vocation engagement spirituality -...

AN INTERNATIONAL MARIST JOURNAL OF CHARISM IN EDUCATION

volume 18 | number 01 | 2016

Inside:

• Something new for our time

• Catholic Schools and Universities: A Global View

Vocation

Spirituality

Engagement

APRIL 2016

2 | CHAMPAGNAT APRIL 2016

Champagnat: An International Marist Journal of Charism in Educationaims to assist its readers to integrate charism into education in a way that gives great life

and hope. Marists provide one example of this mission.

EditorTony Paterson [email protected]: 0409 538 433

Management CommitteeMichael Green FMSLee McKenzieTony Paterson FMS (Chair)Roger Vallance FMS

Peer-ReviewersThe papers published in this journal are peer-reviewed by the Management Committee or theirdelegates. The peer-reviewers for this editionwere:

Peter Howes, FMSAnthony Hunt, FMSMichael McManus FMSHelga Neidhart, RSCTony Paterson FMSKath RichterRoger Vallance FMS

Champagnat: An International Marist Journal ofCharism in Education, ISSN 1448-9821, ispublished three times a year by Marist Publishing

Peer-Review:The papers published in this journal are peer-reviewed by the Management Committee or theirdelegates.

Correspondence:Br Tony Paterson, FMSMarist Centre,PO Box 1247,MASCOT, NSW, 1460Australia

Email: [email protected]

Views expressed in the articles are those of therespective authors and not necessarily those ofthe editors, editorial board members or thepublisher.

Unsolicited manuscripts may be submitted and ifnot accepted will be returned only if accompaniedby a self-addressed envelope. Requests forpermission to reprint material from the journalshould be sent by email to –The Editor: [email protected]

APRIL 2016 CHAMPAGNAT | 3

ChampagnatAn International Marist Journal of Charism in Education

Volume 18 Number 01 April 2016

1. Editorial and Contributors 4Tony Paterson

2. Something new for our time 9Michael Green

3. Catholic Schools and Universities: A Global ViewJohn McMahon 21


in my view...

The following is the Eulogy given at the funeral forBrother Dacius on Tuesday, 5th April 2016 inMelbourne. As a senior Brother in the AustralianMarist Province it reflects on a fortunate life, well-lived, that encourages all of us to move forward in ourquest for Jesus through our Marian heritage.

The eulogy was written and delivered by Br TonyPaterson, and is printed with the permission of theProvincial of the Australian Province

1. INTRODUCTION:

Today we come together to celebrate and togive thanks for the long life of BrotherDacius James Reilly, (affectionately known

as ‘Dace’ by the Brothers). In your Mass booklet there is a portrait of Dace

painted by his nephew, Paul. This portrait is ofDace in the garden, and like all good portraits, itcaptures the essence of his personality: he is in hisbeloved gardening or work clothes, holding theinstruments of the gardening trade, a mastercraftsman when it came to gardening, a happy man,an unhurried man, at peace with himself, andobviously honored to have his portrait painted. Italso portrays a man who had a contemplative spiritand who was ‘at one’ with the world around him.The painting is a ‘gem’ because it says it all; itreflectively tells us the story of a man whocontributed so much to his family, to the Maristworld, to the Church in Australia; and may I add,to the environment.

2. FAMILY AND EARLY YEARS:

James Joseph Reilly was born on 30th May 1921in Melbourne. His father, Joseph, was a laborer, andhis mother, Jean Lillian (nee Hume), was a nurse.Br Dacius was in his 95th year when he passedaway, the best part of a century. At the time of hisdeath last Thursday, 31st March 2016, he was theoldest living Marist Brother in the AustralianProvince; and he had been a Brother for nearly

seventy-six years. If we add to these years the fouryears he had in the Juniorate at Mittagong, and thefive years as a student at Assumption CollegeKilmore, Dace’s association with the Maristsextends to nearly 85 years. This in itself on the eveof our Bicentenary as a religious institute, clearlysuggests that he has made a significantcontribution to our Marist patrimony.

Over these years we obtain some idea of hislongevity when we consider that during his lifetimehe saw 23 out of the 29 Australian prime-minsterscome and go; there have been 9 Popes in hislifetime; and since his novitiate more than seventy-five years ago, he has welcomed and fare-welled 16Provincials (some twice!). Coupled with thesestatistics are what he saw, what he heard, and whathe experienced over these nine plus decades. Hewas born during the Roaring Twenties into aconfident post-Great War Australia symbolized bythe slogan ‘Men, Money and Markets’; he couldrecall with ease the building and opening of theSydney Harbor Bridge in 1932, first by the ‘gatecrasher’ Captain De Groot; and then, a fewminutes later by the NSW Premier, Jack Lang; heexperienced the Great Depression of the 1930’s; hecould describe life in Australia during the SecondWorld War and the Cold War that followed; helived the ALP/DLP split; he remembered theadvent of television and battery-operatedtransistors; he remembered the surprise election ofAngelo Giuseppe Roncalli as Pope John XXIII andVatican II; he could recall the dawning of the Ageof Aquarius; the Beatles, long hair, hippies andpointy-toe shoes; likewise he observed the VietnamWar demonstrations across Australia; he saw thefirst pictures of man on the moon; and he was aparticipant in the introduction of coeducation inour schools.

Given the mammoth technological changes inrecent years, Br Dacius may not have been keen tolearn how to ‘tweet’, but as an historian, he had avault of information accumulated over more than94 years that could probably compete with a‘Google Search’. It is through all of these eventsthroughout his lifetime that James Reilly grewfrom a young dependent child in a loving familyenvironment to a Marist Brother of great wisdom

RECALLING OUR SENIOR BROTHERWITH GRATITUDE

BROTHER DACIUS (JAMES) REILLY1921-2016


Left to right: Br Justin Guthrie, Br Dacius and BrPeter Carroll (Provincial). Photograph taken atSomers on Westernport Bay.

who sought one thing only: that is, to know and tolive Jesus through the intercession of Mary, theMother of God.

On the 24th January 1936, at the tender age offifteen, James Reilly boarded the train for theMittagong Juniorate. Fellow juniors in those yearswere his life-long friend Br Brendan Feehan whois with us today, and the late Br Julius Walsh whopassed away last year in Brisbane. Jim Reilly wasreceived as a postulant early in January 1940, andon 2nd July of that year he entered the novitiatereceiving the habit and the religious name Dacius.Undoubtedly when this name was announced athis reception, our Dace would have wondered whoon earth ‘St Dacius’ was. Church records are notalways precise of course, and we therefore assumethat he was named after St Dacius of Milan, whowas a bishop in the sixth century. Our own BrotherDacius undoubtedly emulated this man: loyal to

the Pope, loyal to his confreres, and ready to travelin obedience to the requests made to him by hissuperiors. On 2nd July 1941 Brother Dacius madehis First Profession at Mittagong, and after thiseighteen months of ‘spiritual energizing’ in thenovitiate, and on the advice of Brother GregoryMcKechnie, his Master of Novices, Daceproceeded to the classroom for the next fifty years.

3. APPOINTMENTS:

The young twenty-year-old Brother Daciuscommenced teaching at Randwick in the secondhalf of 1941 followed by appointments toHamilton, Mittagong as a member of the Junioratestaff, then to Mt Gambier, Thebarton, Hawthorn,Warragul, Shepparton, Preston and finally, to hisalma mater at Assumption College Kilmore forsixteen years. His retirement years were spent atTemplestowe and more recently with the NorthFitzroy community as well as providingcompanionship to his sister, Nina, at Somers.

During his early teaching years in Melbourne,Dace completed, on a part-time basis, a number ofunits towards a Bachelor of Arts degree at theUniversity of Melbourne. His only other formalqualifications were based on ‘trial and error’ in theearly days or from good advice from his confreressuch as Brother Thomas Francis Dolan atThebarton in South Australia whom Dace greatlyadmired. Dace participated in the Second Novitiatein Fribourg in 1969 and the Senior Brothers’Course in Rome in 1984. These two very shortbreaks were the only times that he left theclassroom during his fifty years of teaching.

