Matthew 1:19). Our Torah, our Law, the Law of the New Covenant, is the Law of Love, of love of God above all for his own sake and of the neighbour as ourselves for the love of God. It is for this that we must hunger and thirst and it is this which alone will sustain and satisfy us. A Catholic school, a Catholic teacher, lives by this New Law, is compelled by it, is guided by it, and, in the only evaluation that really counts, will most certainly be judged by it.
5.BLESSED ARE THE MERCIFUL: In this Jubilee Year of Mercy, the Holy Father would have us think and pray about Mercy, consider its place in the divine scheme of things, and, as we know ourselves to be objects of God’s Mercy, would, in turn, be agents of that same Mercy to those afflicted and deprived in body and/or in soul. In this regard, Pope Francis has, as it were, resurrected the Works of Mercy. He has, on more than one occasion, actually listed the Seven Corporal, and the Seven Spiritual, Works of Mercy. Amongst the latter is this: To instruct the ignorant. It was, in fact, in the exercise of this particular Spiritual Work of Mercy that those who founded our schools, and bequeathed to us their respective charisms, sacrificed so much, endured so much, to bring the Good News to the young, to the poor especially. As it is our inheritance, this particular mode of Mercy is also our challenge, and, like our fore-bears, we too must work long and hard to evangelise, to catechise, always in the unshakable conviction that those who instruct others unto justice will shine like stars for all eternity (cf. Daniel 12:3).
6.BLESSED ARE THE PURE IN HEART: Modern scholarship relates purity in heart to the singlemindedness that ensures we serve God rather than Mammon and do not terminally undermine our Christian discipleship by trying to serve both. All Catholic schools are subject to a kind of “bipolarity” between this world and the next. They must, in fact, prepare their charges for both. The balance is exceedingly hard to maintain. Our school websites tend to celebrate all kinds of Gospel values, values to be lived in time and vindicated in eternity. Our press releases, though, especially those issued on foot of our Leaving Certificate results, may imply that getting our students into this course or that, at this college or that, matters as least as much as getting them into Heaven. Catholic schools must constantly examine themselves sub specie eternitatis, in the light of God’s face, to ascertain whether they are, in fact, as single-minded, as pure in heart, as they must be to maintain their identity, and their integrity, precisely as Catholic.
7.BLESSED ARE THE PEACEMAKERS: In the Old Testament, the Lord is the peace-maker par excellence and it is always his intervention that brings peace, preserves it, restores it when it is lost. Against this background, St. Paul presents Christ as the one who reconciles heaven and earth (cf. Colossians 1:20) and reconciles, too, Jews and Gentiles, making of them one People (cf. Ephesians 2:15), “a chosen race, a holy nation, God’s own people (cf. I Peter 2:9)”. By becoming itself a place, and a means, of reconciliation, of peace-making between students of all kinds, the Catholic school is, in fact, at the service of this eternal project, the formation of the whole of humanity into the New Israel, children of their Father in heaven, citizens of the New Jerusalem.
8.BLESSED ARE THOSE WHO ARE PERSECUTED FOR RIGHTEOUSNESS’ SAKE: It is, again, “God’s justice” that is envisaged here, that determination to give each his/her due as a sine qua non of our observance of the New Law. In the original Greek, to “persecute” means “to harass someone, especially because of beliefs, persecute … to drive away, drive out … (BDAG, s.v.)”. Teachers are often amongst those “driven out” by totalitarian regimes. In the 20th century alone, thousands of Catholic teachers, religious, cleric and lay, were persecuted, many unto death, just for being Catholic teachers. We dare not liken our “martyrdom” to theirs but, like them, we must take whatever knocks come our way for our faith in, and service to, the Catholic school. We must bear witness to our faith-based, Christ-centred, convictions and we will be blessed.
1.BLESSED ARE THE POOR: From the very earliest days of the Church, interpretations of this word “poor” have been many and various. Always, though, there has been an insistence that any explication of the word as used in this particular context must have regard to those who live in actual poverty, the have-nots, the deprived, the oppressed, the marginalised, the voiceless, the unheard, the unheeded. Jesus says that they can be sure of a place in heaven. How sure, though, may they be of a place in this or that Catholic school in Ireland today?
2.BLESSED ARE THOSE WHO MOURN: Not a day passes without some reminder of the inner pain endured by so many of our young people and hardly a parish in the land has not experienced the especially poignant grief that occurs when the old bury the young, particularly the young who have died by suicide. In what is quite frequently the Responsorial Psalm at Funeral Masses on such occasions, we proclaim that the Lord is our Shepherd (Psalm 23), that, precisely when we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, he is there, with us and for us. Often, though, he is with us in, and through, those who respect, who care, who listen. For our students, for those especially “who labour and are heavily laden (cf. Matthew 11:28)”, if the Lord is not there for them in us, and through us, their teachers, their mentors, they may well be convinced that their deepest fears are well-grounded, that they must, in fact, suffer alone, and in a world that, quite simply, just couldn’t be bothered one way or the other. May we and our schools be instruments of the Good Shepherd in supporting our charges, affording them comfort, surrounding them with “goodness and mercy”, helping them find peace.
3.“BLESSED ARE THE MEEK”: Nietzsche thought the Beatitudes constituted proof positive for his thesis that Christianity is a religion of slaves, the means by which the weak might destroy the strong. Even we ourselves may wonder sometimes whether meekness is a quality we should inculcate in the young people committed to our professional care. That, of course, will depend on what we mean by “meek”. The word used in the Greek original is praeis, which means “the quality of not being overly impressed by a sense of one’s self-importance, gentleness, humility, courtesy, considerateness, meekness in the older favourable sense (BDAG, s.v.)”. This is, in fact, a quality which would enhance the exercise of authority in any community. It is, however, essential in Christian communities, schools included. Whoever is given authority amongst the Faithful, must exercise it, not for self, but for others; not for power, but for service. The Pope is Servus Servorum Dei, Servant of the Servants of God, and such must be all who share in the Shepherd-Kingship of Christ. Meekness in this sense is a quality that must characterise the dealings of school leaders with staff and of staff with children. We must wash each other’s feet.
