BROTHERS OF THE CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS

DISTRICT OF SAN FRANCISCO

SECOND CONVOCATION

Cardinal Thomas S. Williams, D.D.

Key Note Address

Burlingame, California

23, 24 October 1999

REACHING OUT, TOUCHING HEARTS

All I wish to offer you in this address is based on a single premise: there is no greater contribution that the Church can make to the welfare of young people than to provide good Catholic schools for their education.

Good schools depend upon good teachers. That is axiomatic, but many teachers may be tempted often to feel that their teaching apostolate in our schools is hidden, or unnoticed, or taken for granted.

Yet not altogether hidden . . . not altogether unnoticed.

Do you remember that wonderful play, later a film: Robert Bolt's "A Man For All Seasons", on the life of St. Thomas More?

One of the characters in that play, Richard Rich, a very ambitious young man, sought Thomas More's advice on what career he should choose,

"Be a teacher, Richard. You would be a good one, even a great one.

"But if I was," said Richard, "who would know it?"

Said Thomas More : "You, your pupils, God. Not a bad audience that!

Well, I want you all, teachers and partners in the Lasallian educational enterprise, to know that I declare myself a member of that audience.

You see, even if we bishops or clergy, board members, parishioners or parents, don't say so often enough, deep down in our hearts all of us know that, in the course of a lifetime teachers, along with our parents, have the greatest influence in making us the kind of people we are.

Serving as the New Zealand Bishops Conference deputy for education for the past 15 years, and visiting Catholic schools in countries as diverse as Samoa, South Africa and East Timor, has brought home to me very forcibly just how much we are indebted to our teachers, and just how true is the statement of the philosopher, Pericles of Athens: "The good teacher lives on in the stuff of other men's lives."

The mark of the good teacher never changes. It may have many names such as 'dedication' or 'commitment'. Call it what you will, it is before anything else a complete giving over of themselves to informing their pupils so that they will know truth and appreciate beauty, and forming their wills so that they will seek good.

This is essentially a religious task, since God is the source of all truth, God is the creator of all that is beautiful, God is the infinite Good, and since the ultimate destiny of each and every pupil is to be united with God for all eternity.

Most of you here are teachers, I believe. To you I want to say that, if ever you become discouraged, then know that part of you will be flying with every pilot, building with every architect, diagnosing with every doctor, creating with every artist, fashioning with every craftsman and woman. More than that, part of you will be woven into the fabric of every sound marriage and every good home. You are making your way into the hearts and minds of the children and youth you teach. "Reaching out, touching hearts" is a more true description of teaching than of any other human activity, save perhaps parenting.

In a Catholic School, it goes without saying that the teacher is a member of a profession. More than that, the teacher is fulfilling a vocation. And even more than that, the teacher, whether lay or religious, is exercising an irreplaceable ministry in the Church. Teaching is–I'm in no way guilty of exaggeration here–teaching is the most widespread and effective ministry in the Church.

It is a ministry which has existed in the Church for all its 2,000 years. St. Paul lists the ministries carried out in the communities to which he addressed his letters. The ministry of teacher occurs in each, and yields precedence only to that of apostle and prophet.

And, of course, it is no accident that the name by which Jesus was known to his disciples was 'Rabbi', which means 'Teacher'.

Bishop David Konstant of Leeds, Chairman of the Catholic Education Service in the United Kingdom, speaks of teachers as "Master builders".

"The best craftsmen, of course, are not just skilled artisans. The builders of our great Cathedrals devoted the whole of their lives to their work, even though most of them knew they would never see the finished building. They felt called to portray something of the glory of God in stone, wood or stained glass, even if it was never seen in all its glory. The same is true of any great craftsman. The same is also true, I believe, of the best Christian teachers. They have a vocation to educate the young within a community of faith and to share their love of knowledge not as an end in itself but as an insight into the Author of all knowledge and his creation. " (Briefing, 18.4.96)

It is surely to the glory of God that you are drawing out the potential of your pupils so that their experience of life is richer and more fulfilling.