4. HIS LEGACY

The life of Br Dacius exemplified some of thefirst words in our Constitutions that state: OurVocation as Brother is a special call to live thebrotherhood of Christ with everyone (Constitutions 3).In response to this, his daily encounters with bothhis God and his neighbor were always importantmoments for him. Wherever he was sent he put hisheart and soul into the ministry assigned to him.This fact is central to his legacy.

Editorial


This ‘Yes’ to his God; was enfolded with a deepunderstanding of what God was asking of him.When the appointments were read out at StJoseph’s College in Hunter’s Hill in January 1944,Dace heard that he was moving from Mittagongto Mt Gambier. Given the war restrictions ontravel in those days, Dace managed to traveloverland arriving in time to start the school year atMt Gambier. I would suggest that he could onlydo this if he had a deep faith, an understanding ofhis religious commitment, and a readiness like theprophets of old to go into the ‘unknown’.

The following year Dace found himself atThebarton in South Australia, where he was to stayfor the next eight years. On arrival, the Directorasked him to teach Grade 3. Dace of course said‘Yes’, but admitted that he didn’t have a clue whereto start. Through the unofficial Adelaide‘grapevine’, Dace found out that there was areligious sister teaching Grade 3 at the SemaphoreConvent. One has to remember that in the 1940’swe are talking about Adelaide, the great City ofChurches, as well as a pre-Vatican II Church,where any lone contact by a young cleric with alady was regarded as ‘dangerous’, let alone with anun where it could be viewed as ‘scandalous’. Eitherinnocent of these possibilities, or unperturbed, onmany Saturdays and with the support of BrThomas Dolan, Dace in black clerical suit andRoman collar, rode the Thebarton community’sonly means of transport, an old bicycle, the fifteenkilometres down the Port Road to Semaphore tobe tutored by Sister in the intricacies of Grade 3pedagogy. With her help, for which he was forevergrateful, and fired with zeal, not because he hadmet the Lord on the fifteen kilometre ride back toThebarton, but rather for the fact that he was sograteful to have the lessons for the next week, hepedaled on! This ongoing task was important forhim, for it entailed doing the right thing by hisstudents.

Eventually when he returned to Victoria, one ofhis key appointments was to Preston from 1963 to1975. In those years Preston was bulging at theseams with a multicultural enrolment that consistedprimarily of students who were the sons of migrantfamilies initially from Southern Europe and thenfrom the Middle East and Vietnam. Large classes,little Government finance, little or no support inthe form of teacher-aides, or teachers with no

formal qualifications to teach English as a SecondLanguage (ESL) were the norm. In the ‘busyness’ ofthis environment, he was still able to contemplatethe Sacrament of the Present Moment; and atthose high points of tension in the classroom orschool yard, he undoubtedly reflected on the beautyand consoling images that his favorite poet, WilliamWordsworth, gave him years earlier in the poem“Daffodils”. Here we read:

I wandered lonely as a Cloud…When all at once I saw a crowd of dancing Daffodils;

Along the lake, beneath the trees,Ten thousand dancing in the breeze…

They flash upon the inward eyeWhich is the bliss of solitude,

And then my heart with pleasure fills,And dances with the Daffodils.

I suspect that these images for Dace not onlygave him a sense of peace and tranquility in thedaily grind of a very demanding school, but hispeacefulness, his calmness, were good for allmembers of the school community. In later years,this sense of peace, this commitment to everyone,was expressed in his presence and participation inthe morning and afternoon teas at the thenProvince Centre at Templestowe with the staff. Heknew them well and appreciated not only their careand interest in him but also in his life with his sisterNina at Somers. He was very grateful for this.

This quiet and often unassuming engagementwith people and the world around him extended tocaring for the environment that he lived andworked in. In one sense, Dace may well have beenahead of all of us, an ‘ecological theologian’ wellbefore the term was invented. One only has toconsider the avenues of trees he planted atAssumption College Kilmore, or at Marist-SionCollege Warragul to understand this point. Hisdogged commitment to carrying hundreds ofbuckets of water to keep those trees alive forty ormore years ago is a clear testimony to a convictionthat he had a call, and a responsibility, to care forthe earth and to assist in the creative work of God.One only has to drive into the driveways of thegiven schools today to observe the beauty of thosetrees that stand like cathedral spires and reflectGod’s grandeur. In other communities where helived and worked as well as at Somers, the gardensthat he kept exemplified a self-taught horticulturalistwho understood the importance of nurturing


plants and seedlings that when in full bloombrought great happiness and satisfaction not onlyfor Dace but to all of us.

Recalling these stories clearly exemplifies thequiet presence, service and support Dace gave tothousands of people: brothers, lay staff, parents andstudents in his school ministry and to the worldaround him; or alternatively, the Marial dimensionof his life. In January 2012, our current SuperiorGeneral, Br Emili Turu, wrote a circular to allMarists titled: “He Gave Us the Name of Mary”.In this circular, Emili highlights the key themes ofMary’s life in relation to Jesus; in particular, thoserevealed at the Annunciation, the Visitation and atPentecost. Like Mary at the Annunciation, Dace’sfiat, his “Yes” for more than seventy years of Maristlife, was to do the will of God. Like Mary, who setout to visit and to assist her cousin Elizabeth, Dacedid the same to all whom he encountered duringhis lifetime. Like Mary, the Mother of God presentat Pentecost, Dace’s quiet and prayerful presence

was always appreciated as he participated in ourMorning and Evening Prayer, our CommunityEucharist, Community celebrations and evenCommunity meetings. When he spoke, his wordswere always those of a gentleman, who like Mary,could offer sound and gentle advice based on hisgreat store of wisdom.

5. CONCLUSION:

There is a statue of St Marcellin Champagnatthat stands in one of the niches on the externalfacade of St Peter’s Basilica in Rome. It representsour Founder carrying a young boy on his shoulders.In this artistic expression we see a symbol of thestrength and powerful inspiration of Maristspirituality for the world. I would like to suggestthat in his own way Brother Dacius Reilly is alsosymbolized in this statue as a true son ofChampagnat. For example, he would commentthat a Year 9 Religious Education class on a Fridayafternoon following Vatican II was no easier thanwhat it had been prior to the Council. Hesuggested that such a class on the eve of a weekendcould be akin to ‘jungle-warfare’. However, hestuck with it, for he had not only inherited avigorous spiritual tradition, but he was also a keyplayer in it. A player, a leader, who knew that as areligious teacher his role was to contribute to theongoing development of a Marist vision where hisstudents understood that their future, was filledwith the promise of vitality and hope. The strengthof this position was built on his faithfulness to thevision of Champagnat. This faithfulness to thevision was also present in his great admiration forthe Brothers who had gone before him. Given hisage, he would have known many of them, and hisfidelity to reading the Marist Necrology eachmorning was a clear witness to this.

And so today, as we bid farewell to our brotherand friend, we thank his sister, Nina and her familyfor their love and care of their brother and uncle,Jim; we thank Bruce Houghton, the ProvinceHealth Care Coordinator for his support of Dacein recent years; we thank the nursing staff atHawthorn; and we thank Br Des Howard and theNorth Fitzroy community for their care of Dace inrecent times. Dace could at times be very strong-willed, and his initial resistance to entering nursingcare clearly exemplified this. However, at the endof the day he accepted with great apprehension, the

Br Dacius in his garden at Somers. Painting by hisnephew, Paul Sutcliffe.