4.BLESSED ARE THOSE WHO HUNGER AND THIRST FOR RIGHTEOUSNESSS: The primary reference here is to “God’s justice”, the kind of righteousness practised by St. Joseph, whom the evangelist characterises as “a just man”, a man faithful in all respects to the Torah, the Law of Moses, the Law of the Covenant (cf. Matthew 1:19). Our Torah, our Law, the Law of the New Covenant, is the Law of Love, of love of God above all for his own sake and of the neighbour as ourselves for the love of God. It is for this that we must hunger and thirst and it is this which alone will sustain and satisfy us. A Catholic school, a Catholic teacher, lives by this New Law, is compelled by it, is guided by it, and, in the only evaluation that really counts, will most certainly be judged by it.
5.BLESSED ARE THE MERCIFUL: In this Jubilee Year of Mercy, the Holy Father would have us think and pray about Mercy, consider its place in the divine scheme of things, and, as we know ourselves to be objects of God’s Mercy, would, in turn, be agents of that same Mercy to those afflicted and deprived in body and/or in soul. In this regard, Pope Francis has, as it were, resurrected the Works of Mercy. He has, on more than one occasion, actually listed the Seven Corporal, and the Seven Spiritual, Works of Mercy. Amongst the latter is this: To instruct the ignorant. It was, in fact, in the exercise of this particular Spiritual Work of Mercy that those who founded our schools, and bequeathed to us their respective charisms, sacrificed so much, endured so much, to bring the Good News to the young, to the poor especially. As it is our inheritance, this particular mode of Mercy is also our challenge, and, like our fore-bears, we too must work long and hard to evangelise, to catechise, always in the unshakable conviction that those who instruct others unto justice will shine like stars for all eternity (cf. Daniel 12:3).
6.BLESSED ARE THE PURE IN HEART: Modern scholarship relates purity in heart to the singlemindedness that ensures we serve God rather than Mammon and do not terminally undermine our Christian discipleship by trying to serve both. All Catholic schools are subject to a kind of “bipolarity” between this world and the next. They must, in fact, prepare their charges for both. The balance is exceedingly hard to maintain. Our school websites tend to celebrate all kinds of Gospel values, values to be lived in time and vindicated in eternity. Our press releases, though, especially those issued on foot of our Leaving Certificate results, may imply that getting our students into this course or that, at this college or that, matters as least as much as getting them into Heaven. Catholic schools must constantly examine themselves sub specie eternitatis, in the light of God’s face, to ascertain whether they are, in fact, as single-minded, as pure in heart, as they must be to maintain their identity, and their integrity, precisely as Catholic.
7.BLESSED ARE THE PEACEMAKERS: In the Old Testament, the Lord is the peace-maker par excellence and it is always his intervention that brings peace, preserves it, restores it when it is lost. Against this background, St. Paul presents Christ as the one who reconciles heaven and earth (cf. Colossians 1:20) and reconciles, too, Jews and Gentiles, making of them one People (cf. Ephesians 2:15), “a chosen race, a holy nation, God’s own people (cf. I Peter 2:9)”. By becoming itself a place, and a means, of reconciliation, of peace-making between students of all kinds, the Catholic school is, in fact, at the service of this eternal project, the formation of the whole of humanity into the New Israel, children of their Father in heaven, citizens of the New Jerusalem.
8.BLESSED ARE THOSE WHO ARE PERSECUTED FOR RIGHTEOUSNESS’ SAKE: It is, again, “God’s justice” that is envisaged here, that determination to give each his/her due as a sine qua non of our observance of the New Law. In the original Greek, to “persecute” means “to harass someone, especially because of beliefs, persecute … to drive away, drive out … (BDAG, s.v.)”. Teachers are often amongst those “driven out” by totalitarian regimes. In the 20th century alone, thousands of Catholic teachers, religious, cleric and lay, were persecuted, many unto death, just for being Catholic teachers. We dare not liken our “martyrdom” to theirs but, like them, we must take whatever knocks come our way for our faith in, and service to, the Catholic school. We must bear witness to our faith-based, Christ-centred, convictions and we will be blessed.
LUX EDMUNDI: REFLECTION: JUNE 2016
In addressing the Dáil on the Cloyne Report, Taoiseach Enda Kenny was scathing in his denunciation of Catholic authorities for their sins of omission and commission in respect of child abuse by clerics. Then and since, this speech has been taken to mark a historic turning point in Church-State relations in Ireland. The deference – sometimes abject - of politician to prelate which had characterised those relations heretofore was notable only by its complete absence. Mr. Kenny was lauded inside the Oireachtas and outside for his refusal to be cowed by “a belt of the crozier”, for, in effect, his moral courage in the face of possible episcopal retaliation.
Moral courage is a virtue essential to the right conduct of affairs, personal, social, political and, indeed, ecclesiastical. It is, in fact, a quality we would all wish to have and we like to think that, if and as need arises, we would shelter the Franks, stop the tanks in Tiananmen Square, blow that whistle loud and long until injustice was undone, justice done. The fact is, of course, that those who thus face down the powers that be are almost always a tiny minority. Where resistance might result in dire consequences for the resistor, most of us would be much more likely to keep our heads down, our noses clean and our opinions to ourselves.
It is arguable, indeed, that, when virtually everyone has a crack off, say, the Church, the likelihood is that the power of the Church to hurt is long gone. When there is no real risk to the kicker, when, again, the Church can be kicked more or less with impunity, there may, in fact, be a kind of kicking frenzy as even the most cagey, the most timid, of us, can thus “man up” on the cheap, as it were.