It is surely to the glory of God that you send out from the school in which you teach young men and women with ideas and dreams, with a vision of what they want to achieve in life, with a strong sense of service, of care and compassion for those in need, and above all with a love of life and a zest for living it to the full.

And it is surely to the glory of God that you love life, and love the Giver of life, and in loving you give yourselves in such generous measure to your students.

May I move from teachers to the schools in which you teach, and in which you who are Partners in the Lasallian Mission play such a significant role.

You know well, more surely than most, that your schools, Catholic schools, are in a category of their own.

Your schools do not exist simply to duplicate what is being done by other schools. Catholic schools have a special character—nature and goals—which distinguishes them from other schools, and which alone accounts for the enormous sacrifices you and your fellow-Catholics have made to establish them and sustain them down through the decades.

Perhaps I can best sum up Catholic character by referring again to a passage in Robert Bolt's "A Man For All Seasons."

Will Roper, St. Thomas More's future son-in-law, had come to seek permission to marry Thomas More's daughter, Margaret. More questioned Will Roper:

"You come to ask for my daughter's hand in marriage at an age that I think both of you are unprepared for. What say you?

The young man replied : "I want to love your daughter as you, Sir, love your wife. I want to practice law, Sir, as you do, in pursuit of justice; and I want to serve my country as you do, Sir, in the hope of a better England."

"I feel it would be enough, my Lord".

And St. Thomas More said: ''It is only enough if, before all, you have said you love God first and above all else, because He has first loved you."

Loving God first and above all else because He has first loved us. That is what our Catholic faith is all about. That is what Catholic family life is all about. That is what Catholic education is all about. That is what gives Catholic schools their special character. If there are people who value Catholic schools for any other reason which in their minds over-rides that essential one, then they have missed the point of their very existence.

Catholics have never been able to accept that a purely secular education can be true education, complete education.

The Catholic school is based on the conviction that the human and the divine are inseparable. In other words, the way we live and what we believe are or should be wholly complementary and mutually enriching.

It is this same conviction which led to the establishment of the ministry of teacher in apostolic times, to the monastic schools dating back to the fourth century, to the foundation of the great medieval universities, and to the mission schools set up in every place where the Gospel has penetrated.

Even when Church schools have been illegal, ways have been found despite the terrible risks, to continue Catholic education. The 'hedge schools' of Ireland, and the 'Flying University' of Lublin in Poland where Pope John Paul received his tertiary education during the Nazi occupation of his country, with secret classes in the attics of houses . . . a different house each night . . . are examples of the Catholic determination to provide God-centered education regardless of the cost.

I have immense admiration for the Catholic schools, colleges and universities here in the United States, not only for the quality of education they offer and for their uncompromising Catholicity, but also for the massive sacrifices made by dioceses and parishes, religious congregations and institutes, and particularly teachers and parents, to maintain those schools.

Separation of Church and State translates here into a refusal to aid denominational schools. A similar stance had prevailed in New Zealand since 1877 when an Education Act made state school education free, secular and compulsory, and denied government funding to schools, such as the Catholic schools, which provided an education that was not secular.

For a century the Catholic community fought for state aid for its schools. Financial relief came in 1975 with the passing of the Private Schools Conditional Integration Act. That legislation enabled our Catholic schools to integrate with the State School system. The requirement on the part of Government was that the Catholic schools follow the State school curriculum guidelines and general norms regarding governance and management. The Catholic proprietors, i.e. the diocesan bishops and religious congregations, retained the right to maintain and develop the specifically Catholic character of their schools through teacher appointments, pupil enrollments, religious education curriculum and religious practices, and in other ways. As a result our schools are as Catholic now as they have ever been and more so, since they have been freed from crippling and enervating financial worries and have been able to focus wholly on striving for Catholic and educational excellence. Freed from financial anxiety, because government pays the salaries of principal, teachers, director of religious studies, auxiliary staff, as well as all operating expenses. In addition, Government pays to Catholic schools the same per student per annum amount it pays for the up-grading, modernization and maintenance of the state schools. Between the state schools (which remain secular) and state integrated schools (all the Catholic Schools, as well as other previously independent schools) there is now genuine equity.