Editorial


need for him to take up residence at the MaryMacKillop Home in Hawthorn. The fact that hewas only there for a few weeks prior to movingfreely and quietly to the Gates of Heaven suggeststhat deep down he understood this important laststage of his life with us. Dace enjoyed life; and hewould have enjoyed meeting the comedian RonnieCorbett who joined the queue just after Dace lastThursday as they waited for St Peter to open theGates of Heaven (maybe a bit like waiting for thegates at the MCG to open?). His conversation withRonnie Corbett at the Gates would have recalledsome of the humor from the former televisionprogram titled “The Two Ronnies” such as the storyof the cement mixer running into the back of apolice van carrying sixteen prisoners all of whomemerged from the accident as ‘hardened criminals’!Dace could pick up the humor in such commentseven if it took some of us a minute or two to getthe point!

The Cistercian monk, Thomas Merton, writesthat at the centre of our being is a point of puretruth, a point or spark which belongs entirely toGod (in Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander). It is likea pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light ofheaven. It is at this point of truth where Dace hasnow had the Mystery of the Incarnation fullyrevealed to him. And so our prayer is one ofgratitude and joy for the fortunate life of BrotherDacius James Reilly who now enjoys the reward heso richly deserves. We will miss him greatly. But hislife, his example, carries us forward toenthusiastically embrace all that awaits ustomorrow.

May his soul, and the souls of all the faithfuldeparted rest in peace. Amen.Tony PatersonTuesday 5th April 2016.

THANK YOUOur gratitude to those who have contributed papers to this edition, and to the proof-readers andto those who have assisted with the peer-review process. The Management Committee.

CONTRIBUTORS:

Brother Michael Green is the National Directorof Marist Schools Australia and the ExecutiveDirector of Ministries for the Australian MaristProvince. He works from the Marist Centre inBrunswick in Melbourne, and he is a formerPrincipal of St Augustine’s College in Cairns, andParramatta Marist High School.

Brother John McMahon is the NationalDirector of Marist Tertiary and Online Courses.He is currently the Community Leader of the

Templestowe Community in Melbourne; and aformer Principal of Marist schools in Traralgon,Bulleen and Somerton Park.

Brother Tony Paterson is the ProvinceArchivist; he works for Marist Schools Australia asthe editor of Lavalla and The Champagnat Journal;and he is the Community Leader of the DrummoyneCommunity in Sydney. He is also a formerPrincipal of schools at Preston and Swan Hill.


MICHAEL GREEN FMS

Something new for our timeUnderstanding the 1816 Marist pledge of

Fourvière as a project of mercy

Edited Address to a Gathering of Marists. GeneralSantos City, the Philippines, 16 January 2016

It is early in the day, probably around dawn.Although it is mid-summer, there is still a littlecoolness in the air at this hour.1 The morning

quiet of Lyon is broken by the sound of hob-nailedboots walking at pace through its cobbled streets.A passer-by would have seen a group of twelveyoung men, all in their twenties, clad in the blacksoutanes and round hats of the French clergy. Theyare moving briskly. Something is afoot. They havesome urgent business, these young clerics. Makingtheir way across the city, they cross the River Saône,and begin the climb of eight hundred steps up thehill of Fourvière. It is the morning of 23rd July1816.

Put yourself as that passer-by. Enter the scenefor moment. Follow these priests and seminariansup to the Chapel of the Virgin. Catch a sense oftheir excitement, their purpose, the beat that is fastin their hearts that morning. They have beenplanning this for some time. At least seven of themwere ordained priests yesterday at the seminary ofSaint-Irénée, by a missionary bishop from America.They also want to be missionaries. Many of theirfellow seminarians do as well, to serve both inFrance and across the seas. Their professors haveactively encouraged this spirit among them. It is atime for re-building the Church, they have beentold, and they are the men chosen to do it. Theyhave dreams of being like Jean-François Régis, thegreat eighteenth century inland Jesuit missionerfrom Le Puy. One among them, Jean-ClaudeCourveille, comes from near Le Puy. It was in the

grand medieval basilica of that city four years agothat he first felt inspired to found a new religiouscongregation, one that bore Mary’s name. He feltcalled by Mary herself to do it. He shared hisexperience with one of his classmates at theseminary – Etienne Déclas, who is part of thegroup that morning. Later they brought others intotheir circle – among them Etienne Terraillon, Jean-Baptiste Seyve, Phillipe Janvier, MarcellinChampagnat and Jean-Claude Colin. Like othersin the seminary, they formed a “little society”. Suchgroups were being fostered in French seminaries asways for students to deepen their commitment anddevotion, and many seminarians are on the look-out for one to join. Over the last twelve monthsthey have developed their ideas, guided by theiryoung professor of moral theology, Jean Cholleton,who would in time himself join them. They feel aprofound sense of call to do “Mary’s work” in theChurch. This expression was to be at the heart oftheir self-understanding.

Today they are ready to pledge themselvessolemnly to that end. They have crafted a formalpromise, written in Latin, on which all theirsignatures appear. They have brought it with themthis morning, and intend to place it under thecorporal at their Mass, to unite their offering tothat of Jesus. In the text of the pledge they haveincluded the name they have chosen forthemselves: they will be the “Mary-ists”. They reachthe top of the hill, enter the shrine, and prepare forMass. As instigator of their project, M. Courveilleis given the honour of offering the Mass, assistedby M. Terraillon who is known as a liturgist. The

1 I am indebted to Justin Taylor SM for some of the details of the Fourvière event itself and the background to it.Taylor, J. “Fourvière, 23 July 2016” in Marist Notebooks, No.34, 2016. I have also drawn on some detail and analysis byGaston Lessard SM in Marist Spirituality in Four Voices, a presentation to the General Councils of the four Maristcongregations, 24 September 1988.


others are keeping the celebration of their firstMasses as priests for their own parishes. They allreceive Holy Communion and dedicate themselvesin front of the statue of Our Lady of Fourvière. Sitwith the intensity of that experience. Touch intothe confidence, clarity and conviction that are themarks of young people of faith.

The seeds of a new spiritual family of theChurch are being sown.

These seeds will soon put forth their first buds.In less than six months, Marcellin Champagnatwill have invited two young men of his new parishof La Valla – one a twenty-three year old formersoldier and the other a fifteen year-old working onhis family’s farm – to become the first teachingbrothers of the Society. Within a few years Jean-Claude Colin, his older brother Pierre, and EtienneDéclas will have formed a community of prieststhat became active in missions in the rugged Bugeyregion during the winter months, and Jeanne-Marie Chavoin and Marie Jotillon will have joinedthem at Cerdon to begin what would become thesisters’ branch. Meanwhile, several separatefoundations were to be made of lay tertiaries andalso sisters. A multi-branched tree was sprouting.

Why a focus on what happened that morning atFourvière? It is just one moment of the Mariststory. There were defining experiences thatpreceded it for Jean-Claude Colin, MarcellinChampagnat and Jeanne-Marie Chavoin. Each ofthem had a sense of a vocational call well beforethey came across the Marist idea and, at least forMarcellin and Jean-Claude, a pre-existing idea offounding a new religious congregation. Jeanne-Marie, after testing her vocation elsewhere, hadbeen counselled that she was destined for acongregation that was yet to be established. Andthere were, of course, a multitude of experiences tofollow, as the Marist tree began to grow andspread.2 That day at Fourvière was not even aformal beginning as such, just a promise to beginat some point yet to be determined, probably in LePuy. There are other milestones in early Maristhistory that are also significant – 1812, whenCourveille had his first inspiration in Le Puy; 1817,

when Marcellin gathered his first brothers, andwhich the Marist Brothers traditionally claim astheir foundation year; 1822, when the firstfavourable response was received from the PapalNuncio in Paris; 1824, the year that J-C Colinpreferred to use for the foundation of the Societyof Mary because it is when the first missionarycommunity of priests was formed; 1836, when theSociety of Mary was approved by the Holy See andthe priests took vows for the first time, on the feastday of Our Lady of Mercy. Later there were theRoman approvals of the Marist Sisters, the ThirdOrder of Mary, the Marist Brothers, and eventuallythe Marist Missionary Sisters. Indeed, theFourvière event was later air-brushed out of thefounding story by both Marcellin Champagnat andJ-C Colin, probably due to its embarrassingassociation with J-C Courveille who was to letthem down so hurtfully. Courveille’s name waseffectively banished from use after 1826. It wouldbe some years before those wounds had healed anda new generation of Marists was able to re-discoverwhat 23rd July 1816 signified for them. It was morethan it might seem.