Real moral courage, of course, would require that we take on those who can still hurt us; that we check and challenge, not the powers that were, but the powers that be; that, in effect, we hit out at those we know will definitely hit back, and hit back harder - as hard as it takes to put us back in our box and to dissuade any who might have thoughts of emulating us from doing anything of the kind.
It may well be the case that, in Ireland now, it takes greater moral courage to defend the Catholic Church than it does to denounce it; more to stand for, than against, religious faith of any kind, especially the Catholic kind. As in so many others, in the field of education, it takes “guts” to protect and promote the Catholic presence; “gumption” – a lot of “gumption” - to remain steadfast in the face of calls that the Church divest itself of schools; that dioceses and religious congregations accept the current view of the Department that – pace deeds of trust, model agreements and, even, court decisions – community schools/colleges are not de iure, and should not be de facto, denominational; that the state determine how religion and morality may, and may not, be taught in our schools.
It is never easy to be counter-cultural, to go against the political flow, to “not go gentle into that goodnight” to which others might wish now to consign us. We have Good News to offer, the best news possible, that “God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16)”; that in Christ Jesus we have the eikon of the invisible God (cf. Colossians 1:15) and the paradigm of humanity at its most authentic and its most complete. Individually, collectively, we may, and must, proclaim the Gospel, in and out of season. “With malice towards none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in … “.
In addressing the Dáil on the Cloyne Report, Taoiseach Enda Kenny was scathing in his denunciation of Catholic authorities for their sins of omission and commission in respect of child abuse by clerics. Then and since, this speech has been taken to mark a historic turning point in Church-State relations in Ireland. The deference – sometimes abject - of politician to prelate which had characterised those relations heretofore was notable only by its complete absence. Mr. Kenny was lauded inside the Oireachtas and outside for his refusal to be cowed by “a belt of the crozier”, for, in effect, his moral courage in the face of possible episcopal retaliation.
Moral courage is a virtue essential to the right conduct of affairs, personal, social, political and, indeed, ecclesiastical. It is, in fact, a quality we would all wish to have and we like to think that, if and as need arises, we would shelter the Franks, stop the tanks in Tiananmen Square, blow that whistle loud and long until injustice was undone, justice done. The fact is, of course, that those who thus face down the powers that be are almost always a tiny minority. Where resistance might result in dire consequences for the resistor, most of us would be much more likely to keep our heads down, our noses clean and our opinions to ourselves.
It is arguable, indeed, that, when virtually everyone has a crack off, say, the Church, the likelihood is that the power of the Church to hurt is long gone. When there is no real risk to the kicker, when, again, the Church can be kicked more or less with impunity, there may, in fact, be a kind of kicking frenzy as even the most cagey, the most timid, of us, can thus “man up” on the cheap, as it were.
Real moral courage, of course, would require that we take on those who can still hurt us; that we check and challenge, not the powers that were, but the powers that be; that, in effect, we hit out at those we know will definitely hit back, and hit back harder - as hard as it takes to put us back in our box and to dissuade any who might have thoughts of emulating us from doing anything of the kind.
It may well be the case that, in Ireland now, it takes greater moral courage to defend the Catholic Church than it does to denounce it; more to stand for, than against, religious faith of any kind, especially the Catholic kind. As in so many others, in the field of education, it takes “guts” to protect and promote the Catholic presence; “gumption” – a lot of “gumption” - to remain steadfast in the face of calls that the Church divest itself of schools; that dioceses and religious congregations accept the current view of the Department that – pace deeds of trust, model agreements and, even, court decisions – community schools/colleges are not de iure, and should not be de facto, denominational; that the state determine how religion and morality may, and may not, be taught in our schools.
It is never easy to be counter-cultural, to go against the political flow, to “not go gentle into that goodnight” to which others might wish now to consign us. We have Good News to offer, the best news possible, that “God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16)”; that in Christ Jesus we have the eikon of the invisible God (cf. Colossians 1:15) and the paradigm of humanity at its most authentic and its most complete. Individually, collectively, we may, and must, proclaim the Gospel, in and out of season. “With malice towards none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in … “.
LUX EDMUNDI: REFLECTION FOR MEMORIA OF BLESSED EDMUND IGNATIUS RICE
The various communities of the Christian Brothers and of the Presentation Brothers across the globe will honour their Holy Founder on or around Thursday, 5th May, 2016, his liturgical Commemoration, and the many and various people and groups who share the charism of Blessed Edmund and the mission of his brethren – including all of us in Lux Edmundi – will gladly join them.
For Blessed Edmund, 1816 was something of a mixed year. One of his greatest supporters, Bishop John Power of Waterford and Lismore, died on January 7th. It was he who, to a considerable degree, facilitated Blessed Edmund in the establishment of the aboriginal and undivided Society of the Presentation. His death was a blow to the Founder. It was, though, also in 1816 that a house of the Society was established in, respectively, Limerick and Thurles, the one in the Diocese of Limerick, the other, in the Archdiocese of Cashel and Emly. One historian of the Brothers tells us that, on the opening of the house in Limerick, hundreds of pupils at the local Lancasterian school enrolled en masse with the Brothers, and that, in Thurles, the introduction of the Society was effected by the involvement of the Cahill brothers, who, with others, had previously lived there together as what the people called “monks”, i.e., lay-men who lived together in community but who were unbound by rule or by vow, free to go and come as they pleased, but who now entered the Society of the Presentation the better to serve the Lord, the Church and the poor.