We still have indebtedness incurred prior to the arrangements now in place, so we charge attendance dues for each student: in American dollars, about $100 per annum for primary pupils and about $250 per annum for secondary.

Perhaps you can see now why I, coming from a country where separation between Church and State has not impeded partnership and government support, am so much in admiration of the sacrifices that make possible the American Catholic education network.

But if the Catholic schools in New Zealand enjoy material advantages, we certainly have to educate in a social and moral climate which presents huge challenges to all involved in Catholic education.

New Zealand is now the most secularized society in the English-speaking world. Successive quinquennial international studies of values have established that. The 1877 Education Act I referred to earlier, in establishing a professedly secular state system of education, has certainly been part of the cause. Perhaps it is an indictment of the Catholic Church in New Zealand. We are over 13% of the total population, and have 237 of the nation's 3,000 primary and secondary schools.

One effect of the secular tide which has washed over my country is a marked decrease in religious practice. It has affected the other main stream Churches to a much greater degree than the Catholic Church. I am convinced the strength of our Catholic education system is a major reason why Catholic practice is so much stronger. Even so, only a quarter of those who profess their Catholic allegiance on the national census form are active Mass-goers. It goes without saying that where participation in the Eucharist drops away, the level of faith in the family declines also.

Dilution of faith in the home has a direct bearing on the expectations made of the Catholic school, of teachers and catechists.

Parents and grandparents all too often expect the school or parish education in faith programs to do what neither can possibly do. Teachers and catechists build on the foundations laid by the parents. If the foundations are faulty or virtually non-existent, if the importance attributed to prayer, devotional practices and essential truths is denied implicitly or explicitly by the attitudes and behavior of the parents, then the teachers and catechists, if they were all John Baptist de La Salles, Don Boscos, Elizabeth Ann Setons, Catherine McAuleys, or Marcellin Champagnats, can avail little.

Our teachers and catechists toil hard, they love and grieve over their pupils, they live and proclaim and witness their faith, but they can only supplement and extend and develop what is done in the home. They cannot replace it.

Too many ignore the reality of this truth. There are critics who will apportion blame liberally, and reproach teachers and texts, curriculum and Council (Vatican II, I mean!). I will not join their ranks, and least of all as regards teachers. They are the often unsung, rarely enough appreciated heroines and heroes of education in faith in the Catholic Church.

And thank God for the good parents who do value their Catholic Faith and heart and soul want to communicate to their children. They and our teachers are a mighty combination, hard to beat. Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven!

Recognition of decline in religious practice serves to emphasize the need of on-going partnership between parish and school. It goes without saying that any Catholic primary or secondary school is normally an integral part of the parish or group of parishes. What is not generally realized (although some principals and teachers know it well) is that, for many students and their parents, the school is the parish.

In so many instances more families are in contact with the Church through the school than through parish organizations and Sunday Mass.

If parishes are to reach out to their inactive parishioners, their most potent means must be the school. Catholic schools are essential to the vitality of the parishes, and their most precious resource.

Another reality in New Zealand which impacts upon our schools and their teachers is the incidence of marriage breakdown. It cannot help but distort in some degree the religious development of the younger family members whether children or in their teens.

Marriage breakdown ran be a cause of confusion and pain to a child or teenager while it is happening, when it happens, and after it happens. The teacher has the hurting student in the class, and seeks to soothe the hurt on the one hand, and make sense for the student of Abba, Father and the Holy Family on the other. It is just not easy, and cannot always succeed. And those who criticize our teachers and education-in-faith programs may never know.

Another observation concerns the impact of television. Don't expect a diatribe against the "box" from me. I know full well it can be a tool, not a toy, that it can be a window on the world rather than a mirror on self. I simply point out that through TV a great number of unsavory people are admitted to the home who would never have got past the door had they knocked and asked to come in. A flick of the switch, and they are in the living room, guests of the family. They bring with them their distorted values and, often enough, their irreligion and their violence. Those responsible for education in faith outside the home are too often expected to counter in the classroom those deforming values, and undo the effects of hour after hour of indiscriminate and unsupervised viewing. I say again, too often we ask the impossible of our schools and teachers.