In the first place, we can draw much from theFourvière event itself – the place, the time, theyoung men who pledged themselves to form a“Society of Mary”, and the graced intuitions thatled them to do so. To appreciate its significancemore deeply, it is important, secondly, to see it alsoin the context of a larger and richer journey – thestory of the spiritual family which was to growfrom it. It is a family that is now quite extended;there are now families within the family. That is notunusual among the spiritual families of the Church,at least those that have been able to becomeinculturated in many places, and have been able tore-contextualise themselves for different times andcircumstances. Third, we must see it through thelenses of today – contemporary Marian theology,the ecclesiology of the post-conciliar Church, andthe reality of our world – with all its “joys andhopes, sorrows and anxieties”.3 The SuperiorGeneral of one of the branches of the extendedMarist family, Brother Emili Turú of the Marist

2 See Alois Greiler SM for a discussion of the prior vocational call of J-C Colin, Marcellin Champagnat and Jeanne-MarieChavoin: “The Society of Mary and the Wider Marist Family: two models of the Origins”, in Marist Notebooks, No.28, May2010, pp.106-108

3 Gaudium et spes, #1

Something new for our time


Michael Green fms

Brothers, has chosen to dedicate one of the threeyears leading to the Brothers’ 2017 bicentenary asthe “Fourvière Year”. In doing so, he is inviting usto discover what the original Marist dream mightmean for the Marists of today, to a sense of theircollective identity and mission. It is an invitationto revisit what happened that summer’s morningin 1816, but to do so with the intention of comingto a deeper understanding of who are the Maristsof today, and what might they bring as an ecclesialcommunity to the wider Church and the missionwith which the Church is entrusted. Two hundredyears later, the Pope has named 2016 as anextraordinary Jubilee Year of Mercy. The serendipityof this amplifies the anniversary for Marists becauseit was as a project of the mercy of God that the firstMarists intuited a way forward for the Church oftheir day. Pope Francis has had the same intuition.

WHAT WAS FOURVIÈRE

FOR THE FIRST MARISTS?

In climbing the hill of Fourvière, the firstMarists knew that they were approaching holyground. The hilltop chapel, which had not longbeen renovated, had been a Marian shrine and aplace of pilgrimage for centuries. Legend had itthat when the first Christians came to Lyon – rightback in the second century – they had brought aMarian image to the Roman capital of Gaul,Lugdunum, which was built mainly around whatis now called Fourvière. There may be some truthin this, since we know that the first two bishops –Pothinus and Irenaeus – were disciples of Polycarpwho himself was a disciple of John. The traditionof Mary’s being part of the Johannine communityin Asia Minor was an ancient one. Irenaeus was tobecome the first great Marian theologian of theChurch.4 Whatever might have been the case infact, it is certain that from earliest times the figureof Mary played a defining role in the religiousimagination of the French Church generally, andof its Primatial See of Lyon in particular. Mary and

Lyon went together. And there was somethingabout the resilient and daring Lyonnaise spirit thatwas forged early. Those first Christians had sufferedpersecution here, many of them being martyredduring the time of the emperor Marcus Aurelius.In the year 177, Pothinus was among those to diewhile imprisoned not far from the Roman Forumat Fourvière. Since the sixteenth century, thedungeon where he was supposed to have been heldhad itself become a shrine. The Marist group wouldhave passed near the place of his death on theirclimb that morning. They would have known thatPope Pius VII had visited there just eleven yearsbefore, and knelt to pray. Perhaps they had donethe same during their time in Lyon. In the nearbyForum, those Christians who had been Romancitizens were beheaded.5 The blood of martyrs hadbeen spilt in this place. Just like the first Jesuits hadclimbed Montmartre in Paris to dedicate

4 Among the images of Mary proposed by Irenaeus was that of Mary as “Undoer of Knots”. While originally a reference tountying the metaphorical knot tied by Eve, this image took on a popular devotion. It is a favourite of Pope Francis who hasused it as one of the images for the Year of Mercy.

5 Roman citizens were given the dubious dignity of beheading, while the non-citizens were fed to wild beasts for theentertainment of the masses. This gruesome sport took place in the Roman amphitheatre near the part of Lyon now knownas Croix-Rouge. The place is known as the amphitheatre of the Three Gauls. It is recorded that in the summer of 177, thatsix Christians died this way – one woman (Blandine) and five men. Twenty-four were beheaded in the Forum and eighteendied in prison with Pothinus during the same period (March to August).



themselves to form the Society of Jesus (also menmostly in their twenties and at the end of theirstudies), so now these young men were ascendingto a place of Christian martyrdom to pledge toform the Society of Mary.

The parallel symbolism was not coincidental. Partof the thinking of the new Marist group was thatthey would be akin to the Jesuits. Their proposedname “Mariists” hinted at this. At the time ofsixteenth century Protestantism, they saw that Godhad needed to raise up the Society of Jesus to fightheresy, to be the soldiers of Christ. But their timecalled for a “Society of Mary”. Their intuitions werethat a new approach was needed because thecircumstances were new. It was not heresy that wasthe problem of their age but “unbelief ”,6 as theycalled it. From what they could see, the rise ofsecularist thought and the failings of the style ofchurch of the Ancien Regime had conspired to leaveboth society and Church in ruins. To re-build itwas the work of Mary, the work of a mother. TheChurch needed to be loved back to life, gatheredas a mother would gather, be nurtured as a motherwould nurture, and believed in as much as a mother’sunshakeable belief in her children. Later the MaristBrothers would include in their Constitutions thephrase that the brothers were to “share in thespiritual motherhood of Mary”. That is, the Maristseschewed a Jansenistic or punitive approach,choosing instead one that sought to heal and toreconcile. The word that was most important forthem was mercy. That had maternal instincts. Jean-Claude Colin was later to tell his priests in 1838:

Let us learn to understand the human heart.Let us put ourselves in the place of those towhom we are speaking. Would outbursts ofinvective win our hearts? Let us, on the

contrary, find excuses for them, congratulatethem on their good qualities (there are alwayssome), but no reproaches. I do not know of asingle instance where invective from thepulpit has done any good, not a single one …Rather than condemn and threaten, or speak

from any position of power or privilege, they feltcalled to be humble and among people, to personifythe mercy of God. The expression that hadgarnered them was one they had heard fromCourveille: that just as Mary had been there at thebirth of the Church, she wanted now to be therein these perverse end-times, as they understoodtheir age to be. The French expression was “l’Eglisenaissante” – the Church being born, in the very actof coming to life. In the decades ahead they wouldcome back to this phrase and theologise it further.They would increasingly identify themselves withMary of Pentecost, Mary of l ’Eglise naissante.Although it is from another time and culture, thisAfrican image of Mary at Pentecost capturessomething of this sense:

It is Mary, standing with the literally dis-Spirited, who has the faith, hope and love to bewith the l ’Eglise naissante. She is not at its centre –at least not structurally or functionally – but at itsheart. It is an idea that is also found in the muralof the Marist Fathers’ house at La Neylière, France,which depicts the various Biblical images of Mary:

In the Pentecost image here, Mary is prominent,but not at the geometrical centre. She is firstamong disciples, like them alive with the Spirit ofGod. It is a life-filled image of Church, this MarianChurch. A Church of faith, and hope, and love.