It was also in 1816 that Archbishop Murray of Dublin, Fr. Kenney, SJ – founder of Clongowes Wood College in 1814 and a great friend of the Founder - and Br. Gerbaud Thomas, FSC, Superior General of the Brothers of the Christian Schools (the de la Salle Brothers) came across each other in Rome. The upshot of their encounter was that Br. Gerbaud gave Archbishop Murray a copy of the FSC Constitutions which, on returning to Dublin in 1817, Dr. Murray transmitted to the only Brothers then in his archdiocese (i.e., those at Hanover Street) who, in turn, passed it on to the Founder.
Blessed Edmund was involved throughout the year with the Commissioner for Charitable Donations and Bequests in relation to the Will of Bishop Power, and with the courts in a suit by which Archbishop Bray hoped to secure for the poor of Thurles a substantial legacy bequeathed for that purpose but, unfortunately, in terms that were not as unambiguous as they should have been.
There were, indeed, some Brothers who insinuated that, in thus involving himself in worldly affairs, Blessed Edmund was acting ultra vires his vocation and his office. It was, though, precisely through such involvement that the Founder established and maintained the Society, its houses, its schools, the loss of which would have so hurt the very children he and his confreres were meant to serve.
It bears repeating that, his Rules apart – which were largely copied from others - Blessed Edmund has left us no spiritual writings of his own. He has, though, left us, his correspondence. This – even his considerable correspondence with Rome - is about business. It still constitutes a powerful spiritual legacy to all who live his charism. The Rule of the Society of the Presentation insisted that perfection consists, not in doing extra-ordinary things, but in doing ordinary things extra-ordinarily well. For us who live in the world and work in schools, the stuff of everyday life is the stuff of holiness. We grow where we are planted and it is in doing our duty, at home and at school, that we will love God above all for his own sake and the neighbour as ourselves for the love of God.
The various communities of the Christian Brothers and of the Presentation Brothers across the globe will honour their Holy Founder on or around Thursday, 5th May, 2016, his liturgical Commemoration, and the many and various people and groups who share the charism of Blessed Edmund and the mission of his brethren – including all of us in Lux Edmundi – will gladly join them.
For Blessed Edmund, 1816 was something of a mixed year. One of his greatest supporters, Bishop John Power of Waterford and Lismore, died on January 7th. It was he who, to a considerable degree, facilitated Blessed Edmund in the establishment of the aboriginal and undivided Society of the Presentation. His death was a blow to the Founder. It was, though, also in 1816 that a house of the Society was established in, respectively, Limerick and Thurles, the one in the Diocese of Limerick, the other, in the Archdiocese of Cashel and Emly. One historian of the Brothers tells us that, on the opening of the house in Limerick, hundreds of pupils at the local Lancasterian school enrolled en masse with the Brothers, and that, in Thurles, the introduction of the Society was effected by the involvement of the Cahill brothers, who, with others, had previously lived there together as what the people called “monks”, i.e., lay-men who lived together in community but who were unbound by rule or by vow, free to go and come as they pleased, but who now entered the Society of the Presentation the better to serve the Lord, the Church and the poor.
It was also in 1816 that Archbishop Murray of Dublin, Fr. Kenney, SJ – founder of Clongowes Wood College in 1814 and a great friend of the Founder - and Br. Gerbaud Thomas, FSC, Superior General of the Brothers of the Christian Schools (the de la Salle Brothers) came across each other in Rome. The upshot of their encounter was that Br. Gerbaud gave Archbishop Murray a copy of the FSC Constitutions which, on returning to Dublin in 1817, Dr. Murray transmitted to the only Brothers then in his archdiocese (i.e., those at Hanover Street) who, in turn, passed it on to the Founder.
Blessed Edmund was involved throughout the year with the Commissioner for Charitable Donations and Bequests in relation to the Will of Bishop Power, and with the courts in a suit by which Archbishop Bray hoped to secure for the poor of Thurles a substantial legacy bequeathed for that purpose but, unfortunately, in terms that were not as unambiguous as they should have been.
There were, indeed, some Brothers who insinuated that, in thus involving himself in worldly affairs, Blessed Edmund was acting ultra vires his vocation and his office. It was, though, precisely through such involvement that the Founder established and maintained the Society, its houses, its schools, the loss of which would have so hurt the very children he and his confreres were meant to serve.
It bears repeating that, his Rules apart – which were largely copied from others - Blessed Edmund has left us no spiritual writings of his own. He has, though, left us, his correspondence. This – even his considerable correspondence with Rome - is about business. It still constitutes a powerful spiritual legacy to all who live his charism. The Rule of the Society of the Presentation insisted that perfection consists, not in doing extra-ordinary things, but in doing ordinary things extra-ordinarily well. For us who live in the world and work in schools, the stuff of everyday life is the stuff of holiness. We grow where we are planted and it is in doing our duty, at home and at school, that we will love God above all for his own sake and the neighbour as ourselves for the love of God.
LUX EDMUNDI: REFLECTION: APRIL, 2016
Edward de Bono, one of the great gurus of our times, insists that the urgent will always take precedence over the important (Future Positive, 1980, pp. 227-228). In so saying, he may be thought to have outlined the virtually universal experience of those who work in schools, of those, in particular, who work in them as leaders. Diaries and agendas, scéimeanna and lesson-plans, notwithstanding, crises, big and small, can dictate what gets, and what holds, our attention in the course of any given school day. At times, including especially this last term of the school year, work in school can – to invoke the title of a John Masefield novel – seem to be just ODTAA, “one damned thing after another”, without rhyme or reason, beginning, middle or end, and principals especially may seem and feel like Chinese jugglers, racing up and down in an increasingly frantic effort to keep all the plates spinning on their respective poles (See YouTube). It is, of course, absolutely essential for the effectiveness of our schools as places of teaching and learning, as places, indeed, of Christian formation , that, the demands of the urgent notwithstanding, we make time for the important.