I cannot help but note yet another concern which is affecting New Zealand, and which I see is being aired frequently in addresses on education matters by the Catholic Bishops of England and Wales. Maybe it is being debated here also. It relates to the extent to which education is to be made subservient to the demands of the market, and the extent to which schools are themselves to be made subject to market forces.

As far back as 1991 Cardinal Basil Hume of Westminster noted that:

"It is easy sometimes to get the impression that the main purpose

of education is seen as being primarily to sustain our economic

prosperity, to produce technicians and managers."

He went on to quote a local authority director of education:

"In terms of national policy, it seems that education is no longer seen as having an intrinsic value in itself - as a process which enriches the lives of individuals and society. Schools are now being judged on the extent to which their 'products' meet the labor market needs of the day. Low level 'short-termism', political expediency and dogmatism have replaced educational philosophy and long-term strategic planning."

Bishop David Konstant of Leeds, whom I quoted earlier, referred in an address on "Catholic Schools and Market Forces", 25.9.91, to an article by a Ministry of Education advisor advocating the application of market values to education.

In the article the author speaks of "an effective competitive market in schools" as being likely to raise standards of achievement in schools. He refers to "a market formula" and to the need for "a free market" in which "the consumer must be free to choose". The great strength of the independent schools, he says, is among other things their "freedom to respond to changing market demands". He looks forward to schools opting out (of government-funded schemes) because they will then see themselves as ready to "compete in an increasingly competitive market."

This is the sort of language that more and more people are using in order to describe educational activities. One of the effects of this is that it is beginning to be taken for granted that education is a market commodity; it is as if by saying it often enough it becomes true.

Bishop Konstant offers in response some salutary comment:

"Let me indicate what I find so dangerous about such an emphasis. It seems to me that what the market encourages is something of the following: success at the expense of someone else's failure; achievement as the only valid measure of work; a stress on money that obscures other and more human values; a concentration on effective structures that means that too little attention is given to individuals; a desire to please others (for example, the shareholders) that overrides principles. And much more besides. Maybe some of these emphases are splendid for the market place itself, but if they become the norm for education (and by implication for our whole way of life), then something is very seriously wrong. Living by such values we shall more and more develop into a society characterized by materialism, acquisitiveness, impatience with lack of success (automatically equated with failure), a selfishness bred from this same impatience, and a lack of attention to non-productive members of society (for example, the old, the sick, the handicapped). This would be a human disaster of the first magnitude."

It is the task of Catholic educators to withstand the persistent and deliberate thrust towards consumerism and utilitarianism in education.

The direction we take must always be charted by reference, not to the market, but to our fundamental beliefs about the nature and value of the human person and therefore to the essential purpose of education: the drawing out of the person's potential, gifts and creativity, and the realization of personal wholeness and integrity.

A final comment on matters which impact on our Catholic schools in New Zealand and the United States is the challenge for us to lead the way in gaining recognition for the spiritual in the life of our societies.

Writing in 1933 as the Nazi threat was taking shape in Germany, Christopher Dawson wrote these words with, I believe, true prophetic insight:

"In fact, the great tragedy of modern civilization is to be found in the failure of material progress to satisfy human needs. The modern world has more power than any previous age, but it has used its new power for destruction as much as for life; it has more wealth, yet we are in the throes of a vast economic crisis; it has more knowledge, and yet our knowledge seems powerless to help us. What our civilization lacks is not power and wealth and knowledge, but spiritual vitality and, unless it is possible to secure that, nothing can save us from the fate that overtook the civilization of classical antiquity and so many other civilizations that were powerful and brilliant in their day."

Christopher Dawson spoke even then of the need to recover "spiritual vitality." Nearly sixty years later that need is even more urgent. Catholic education surely has a role to play in the spiritual regeneration of society.

It would have been with this task in mind that led Pope John Paul II to address the Bishops from Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin on the "ad limina" visit to Rome in May last year:

"The greatest challenge to Catholic education in the United States today, and the greatest contribution that authentically Catholic education can make to American culture, is to restore to that culture the conviction that human beings can grasp the truth of things and in grasping that truth can know their duties to God, to themselves and their neighbors.