From the theology they learnt in the seminary,and from their own reading and discussion, theyoung priests had developed a heightened sense ofthe ongoing role of Mary in the Church. Onesource of this was the Spanish mystic María ofÁgreda. Her six-volume work on the earthly andheavenly life of Mary and not long translated intoFrench – The Mystical City of God – was one thatthe Marist aspirants knew and discussed. J-C Colinand Marcellin Champagnat both had copies. Muchhas been written and conjectured about the role ofthe “Blue Nun” in shaping the Marist self-understanding, but it is sufficient to emphasise herethat for the young men in 1816, Mary was not

6 “Incrédulité” in French.

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some remote object of reverent devotion. They hada compelling sensibility towards her activity in theirown lives and in the life of the Church, and theyfelt called to be part of that. As they prayed in frontof the statue of Our Lady of Fourvière, they did sowith a deep sense that they were sharing in “Mary’swork” – for her and with her.

The expression “Mary’s work” is a key forunlocking their core purposes that morning and inthe decades that followed.7 Each of J-C Colin,Marcellin and Jeanne-Marie was to use the termoften – frequently aligning the “work” and the“Society of Mary” synonymously. The work ofMary and that of the Society was one and the samething. And what was this “work of Mary”? TheMarist Brothers’ document Water from the Rock,Marist spirituality flowing in the tradition ofMarcellin Champagnat puts it this way:

The Marists understood their Project to be asharing in Mary’s work of bringing Christ-life to birth and being with the Church as itcame to be born. It was a work which theyhoped would touch every diocese of theworld, and would be structured like a multi-branched tree by including lay people, priests,sisters and brothers.8

The most ancient andfundamental title of Mary isTheotokos – God-bearer, mother ofGod. They might not have used theGreek word, but this is what thefounding Marists understood to bethe role of Mary, historically in theliteral birth of Jesus and thegathering in the Upper Roombefore Pentecost, as well as eternallyin the continuing life of the Church.Christ needed to be born in everyperson and in every age, and theChurch needed to be nurtured andsupported for all time. That was

Mary’s work. They sang often the hymn Sub TuumPraesidium – perhaps the oldest Marian prayer inthe Church, coming from third century Christiansin Egypt – where Theotokos was rendered in Latinas Dei Genitrix. In placing themselves under Mary’spatronage and protection, they were at the sametime aligning themselves with her work.

But more than a theological concept, the Maristsunderstood that Mary had a way of doing her work.There was a Marian way of bringing Christ-life tobirth and of nurturing life into the Church, andthat is what they sought to imitate.9 The Maristaspirants of 1816 had been formed by what latercame to be called the “French school ofspirituality”. The name is something of an unsubtlecover-all term for the currents of spiritual renewalthat had flowered in France and other Europeancountries as part of the Catholic Reformation. It isa study in itself, and multi-faceted. But let us pointto just a couple of images that emerged from it:that of the “Sacred Heart” and the “Holy Family”.They give a window into a spirituality that wasinstinctively affective, intimate and loving – bothof God and of others. It was highly relational.Figures such as Francis de Sales and Vincent dePaul were prominent in this school, and they were

7 Jean Coste SM has written extensively on this. See, for example, “Société de Marie, oeuvre de Marie”, in Forum NovumVol.2, No.2, 1993. pp.224-261

8 Water from the Rock, #11. See also #26: “We share in the spiritual motherhood of Mary as we take our part in bringing Christ-life to the world of those whose lives we share. We nurture that life in the ecclesial community, whose communion westrengthen through fervent prayer and generous service.”

9 Interestingly, the opening salutation of the Sub Tuum Praesidium was originally better rendered in English as “We fly toyour mercy” rather than “your patronage”, something that captures a sense of Mary’s role as mother as well as her function.Cf. Kasper, W. Mercy, the Essence of the Gospel and the Key to Christian Life. Paulist Press, New York. 2013. p.213.



for the Marists. They had read them and wereaffected by them. Francis de Sales’ book A Treatiseon the Love of God was a religious best-seller. It wasthis book that Marcellin later took from hispersonal library to give to Brother Louis, his firstNovice Master, telling him: “Here is a book thatwill show you how to love God.”10 In reading it, hewould have found the Salesian focus on God aslove, the unfathomable love of God for eachperson, and that a person’s only response being tolove of God and to show a practical, grounded loveof one’s neighbour. Marcellin, in particular wasgreatly influenced by Francis de Sales, borrowingfrom him the terms “family spirit”, “simplicity”,“presence”, and the “little virtues” – each of whichwas to become core aspects of the strand of Maristspirituality that grew from him. From Vincent dePaul – in front of whose incorrupt body a numberof the first Marists would later pray in their visitsto Paris – they would have read gems such as:

Charity is certainly greater than any rule.Moreover, all rules must lead to charity. Withrenewed devotion, then, we must serve the poor,especially outcasts and beggars. They havebeen given to us as our masters and patrons.

The most powerful weapon to conquer theDevil is humility. For, as he does not know atall how to employ it, neither does he know

how to defend himself from it.

It is not enough to give soup and bread. Thisthe rich can do. You are the servant of thepoor, always smiling and good-humoured.They are your masters, terribly sensitive andexacting master you will see. And the uglierand the dirtier they will be, the more unjustand insulting, the more love you must givethem. It is only for your love alone that thepoor will forgive you the bread you give tothem.The Marists wanted to share in Mary’s work and

to do so in Mary’s way. That way for them wasabout love and nurturance, about humility anddiscretion, and about joy and hope. This was howtheir “age of unbelief ” would be helped – by theirbeing maternal people of faith. Rather than atheological term such as Theotokos, the Maristspreferred the much more grounded name of “GoodMother”. Each day they sang to her in the SalveRegina as Mater Misericordiae, Mother of mercy.For Marcellin and Jeanne-Marie, in particular, thisimage of “good mother” captured theirunderstanding of a Marist spirit. Look atMarcellin’s personal statue of Notre Bonne Mère andthe wooden statue in the church in Coutouvre, inwhich Jeanne-Marie would have pondered hervocational call:

These are not some remote,otherworldly Marys, but realmothers, carrying their thumb-sucking infants. The thumb-sucking, of course, was an artisticmeans of emphasising the humannature of Jesus. It is also a way ofbringing attention to the humanityof Mary. Christ-life was somethingto be incarnated, to be real.

So, as they climbed Fourvièrehill that morning, what was in thehearts of these young Marists?First, there was a sense that theywere re-building the Church. Theirproject was in, and of, and for theChurch. It was not some exclusiveor insular plan, one that would beplayed out just among themselves.

10 Biographies de Quelques Frères, p.18


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On the contrary, it was one that would take themto the margins, to the peripheries, as agents of themercy of God. Essentially, it was missionary.Second, they saw themselves called by Mary, toshare with Mary in her work. Although they didnot put it exactly this way, their sense of beingMarist was being Mary. It meant for them, toimitate her openness and surrender to God’s will,to trust completely in God’s plan, and to give all ofthemselves to it. They saw this in terms ofdiscipleship of Jesus – to imitate Jesus in all things,as Mary had done. This was also part of therevelation of Le Puy.11 And, third, they wanted todo it together. Indeed, they imagined that theirwork would not only involve them as priests, butthere would also be religious sisters and brothers,and that the largest group of all would be laypeople. They did not delay in trying to make a startwith all the branches. Father Colin was later to putit this way:

The Society must begin a new Church overagain. I do not mean that in a literal sense;that would be blasphemy. But, still, in a certainsense, yes, we must begin a new Church12

They imagined a new way of being Church.Later theologians were to give this a name and theCatechism of the Catholic Church was to defineit: the Marian principle of the Church, or theMarian Church. In 1816, those young men justknew it intuitively: this was the way the Churchwas meant to be.