There is a wealth of literature arguing that, in any profession, teaching included ,“reflective practice” (RP), “reflection for practice”, “reflection in practice” and “reflection on practice”, is hugely important. Though its value has been questioned in some more recent studies, RP is still the basis and/or the object of training – both pre- and in-service - and of Continuing Professional Development (CPD) for teachers across the globe.
It may well be that, in schools across the country, primary and post-primary, RP is top of no-one’s to-do list right now. There is, it may well be argued, simply too much to be done to justify teachers, in general, principals, in particular, making time for thinking! It does, though, bear emphasis that it is those teachers and those schools which, in whatever form and by whatever means, advocate and cultivate RP, even when – especially when - everyone is “up the walls”, which are more likely to negotiate these particular “rapids” most successfully.
In Catholic schools, RP must have a specifically faith-based dimension. For us who are committed to the service of youth for the sake of the Gospel, RP simply must include prayer, both individual and collective. Each of us must pause from time to time to reflect in the Light of Christ on what we are and on what we are about as Catholic teachers and we must do that for and by ourselves and also together as we collaborate to form the young in Christ. (If the idea of making space and time for prayer when we are busiest seems odd, maybe we have, right there, matter for reflection).
It was, in fact, when they were busiest that Christ bade his apostles: “‘Come away by yourselves to a lonely place, and rest awhile’ (Mark 6:31)”. The Fathers interpreted this as an invitation to the Twelve to spend time in prayerful solitude with the Lord, to rest with him in contemplation after the exertions of action, to recuperate in body and in soul from their recent labours the better to face those to come. Time for reflection, time for prayer, is absolutely essential for all who work in Catholic schools, teachers, in general, principals, in particular. They must - as a matter of course but especially when under greatest pressure – make time to be alone with Christ, the only Teacher (cf. Matthew 23:10), whose yoke is easy, whose burden is light, who, when we labour and are over-burdened, gives rest to our souls (cf. Matthew 11:28-30).
Is all this just pie-in-the-sky? Most emphatically not! It is, rather,Manna from heaven! It is viaticum, “food for the journey”, essential sustenance precisely when the going is tough and we are jaded!
Edward de Bono, one of the great gurus of our times, insists that the urgent will always take precedence over the important (Future Positive, 1980, pp. 227-228). In so saying, he may be thought to have outlined the virtually universal experience of those who work in schools, of those, in particular, who work in them as leaders. Diaries and agendas, scéimeanna and lesson-plans, notwithstanding, crises, big and small, can dictate what gets, and what holds, our attention in the course of any given school day. At times, including especially this last term of the school year, work in school can – to invoke the title of a John Masefield novel – seem to be just ODTAA, “one damned thing after another”, without rhyme or reason, beginning, middle or end, and principals especially may seem and feel like Chinese jugglers, racing up and down in an increasingly frantic effort to keep all the plates spinning on their respective poles (See YouTube). It is, of course, absolutely essential for the effectiveness of our schools as places of teaching and learning, as places, indeed, of Christian formation , that, the demands of the urgent notwithstanding, we make time for the important.
There is a wealth of literature arguing that, in any profession, teaching included ,“reflective practice” (RP), “reflection for practice”, “reflection in practice” and “reflection on practice”, is hugely important. Though its value has been questioned in some more recent studies, RP is still the basis and/or the object of training – both pre- and in-service - and of Continuing Professional Development (CPD) for teachers across the globe.
It may well be that, in schools across the country, primary and post-primary, RP is top of no-one’s to-do list right now. There is, it may well be argued, simply too much to be done to justify teachers, in general, principals, in particular, making time for thinking! It does, though, bear emphasis that it is those teachers and those schools which, in whatever form and by whatever means, advocate and cultivate RP, even when – especially when - everyone is “up the walls”, which are more likely to negotiate these particular “rapids” most successfully.
In Catholic schools, RP must have a specifically faith-based dimension. For us who are committed to the service of youth for the sake of the Gospel, RP simply must include prayer, both individual and collective. Each of us must pause from time to time to reflect in the Light of Christ on what we are and on what we are about as Catholic teachers and we must do that for and by ourselves and also together as we collaborate to form the young in Christ. (If the idea of making space and time for prayer when we are busiest seems odd, maybe we have, right there, matter for reflection).
It was, in fact, when they were busiest that Christ bade his apostles: “‘Come away by yourselves to a lonely place, and rest awhile’ (Mark 6:31)”. The Fathers interpreted this as an invitation to the Twelve to spend time in prayerful solitude with the Lord, to rest with him in contemplation after the exertions of action, to recuperate in body and in soul from their recent labours the better to face those to come. Time for reflection, time for prayer, is absolutely essential for all who work in Catholic schools, teachers, in general, principals, in particular. They must - as a matter of course but especially when under greatest pressure – make time to be alone with Christ, the only Teacher (cf. Matthew 23:10), whose yoke is easy, whose burden is light, who, when we labour and are over-burdened, gives rest to our souls (cf. Matthew 11:28-30).
Is all this just pie-in-the-sky? Most emphatically not! It is, rather,Manna from heaven! It is viaticum, “food for the journey”, essential sustenance precisely when the going is tough and we are jaded!
LUX EDMUNDI: REFLECTION: EASTER 2016
In the state that emerged from the struggle for Irish independence a century ago, there was no doubting the status of the Catholic Church. It was not, as such, a church by law established, but it was readily accorded – and as readily accepted, if not, indeed, expected – authority and even precedence in all kinds of areas in the public square. There was, it must have seemed, no need for the Church to have the kind of specifically Catholic bodies, professional, social and political, which, even in other Catholic states, were considered necessary to protect and promote its place and its rights in the scheme of things. Since the great majority of the members of such public and private bodies as existed or emerged in those decades could be expected to be practising Catholics, more or less loyal to the Church and faithful to the Hierarchy, it is possible to see how it might have been thought that there was little if any need in Ireland for, say, a formally constituted Christian Democrat party, Catholic trades union, or, indeed, associations of Catholic parents, Catholic teachers, and the like. It may, in fact, have been the case that Catholic ecclesiastical authorities would have been less than welcoming of any organisations which, good intentions notwithstanding, might have become an alternative, rather than a subordinate, voice to that of the Hierarchy, certainly in anything as crucial to the Church as education.