"In meeting that challenge the Catholic educator will hear an echo of Christ's words, "If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free" (In. 8:32). The contemporary world urgently needs the service of educational institutions which uphold and teach that truth is "that fundamental value without which freedom, justice and human dignity are extinguished." (Veritatis Splendor, n.4).

The Holy Father's words apply far beyond Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin. Our societies are gravely at risk of de-humanization and moral impoverishment.

The Catholic Church and its Catholic schools can no longer think only in terms of the needs of Catholics and Catholic interests. The very health of the societies in which we live demands moral and social input which the Church is uniquely fitted to provide.

No betrayal of the content of Catholic doctrine is necessary. On the contrary, it is the very authority of the Church, the firmness and clarity of its teaching, and its understanding of the nature and purpose of education, which gives Catholicism the opportunity to answer the need of the moment.

People sense that they have drifted too far from the certainty of moral fundamentals, and as a result they see civilization itself beginning to be threatened by lawlessness and anarchy.

The Catholic Church, through its schools, by being true to itself and its educational philosophy, is truly a beacon of hope in our countries.

All I have said thus far I wish to summarize in the form of a statement describing the task of the Catholic school.

There will be nothing new in it for you. Its content you exemplify in your day-to-day teaching, and your day-to-day work as Partners in Lasallian Mission.

The task of every Catholic school is the shaping of full human beings who will be able to get the most out of life, and who will be able to give the most to life.

The Catholic school is called to direct its resources to engendering in its pupils self-awareness and awareness of the world they live in, to building active respect for others, and to forming an ability to discriminate in favor of the needy and disadvantaged.

The pupils, through the School's curriculum, must be left with no illusions about the critique which the Gospel makes of the society that they are to share.

The curriculum must include every opportunity for the pupils to come to understand how a person is to be a follower of Christ, and to live out that following in the face of injustices, institutionalized evils and violence which threaten the world they are to inherit.

No Catholic school is properly fulfilling its task if its pupils opt without thought to join the ranks of those organizations which perpetuate the world's basic divisions into rich and poor, the powerful and the powerless.

No Catholic school properly fulfills its task if it counts its success by the number of pupils it has managed to "fit in" to society without disturbing its accepted standards and values.

A Catholic school cannot simply be an annex to contemporary society. Its vision and the vision of its pupils cannot be limited by the ideology of the moment. Its vision is the vision of the Kingdom established by Jesus Christ.

It is a vision that does not permit compromise.

Whether it is a matter of gaining votes, or promotion, or a speedier fulfillment of material ambition, there can be no excuse for a cowardly tolerance of anything that is false or evil.

The Church is not an entrant in a popularity contest, anymore than was Christ himself. Christ commissioned his Church to preach the Gospel in season or out of season, welcome or unwelcome.

People may and do deceive themselves that basic moral principles in one decade need no longer apply in another decade, if enough people are willing to accept wishy-washy substitutes and let-outs.

The task of the Catholic school, Lasallian or any other, is to challenge its pupils to see through that kind of sham, and debasement of sound human values.

The task of the Catholic school is:

to form young men and women who are prepared to put principle before expediency, who will live by unchanging Gospel-based standards, and who will not seek excuses for moral U-turns that will enable them to live more at home in the de-Christianized society about them.

to form young men and women who accept that high standards mean sacrifice and self-discipline, and who don't have the itching cars and clamorous voices which mark those continually expecting or demanding that Pope or Bishop will bring in changes to make Catholic living easy—to take the Cross out of Christianity.

I confess that, this being my first visit to the San Francisco region, I do not know at first hand your schools and your multi-faceted Lasallian initiatives. But from all I have heard and read, I am wholly confident that those tasks I have outlined you Brothers, lay teachers, Partners and auxiliaries, and all involved in Lasallian Mission carry out capably and effectively to the glory of God and the honor of him whose charism inspires all you do, St. John Baptist de La Salle.