THE GROWTH OF THE EXTENDED FAMILY

There were a number of starts and false-startsover the twenty or thirty years after Fourvière, butthe more accepted narrative these days is that therewere two main orbits for the project and, de facto,

two simultaneous foundations of the Society ofMary – one at Belley with Jean-Claude Colin asthe principal protagonist and one at St Chamondshaped by Marcellin Champagnat.13 Both groupscomprised priests and brothers, but in distinctivelydifferent relationships and understandings.Different Rules were composed in each place.Different words were used. Different fields ofministry were chosen. The two groups did not seethemselves as separate, and did not seek to be, butthe clarity of hindsight reveals that each foundationdeveloped its own way of being Marist, using itsown language, honouring its own founding eventsand myths, its own heroes of the founding time,evolving its own culture, and indeed its owndistinctive path of Marist spirituality. The Sisters,more by accident than design, found themselves atBelley, and therefore much more aligned with theSociety of Mary that grew there, and Father Colin’svision for the sisters’ branch. There is a little ironyin this, because Jeanne-Marie herself was probablycloser in temperament and apostolic intuition toMarcellin than to Father Colin. As we know, theclose and collaborative relationship betweenJeanne-Marie and J-C Colin fractured after the1850s, and the sisters went in a different directionfrom the one desired by the Foundress.14

Meanwhile, tertiary groups formed, initiallysomewhat straddling both. An early Rule,composed probably by Jean-Baptiste Pompallierwho was associated with Marcellin at TheHermitage, captured something of the spirit of thatplace. Traces of it exist in the Constitutions of theMarist Missionary Sisters who were gradually toemerge from that movement as a distinct branch.15

In time, however, the Third Order of Mary alsobecame aligned to the fathers’ and sisters’ branches.

11 Courveille’s later account of his “interior hearing” of Mary’s voice begins: “I have always imitated my divine Son ineverything …” Origines Maristes. Doc.718 #5.

12 Another way that Colin described this was that the Marists were not trying to establish “une autre Eglise” but “une Egliseautre”. See Craig Larkin, Mary in the Church. How Can the intuition of the first Marists be a source of vitality for us today?Address to the General Chapters of the Marist Family. 12 September, 2001, p.7

13 This idea has been especially developed by Marist historian Brother André Lanfrey. See, for example, “Unity and Diversityin the Society of Mary: Mysticism, History and Canon Law”, in Marist Notebooks No. 24, 2007. pp.27–34. See also AloisGreiler SM, op.cit, pp.101-114.

14 Lessard, op.cit. p.2. Father Lessard points to the change in Colin’s conception of the Society after 1836, with a much moreprimary focus on the priests’ branch. He sees that Jeanne-Marie and Marcellin remained more committed to the originalmulti-branched vision.

15 Sister Mary Emerentiana Cooney SMSM “A Tree with Many Branches. Perspectives on Marist Origins and Traditions, inMarist Notebooks, No.28, May 2010, p.143.


While the original vision was inclusive of allstates of life – lay, male and female religious, andclergy – we know that that was all too much forthe hierarchically-minded Cardinal Castracane andthe Roman Curia. It was laughed out of court, andeach branch was forced to pursue its approvalindependently of the others. That story is well-known. It is sometimes imagined that, with theoriginal plan’s being more in line with a Vatican IIecclesiology, that perhaps an attempt could bemade these days to bring everyone back into thesame structure, perhaps like one the “new ecclesialmovements” that have flourished since the Council.An instructive response to that proposition wasoffered by Craig Larkin SM in an address to acombined gathering of the General Chapters ofthe four Marist religious institutes in 2001.16

Father Larkin described the growth of the Maristfamily as being analogous to that of any humanfamily. Children are born into the one family andwill be forever shaped and bonded by the influenceof their childhood home. But as adults they moveaway from each other and they establish their ownhomes and their own families. They make newconnections, and develop their own lives and work.While they will always retain the affectionatefamilial links that siblings do, and the cousins willshare strong family traits and resemblances, therewill also be subtle but real differences across theextended family. Each of the nuclear families willhave its own feel, its own ways, and own its ownstory. They might all share the one family name,and everyone has as much right as the others to usethat family name because it is theirs, but they willhave grown well beyond living under the one roof.

Perhaps the challenge for each of our Maristfamilies is for them to reclaim the original visionof Fourvière: each one of them to imagine itself asa broad and inclusive spiritual family. The emergingevidence is that it will be those spiritual families orcharismatic families that can develop a sense ofcommunio as Vatican II proposed which will beones to have most relevance and vitality in theChurch of the third millennium. This requires

something of a paradigm shift for each religiousinstitute. But it may be just the one that they mustmake if the dream of Fourvière is to be re-contextualised for today’s Church.

Let us take the Marist Brothers as an example.Their current paradigm is a religious institute ofbrothers. There are many people who gather aroundthem who also describe themselves as Marist, butinformally so for the most part. There is one formalstructure to which the lay Marists in this branch ofthe family can belong – the Champagnat Movementof the Marist Family, now just over a quarter of acentury old. It was conceived to be, and still is, anextension of the Institute. That is, it is something akinto a traditional third order. It exists in many Provinces,but not all, and is guided and supported by theInstitute, and ultimately under its authority andwithin its conceptual structure. There is nothingwrong with that, as far as it goes; it is a tried andtested way for people to be associated with thespirituality of a religious institute, and to follow adistinctive path of the Gospel in their own lives,and fruitfully so. It is a model that has been used bythe Church since medieval times. There is, however,another way to look at the current reality, onewhich the Champagnat Movement cannot answer.

At the last General Chapter of the Brothers in2009, the imperatives emerged for a greater“communion and co-responsibility” among Maristsin the tradition of Saint Marcellin. It recognisedseveral things. First, the reality is that in everyProvince, over ninety-five per cent of the leadershipand work of Marist projects is in the hands of laypeople. Second, among these people are many whoidentify as Marist, both in their spirituality andtheir professional practice, and also feel a closesense of association with other Marists. They feel astrong vocational call to be Marist, something thatis powerfully captured in the document Gatheredaround the Same Table. But there is currently no way,no Church-recognised structure, to which they canbelong where they can exercise full communionand co-responsibility for Marist life and mission.17

The brothers, in the final analysis remain in charge,


16 Larkin, op.cit., p.717 There are a number of initiatives in train to address to address this. The Institute is currently sponsoring the establishment

of a new juridical entity – the Marist Association of St Marcellin Champagnat - which canonically will be a public associationof Christ’s faithful and of which lay Marists, brothers, sisters and clergy can become members. The first Conference of theAssociation is being developed in Australia, where it will assume responsibility for the development of the Marist spiritualityand life of its members and also governance of Marist works. It is hoped to gain the approbation of the Holy See in 2016.

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and everyone else is ancillary. Is being “in charge”the essential role of religious? The recent documenton the Identity and Mission of the Religious Brotherin the Church suggests not. Consistent with thethinking of Vita Consecrata, this documentsuggests that the identity of religious is sourced inthe role they play in the Church – to be the guidesfor people who seek God, to be a leaven ofcommunion, and exemplars of service. They are tobe the living memory of the Gospel, calling all theChurch to its evangelical essence by their witnessand their direct involvement with lay people. Thelatest document, however, goes a step further, tosuggest that this role is effectively done within theparticular “charismatic families” of which thebrothers are part.

Religious Brothers today often live theirvocation integrated into charismaticfamilies. Many of these come fromlongstanding traditions but have beenprofoundly renewed, while new ones haveappeared as a result of the ecclesiology ofcommunion promoted by the Second VaticanCouncil. They point to a new way of livingand building the Church, a new way ofsharing the mission and pooling the variousgifts that the Spirit distributes among thefaithful. The founding charisms born with theReligious Orders and Congregations nowtake the form of rivers watering the surface ofthe Church and extending far beyond it. Thefaithful come to their shores from differentstates of life to drink from their waters and toparticipate in the mission of the Church fromthe constantly renewed inspiration and vigourof such charisms.

Laity and religious, men or women, andpriests are united together in a charismaticfamily to revive the charism that has given riseto this family, to incarnate together theGospel face that the charism reveals and toserve together in the same Church mission,which is no longer just the mission of aparticular Institute.