Experience these last few years suggests that, not least in respect of Catholic schools, their patronage, management and ethos, the Ireland adumbrated here is dead and gone. In national discourse on education, Catholic authorities may now expect no favours at all; may, indeed, expect disfavour, covert or overt; and must, in any event, fight their corner to win and hold their due.
It may be that the moves at national level to consolidate and coordinate the multiplicity of bodies which currently oversee and/or represent Catholic involvement in primary and post-primary education indicate a realisation that changed times and circumstances necessitate changed structures and approaches. It looks, on the face of it, that a top-down approach has been adopted in these moves. This may, in fact, be necessary. If, though, there is not a corresponding movement from the bottom up, if schools and boards and principals and staff and parents and students and communities are not considered part – and an essential part at that - of this process of re-structuring Catholic education in Ireland, then the effectiveness of whatever emerges will be impaired and may be deemed something for a “them” with no place, no need, maybe, even, no respect, for any “us”.
Experts in school management advocate “distributed leadership”. The Inspectorate commends a team approach to in-school management. It is generally accepted that, in effecting change, the process can be as important as the product; that people are more likely to support what they have helped build. It would be a pity if those accustomed to participatory management at the chalk-face encountered an older, more paternalistic, ethic at work in the board-room; if, in any of the representative and other bodies envisaged here, schools were always the object, and never the agents, of change; informed and consulted it might be, but always and only by invitation, by grace and favour rather than by right, there being no legal or other provision for anything else.
“May the Light of Christ rising in glory dispel the darkness of our minds and hearts”
In the state that emerged from the struggle for Irish independence a century ago, there was no doubting the status of the Catholic Church. It was not, as such, a church by law established, but it was readily accorded – and as readily accepted, if not, indeed, expected – authority and even precedence in all kinds of areas in the public square. There was, it must have seemed, no need for the Church to have the kind of specifically Catholic bodies, professional, social and political, which, even in other Catholic states, were considered necessary to protect and promote its place and its rights in the scheme of things. Since the great majority of the members of such public and private bodies as existed or emerged in those decades could be expected to be practising Catholics, more or less loyal to the Church and faithful to the Hierarchy, it is possible to see how it might have been thought that there was little if any need in Ireland for, say, a formally constituted Christian Democrat party, Catholic trades union, or, indeed, associations of Catholic parents, Catholic teachers, and the like. It may, in fact, have been the case that Catholic ecclesiastical authorities would have been less than welcoming of any organisations which, good intentions notwithstanding, might have become an alternative, rather than a subordinate, voice to that of the Hierarchy, certainly in anything as crucial to the Church as education.
Experience these last few years suggests that, not least in respect of Catholic schools, their patronage, management and ethos, the Ireland adumbrated here is dead and gone. In national discourse on education, Catholic authorities may now expect no favours at all; may, indeed, expect disfavour, covert or overt; and must, in any event, fight their corner to win and hold their due.
It may be that the moves at national level to consolidate and coordinate the multiplicity of bodies which currently oversee and/or represent Catholic involvement in primary and post-primary education indicate a realisation that changed times and circumstances necessitate changed structures and approaches. It looks, on the face of it, that a top-down approach has been adopted in these moves. This may, in fact, be necessary. If, though, there is not a corresponding movement from the bottom up, if schools and boards and principals and staff and parents and students and communities are not considered part – and an essential part at that - of this process of re-structuring Catholic education in Ireland, then the effectiveness of whatever emerges will be impaired and may be deemed something for a “them” with no place, no need, maybe, even, no respect, for any “us”.
Experts in school management advocate “distributed leadership”. The Inspectorate commends a team approach to in-school management. It is generally accepted that, in effecting change, the process can be as important as the product; that people are more likely to support what they have helped build. It would be a pity if those accustomed to participatory management at the chalk-face encountered an older, more paternalistic, ethic at work in the board-room; if, in any of the representative and other bodies envisaged here, schools were always the object, and never the agents, of change; informed and consulted it might be, but always and only by invitation, by grace and favour rather than by right, there being no legal or other provision for anything else.
“May the Light of Christ rising in glory dispel the darkness of our minds and hearts”
LUX EDMUNDI: REFLECTION: FEBRUARY - LENT, 2016
School principals in Ireland consider instructional leadership to be one of their most important responsibilities. It seems that many of them would be prepared to delegate - and, even, to surrender - other responsibilities, especially administrative responsibilities, in order to have more time to focus on the development of teaching and learning in the school.
There is, of course, one responsibility that a principal of a school may not relinquish, viz., leadership in protecting and promoting the ethos, the characteristic spirit, of the school, “ethical leadership”. Under Education Act 1998, it falls to the patron of a recognised school in the Republic of Ireland to establish, where practicable, a board of management to manage the school on behalf of the patron. A board, once established, has a statutory obligation to uphold, and to be accountable to the patron for so upholding, the characteristic spirit – the ethos – of the school. The principal is appointed by the board to manage the school day-to-day on its behalf and is accountable to the board for so doing. The principal is, as it were, the executive agent of the board on the ground. As such, the principal is obliged to ensure that the school is conducted in accordance with its characteristic spirit, its ethos, responsibility for the protection and promotion of which is entrusted to the board by the patron and, in turn, entrusted to the principal by the board.