The Religious Brother finds in his charismaticfamily an environment, conducive to the

development of his identity. In such anenvironment the Brothers share theexperience of communion and promotea spirituality of communion, being the trueblood which gives life to the family membersand which extends to the whole Church fromthem. In the charismatic family, ReligiousBrothers place themselves together with otherChristians and in accord with them. It is withthem that the Brothers build a fraternity forthe mission, motivated by the foundationalcharism; for them they are signs of that samebrotherhood that they are called to live inconsecrated life.18

Ideas such as this invite a radical re-conceptualising of how the Marists who follow thetradition of Saint Marcellin might structurethemselves, both charismatically and juridically.Specifically, they prompt some re-imagining forhow the Institute – that is, the brothers – can existat the heart of a larger charismatic family that ismostly lay – as religious are called to do – butwithin another structure for shared overallresponsibility for Marist life and mission. Thedocument suggests that this is a new way of beingChurch, new wineskins for new wine. In doing so,it is proposing something remarkably similar to thenascent dreaming on Fourvière hill two hundredyears ago.

A WAY OF BEING CHURCH

– ITS MARIAN PRINCIPLE

The Council Fathers at Vatican II wrestled withwhat to do with Mary. Many wanted a separateMarian document. The decision was not to go thatway, but to integrate Mary into the other Conciliardocuments. Mary was part of the Church, really anicon of all the Church was called to be. Themainstream Marian theology that has evolved overthe last half-century has been shaped by thisimportant insight, Mary in the Church. It hasgiven us a much richer and probably more balancedMarian theology than the founding Marists had.We have not lost the sense of Mary as mother; thatremains at the core of her identity and also at thecore of Marist identity. But to that image we havean enhanced sense of Mary as our sister in faith

18 Identity and Mission of the Religious Brother in the Church. Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies ofApostolic Life. October, 2015


and our companion on life’sjourney. The first Maristsundeniably saw Mary as a modelof faith, and felt close to her in arelational way, but “sister in faith”takes it a step further. And relatedto both images as mother andsister, Mary is a disciple of Jesus.Again, this is not something thatis different from the how thefounding generation saw Mary,but it does offer fresh language andslightly different emphasis – Maryas “First Disciple”. They preferredthe term “imitation of Christ”which was part of Christianspiritual discourse since the timeof Augustine. “Discipleship” isarguably a richer concept. Mary as mother orbearer-of-God, as sister, and as disciple. What wehave here are the three dimensions of any Christianlife: each person is called by virtue of his or herBaptism to share in God’s mission, to be incommunio with others, and to ongoing personalconversion to Christ.19

This three-dimensional view of the Christian lifeand Mary’s place as an archetype of it has been atheme of contemporary theology and ecclesiology.The Swiss theologian Hans Urs Von Balthazar(1905-88) was influential in shaping the thinkingof the Church on this, including that of Pope JohnPaul II. In doing so, he was helping the Church tore-discover a quite ancient understanding of itself.He drew on the traditional icon of The Ascensionto do this. Expressions such as “Marian Church”,“Marian principle of the Church” and “Marian faceof the Church” have been the result. ModernMarist writers have recognised the significance of

this thinking for describing the role of Marists intoday’s Church.20 If Marists see themselves “beingMary”, faithful to the intuitions of Fourvière, thenthis theology is important for them. It will helpthem fulfil the challenge issued to them by PopeJohn Paul II to have “an original and specific way”of making visible “the presence of Mary” in theChurch today.21

Let us pause to gaze on the icon of theAscension.22

In the theology and the practice of EasternChristianity there is less emphasis on all the wordsthat we Westerners like to use. There is a moremystical, a more symbolic, a more visual, and amore experiential approach to the Divine. This iconof the Ascension is typical. The basic form of theicon of the Ascension is always the same, and hasbeen so since the early centuries. There is so muchthat could be written about this icon, but thatwould be falling into a Western mindset, andprobably debasing its power. For our purposes here,


19 Both Christifideles Laici and Vita Consecrata both describe this three-dimensional view of the Christian life in general, andthe religious life in particular. The latest document, Identity and Mission of the Religious Brother in the Church presentsthe same basic view.

20 In particular, it is worth highlighting the writing of the late Craig Larkin SM and Emili Turú FMS on this subject. SeeFather Craig Larkin, op.cit. for a more detailed description of the different dimensions of the life of the Church that arerepresented in the traditional icon of the Ascension. Father Larkin developed his ideas a little further in The Icon of theAscension, A Marian Church, Keynote address to the Biennial Conference of the Association of Marist Schools of Australia.(Brisbane, Australia. 29 July 2005.). See also, Brother Emili Turú He Gave Us the Name of Mary. Circulars of the SuperiorsGeneral, Vol.XXXII, No.1, 2 January 2012

21 Pope John Paul II, Address to the Men and Women Religious of the Institutes of the Marist Family. Castel Gandolfo, 17September 2001.

22 Much of the discussion on the Balthasarian insights is drawn from the writing of Father Larkin and Brother Emili cited above.


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it may be helpful, nonetheless, to draw briefly acouple of insights from it and to put some wordsaround them.

First, the theme of the icon is not really aboutthe Ascension at all, or not at least the literal event.For one thing, there are twelve Apostles; thetwelfth being Saint Paul who of course was notpresent in the biblical scene. This icon is, rather, atheology of the Church, presented visually. It is theChurch fully constituted. We see Christ ascendedin heaven, flanked by two angels cloaked earthlygreen, while on earth the angels are cloaked inheavenly white and gold, alongside Mary who hasa robe of green but a cloak and shoes of red, thecolour of the Divine. Heaven has come to earth andearth has come to heaven; the work of redemptionis done. Now let us look at the Apostles. We havePeter, on Mary’s right, not at the physical centre ofthe group but cloaked in gold and the most stableof the Apostles. Mary’s right hand, raised in prayer,also points to him, as do the eyes of the angelsalongside Mary’s. On Peter’s side of the icon, thereis more solidity, more structure, more order: theinstitution of the Church, but not as an end initself. Peter’s gaze is fixedly on Christ and he pointseveryone in this direction. Mary’s left hand is openin front of her breast, the customary symbol ofwitness or martyrdom for Christ. The Apostleclosest to this hand is Paul, the missionary. On hisside of the icon there is more movement, reflectingthe apostolate of the Church. On Peter’s side,James is often depicted holding the Scriptures, thehistory of salvation, the revelation of God –connecting everyone with their story, theirtradition, their pilgrimage. And quite intriguinglyon the Pauline side, there is John, the beloveddisciple. You will always find him over on the side,heavily wrapped in the bright red colour of divinelove, personifying the mystical life of the Church.

In these figures the icon reflects the differentdimensions of the life of the Church, its poles ofreference – the Petrine and the Pauline, theJacobean and the Johannine. Gathering themtogether is the First Disciple of Jesus, Mary.Although she is prominent in the icon, providingsomething of a pivot and a unity, the whole visualflow of the image is towards the ascended Christ

figure. Mary is no-one’s object of devotion, yet sheis there at the heart of the Church, as a kind ofmodel and archetype of the Christ-life on earth.She is First Disciple; discipleship is at the heart ofeverything. She is also Theotokos: the bearer ofGod, as we all are called to be. This is an image ofthe Church that is quite different from thepyramidal one that was in common usage beforeVatican II, at least in schools, with the pope andthe bishops at the top, the laity at the bottom, thereligious sandwiched in between. Here in thisancient image we have the People of God, with thedistinctive giftedness of each, but without therebeing a hierarchy of gifts or a hierarchy of holiness.The basic paradigm of this holiness is visuallyrepresented in Mary: totally aligned with Christbut with her feet on the ground; with one handindicating a life of witness to Christ, and the otherin prayerful connection with the Church; born ofthe earth and cloaked in the life of God; with ahalo to signify her holiness. It is the Mariandimension that gives the disciples of Jesus identity,purpose, direction and meaning. Mary, in first placeamong the disciples of the Risen Christ.