It is, of course, absolutely essential to the “ethical” identity of a school that all personnel understand and accept that each has an obligation, professional, legal and contractual, to uphold the characteristic spirit of that school and, at the very least, to do nothing that counters or otherwise undermines it. That said, both because in any organisation, what is the duty of all can so easily become the responsibility of none, and because empirical research amply demonstrates that the success of any in-school initiative requires the support of the principal, it is equally essential that principals recognise and acknowledge that the duty of “ethical leadership” in the school is theirs. In discharging this fundamental duty, the principal will, avail of all resources to hand, including the expertise of “specialist” colleagues, will, as in the discharge of any other of her/his functions, delegate and distribute responsibilities as need requires. The primary responsibility, though, for the actualisation of the school ethos, on-the-ground and day-to-day, remains with the principal.
The principal of a Catholic school is obliged to protect and promote its Catholic ethos and to guide and direct the school community in its service. This “ethical leadership” is, in fact, a sine qua non of the preservation of its identity and integrity precisely qua Catholic. It is, again, imperative for its Catholicity that the ethos, the characteristic spirit, of any Catholic school be considered the responsibility of all who work in that school. It is equally imperative, however, that principals recognise that, in this, as in all other respects of school management, the buck stops with them.
Lent is a time of metanoia, of repentance, of conversion, a time of turning again towards God, of accepting Him as the centre and the circumference of our lives. It is a time of renewal, moral, religious, spiritual, and, indeed, professional. It is a time when, led by the Holy Spirit, we go out into the desert, into those bits of us that are “god-less” or not as “godly” as they should be. There, with Christ, we confront our demons, examine ourselves in the searing light of Truth, and, by God’s grace, struggle to amend whatever we must amend in order to grow in charity, in the love of God above all for his own sake and of the neighbour as ourselves for the love of God. In this context, may all who are called by Providence to give “ethical leadership” in Catholic schools have the light to see, and the strength to do, what God now asks of them in that exact regard.
School principals in Ireland consider instructional leadership to be one of their most important responsibilities. It seems that many of them would be prepared to delegate - and, even, to surrender - other responsibilities, especially administrative responsibilities, in order to have more time to focus on the development of teaching and learning in the school.
There is, of course, one responsibility that a principal of a school may not relinquish, viz., leadership in protecting and promoting the ethos, the characteristic spirit, of the school, “ethical leadership”. Under Education Act 1998, it falls to the patron of a recognised school in the Republic of Ireland to establish, where practicable, a board of management to manage the school on behalf of the patron. A board, once established, has a statutory obligation to uphold, and to be accountable to the patron for so upholding, the characteristic spirit – the ethos – of the school. The principal is appointed by the board to manage the school day-to-day on its behalf and is accountable to the board for so doing. The principal is, as it were, the executive agent of the board on the ground. As such, the principal is obliged to ensure that the school is conducted in accordance with its characteristic spirit, its ethos, responsibility for the protection and promotion of which is entrusted to the board by the patron and, in turn, entrusted to the principal by the board.
It is, of course, absolutely essential to the “ethical” identity of a school that all personnel understand and accept that each has an obligation, professional, legal and contractual, to uphold the characteristic spirit of that school and, at the very least, to do nothing that counters or otherwise undermines it. That said, both because in any organisation, what is the duty of all can so easily become the responsibility of none, and because empirical research amply demonstrates that the success of any in-school initiative requires the support of the principal, it is equally essential that principals recognise and acknowledge that the duty of “ethical leadership” in the school is theirs. In discharging this fundamental duty, the principal will, avail of all resources to hand, including the expertise of “specialist” colleagues, will, as in the discharge of any other of her/his functions, delegate and distribute responsibilities as need requires. The primary responsibility, though, for the actualisation of the school ethos, on-the-ground and day-to-day, remains with the principal.
The principal of a Catholic school is obliged to protect and promote its Catholic ethos and to guide and direct the school community in its service. This “ethical leadership” is, in fact, a sine qua non of the preservation of its identity and integrity precisely qua Catholic. It is, again, imperative for its Catholicity that the ethos, the characteristic spirit, of any Catholic school be considered the responsibility of all who work in that school. It is equally imperative, however, that principals recognise that, in this, as in all other respects of school management, the buck stops with them.
Lent is a time of metanoia, of repentance, of conversion, a time of turning again towards God, of accepting Him as the centre and the circumference of our lives. It is a time of renewal, moral, religious, spiritual, and, indeed, professional. It is a time when, led by the Holy Spirit, we go out into the desert, into those bits of us that are “god-less” or not as “godly” as they should be. There, with Christ, we confront our demons, examine ourselves in the searing light of Truth, and, by God’s grace, struggle to amend whatever we must amend in order to grow in charity, in the love of God above all for his own sake and of the neighbour as ourselves for the love of God. In this context, may all who are called by Providence to give “ethical leadership” in Catholic schools have the light to see, and the strength to do, what God now asks of them in that exact regard.
LUX EDMUNDI: RELECTION: DECEMBER, 2015
The Jubilee of Mercy commences on Tuesday, 8th December, 2015, the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the 50th anniversary of the closing of the Second Vatican Council. Noting that the Hebrew word “hesed” occurs about 250 times in the Old Testament, the Anchor Bible Dictionary adds: “No one English term corresponds precisely to the Hebrew … and the exact nuances of the term have been much debated”. It has, in fact, been variously translated as “merciful kindness”, “loving-kindness” “steadfast love”, “faithful love”, “covenanted love”. It was translated in the Septuagint – a Greek version of the Hebrew Bible pre-dating the birth of Christ - as “eleos” and this, in turn, was rendered “misericordia” in the Vulgate – the Latin version made by St. Jerome in the fourth century, which remained the Bible in the West for the following millennium plus. In English translations of the Vulgate – such as the Douai/Rheims version and the Knox version – it is given as “mercy”. However translated, “hesed” bespeaks a God “rich in mercy (Eph 2:4)”, “merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness (Ex 34:6)”
We are required to be merciful as God is merciful (cf. Lk 6:36), to show towards our neighbour the “hesed” that our Father in Heaven shows to us. The medieval exegetes noted that the Latin word, misericordia, seemed to combine two other Latin words, miseria (misery) and cor (heart). Pondering all three words, they concluded that the virtue of mercy was that by which the human heart was touched by the neighbour’s misery and so induced to remedy her/his defects and afflictions. Some – e.g., St. Thomas Aquinas – intimated that it was, in fact, our sense of our own vulnerability to those very same hurts and losses that compelled us to help the neighbour in distress. It was, in effect, this capacity to identify with the afflictions and deprivations of others that resulted in our “sym-pathy”, “com-passion”, our “suffering-with” others, and moved us to engage in works of mercy.
As our catechisms have indicated for centuries (see, e.g., Irish Catholic Catechism for Adults), there are Seven Corporal (p. 551), and Seven Spiritual (p. 569), Works of Mercy. In the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats (Mt 25: 31-46), the Judge welcomes those who did, and banishes those who did not, perform the Corporal Works of Mercy. “As long as you did it to one of these my least brethren, you did it to me”. This revelation exercised the European imagination for centuries and, in painting and writing, exemplum and folk-tale, it was impressed on all that to feed and clothe the needy was to feed and clothe the Lord himself. In his enormously influential Life of St. Martin of Tours, Sulpicius Severus recounts the incident that became paradigmatic in this context: Martin cuts his soldier’s cloak in two, giving one half to a freezing beggar, only to see in a vision that night the Saviour himself wrapped in the that very same garment, announcing that Martin had so clothed him.
The faithful who educated the poor for the sake of the Gospel in the age of Blessed Edmund Ignatius Rice were convinced that what they did to others, especially to the child “oppressed by poverty and injustice”, they did to Christ. Christ still endures afflictions and deprivations of many kinds in young people today. These are his members and are – or ought to be - our students. What we do for, and to, them, we do for, and to, the Lord. There will, no doubt, be other ways – e.g., during Catholic Schools Week 2016 – in which we will mark the Year of Mercy. Let us who strive to teach the young in the charism, and after the example, of Blessed Edmund mark it by expressly confessing every single day of this Jubilee Year our conviction that what we do to this pupil or that, we do to Christ.
The Jubilee of Mercy commences on Tuesday, 8th December, 2015, the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the 50th anniversary of the closing of the Second Vatican Council. Noting that the Hebrew word “hesed” occurs about 250 times in the Old Testament, the Anchor Bible Dictionary adds: “No one English term corresponds precisely to the Hebrew … and the exact nuances of the term have been much debated”. It has, in fact, been variously translated as “merciful kindness”, “loving-kindness” “steadfast love”, “faithful love”, “covenanted love”. It was translated in the Septuagint – a Greek version of the Hebrew Bible pre-dating the birth of Christ - as “eleos” and this, in turn, was rendered “misericordia” in the Vulgate – the Latin version made by St. Jerome in the fourth century, which remained the Bible in the West for the following millennium plus. In English translations of the Vulgate – such as the Douai/Rheims version and the Knox version – it is given as “mercy”. However translated, “hesed” bespeaks a God “rich in mercy (Eph 2:4)”, “merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness (Ex 34:6)”
We are required to be merciful as God is merciful (cf. Lk 6:36), to show towards our neighbour the “hesed” that our Father in Heaven shows to us. The medieval exegetes noted that the Latin word, misericordia, seemed to combine two other Latin words, miseria (misery) and cor (heart). Pondering all three words, they concluded that the virtue of mercy was that by which the human heart was touched by the neighbour’s misery and so induced to remedy her/his defects and afflictions. Some – e.g., St. Thomas Aquinas – intimated that it was, in fact, our sense of our own vulnerability to those very same hurts and losses that compelled us to help the neighbour in distress. It was, in effect, this capacity to identify with the afflictions and deprivations of others that resulted in our “sym-pathy”, “com-passion”, our “suffering-with” others, and moved us to engage in works of mercy.
As our catechisms have indicated for centuries (see, e.g., Irish Catholic Catechism for Adults), there are Seven Corporal (p. 551), and Seven Spiritual (p. 569), Works of Mercy. In the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats (Mt 25: 31-46), the Judge welcomes those who did, and banishes those who did not, perform the Corporal Works of Mercy. “As long as you did it to one of these my least brethren, you did it to me”. This revelation exercised the European imagination for centuries and, in painting and writing, exemplum and folk-tale, it was impressed on all that to feed and clothe the needy was to feed and clothe the Lord himself. In his enormously influential Life of St. Martin of Tours, Sulpicius Severus recounts the incident that became paradigmatic in this context: Martin cuts his soldier’s cloak in two, giving one half to a freezing beggar, only to see in a vision that night the Saviour himself wrapped in the that very same garment, announcing that Martin had so clothed him.
The faithful who educated the poor for the sake of the Gospel in the age of Blessed Edmund Ignatius Rice were convinced that what they did to others, especially to the child “oppressed by poverty and injustice”, they did to Christ. Christ still endures afflictions and deprivations of many kinds in young people today. These are his members and are – or ought to be - our students. What we do for, and to, them, we do for, and to, the Lord. There will, no doubt, be other ways – e.g., during Catholic Schools Week 2016 – in which we will mark the Year of Mercy. Let us who strive to teach the young in the charism, and after the example, of Blessed Edmund mark it by expressly confessing every single day of this Jubilee Year our conviction that what we do to this pupil or that, we do to Christ.