The ecclesiology of this ancient icon is verymuch a post-Vatican II one. This is the People ofGod, in all their charismatic diversity, and incommunion with one another, with God, and withthe eternal cosmos. It is a visual theology that couldbe applied not only to the universal Church, but toeach manifestation of Church – whether it bediocesan, parochial, one of the ecclesial movementsor spiritual families of the Church, such as theMarists. Especially the Marists! Every work orgrouping of the Church should have a genuinelyecclesial identity.23 The same poles of referenceapply and the same universal call to holiness. Thelives of all its members lead to and from Jesus,forming a community of disciples, on mission.

What does this icon reveal to us about ourMarist identity? It shows us who Mary is, andtherefore who we are. First, we learn from her thatwe are called to centre ourselves on Christ, therisen Christ. As a disciple, we are filled with thefaith, the hope, and most especially the mercifullove, that is sourced in Christian discipleship.Second, as Theotokos, we bring this Christ-life to

23 For an example of how the Church understands this, see the Congregation for Catholic Education’s explanation of theCatholic school being “at the heart of the Church”. (1999) The Catholic School on the threshold of the Third Millennium. #11-13.



the centre of our community; all we do pivots on aChristological axis. Third, we stand in solidaritywith the whole community, respecting and valuingthe roles and giftedness of all and, in both amaternal and sisterly way, calling this forth andbringing it together. We are with the Churchnaissante.

CONCLUSION: MARISTS AND THE JUBILEE

YEAR OF MERCY

As Pope Francis pushed open the doors of SaintPeter’s on 8 December last year, and asked everycathedral around the world to do the same, he wassignalling something for the whole Church, but forno group within the Church more than one thatbore the name of Mary. Mary, mother of mercy.When, during the Conclave that elected him, hehad seen Cardinal Walter Kasper’s new bookentitled Mercy, the Essence of the Gospel and the Keyto Christian Life,24 the future Pope spontaneouslyexclaimed: “Mercy. That’s the name of our God.”

It is also a word that goes to the heart of theoriginal Marist intuitions. It was this that thoseyoung men who climbed Fourvière hill believed tobe THE way forward for renewing and rebuildinga Church whose members had become flaky intheir practice, sceptical in their attitudes, anddisenchanted with unfulfilled secularist rhetoric.They consciously rejected an approach that wasinsensitive, punitive or threatening. Forgiveness,understanding, and belief in the inherent goodnessand capacity of all – these were to be theirtrademarks. They saw this as Mary’s way, a mother’sway, and they believed themselves called to sharein her work. Each day, as they sang the SalveRegina, to the “Mother of Mercy”, they alignedthemselves to this.

Our Marist founders probably never had theopportunity to read Shakespeare. Had they havedone so, they may have cut out and had framedPortia’s famous soliloquy in the first scene of ActIV of the The Merchant of Venice. They knew thatmercy blesses both “him that gives and him thattakes” it; they knew that it was “an attribute of Godhimself ” and that people are most “likest God”when “mercy seasons justice”.

It was their personal encounter with thatparticular face of the Divine which impelled ourfounders to start a new family in the Church. Foran icon of the mercy of God, they were intuitivelydrawn to Mary, taking her name as their own. Theywere to be Mary-ists, the Marists. They sought tobe Mary for the Church of their day. For them thatmeant they would realise the mercy of God in waysthat were distinctively Marian: they would nurture,empathise and gather; they would go out, teach andreconcile; they would be bearers of joy, justice andlove. And they would do it in ways that weregrounded, accessible and inclusive. Like Mary, theirresponse to God in their own lives would allow thereign of God to come alive in their world. Christwould be born in their midst. They called this“Mary’s work” and they dedicated their lives to it.

This coincidence in 2016 of the Church’s“Jubilee Year of Mercy” and a year commemoratingthe bicentenary of the first Marists’ foundingpledge before Our Lady of Fourvière is a happyone. Our two hundredth birthday calls us asMarists to reflect on what the name we bear mightmean for us in practice. How will people recogniseour Marist-ness? What will makes us authentic asMarists in the Church and world of the twenty-first century? And how can our family group realisethe dream of a new way of being Church?

24 Kasper, op.cit.


JOHN MCMAHON

Catholic Schools and UniversitiesA Global View

INTRODUCTION

In November 2015, I was blessed to be able togo to Rome to attend an InternationalCongress on Catholic education, which was

organised by the Vatican’s Congregation forCatholic education. I was excited to be attending,not only because the Congress was being held inthe ‘Eternal City’, but also because it promised tobring together people from very different culturesas well as people with varying experiences ofCatholic education. Perhaps too, I thought, wemight catch a glimpse of what global Catholiceducation might look like in the near future.

We were informed before we left home, that theCongress would be held in two groups, onefocusing on Catholic schools and the other onCatholic universities. We needed to choose towhich group we wished to belong. Then, on arrivalin Rome, we discovered that Pope Francis wouldbe speaking to all of us on the final day. So therewas good reason for the excitement in the air.

From the Conference pre-reading we learnedthat in 2011, the Members of the Congregation forCatholic Education’s Plenary Assembly acceptedPope Benedict XVI’s suggestion to celebrate twoanniversaries in 2015. These were the publicationof the Second Vatican Council’s Declaration onEducation Gravissimum Educationis (October 28,1965)1 and the Congregation of Catholic Education’sApostolic Constitution on Catholic Universities ExCorde Ecclesiae (August 15, 1990)2. In recommendingthis celebration, Pope Benedict was hoping to givenew stimulus to the Church’s role in education.

The Congregation began its preparation byorganising two events. The first, a seminar involvingexperts from across the world, was held in June2012. The second was a Plenary Assembly of the

Congregation’s Members which met in February2014. In the course of these meetings a number ofreflections about Catholic education came to lightwhich were put together in a handbook, orInstrumentum Laboris, titled Educating Today andTomorrow: A Renewing Passion.3

Included in the Instrumentum Laboris was aquestionnaire under four themes. Below is a samplequestion from each theme:• The Identity and Mission of Catholic Schools

and UniversitiesIn your country, how are Catholic schools anduniversities consistent with their nature and aims?

• Those involved in Catholic Education (Subjects)Is there provision for accompaniment in thefaith for teachers, students and families ofstudents who attend Catholic schools anduniversities?

• The Formation of FormatorsHow does one organise and guarantee theongoing formation, both professional andChristian, of administrators, teachers and non-teaching staff?

• Challenges and OutlookWhat are the best experiences and greatestweaknesses of Catholic schools and universitiesin your country? This text Instrumentum Laboris was translated

into various languages and distributed to CatholicBishops’ conferences, commissions for Catholiceducation, dioceses, religious congregations,associations, Catholic schools and Catholicuniversities. Clearly the handbook initiatedsignificant thinking about the importance ofCatholic education for evangelisation and humandevelopment in today’s world.

Within a few months of the handbook’s

1 (Paul VI, 1965)2 ( John Paul II, 1990)3 (Instrumentum Laboris, 2014)


distribution, educational institutions and groupswithin the Christian community responded to theCongregation’s invitation by carrying out rigorousanalyses of their involvement in education,particularly by responding to what was asked in thequestionnaire. The Congregation tells us these localand regional meetings

produced truly valuable documents …offering not only answers, but also proposalsand suggestions, grouped around the fourthemes. … This is a sign of the wholeChristian community’s notable attention toproblems in education as well as itsheightened expectation – fifty years after theCouncil – for further suggestions on how tore-motivate our educational mission.4

Once the data had been received a ‘well-qualified group of experts’ analysed the answersscientifically, producing a comprehensive andcoherent picture of Catholic education across theworld – a picture ready to guide the work of thepending World Congress.5

THE CONGRESS

The Congress took place over four days from 18– 21 November, 2015. For two of those days wetravelled to Castel Gandolfo, about an hour’s busjourney from the centre of Rome. Nearly 2000people enrolled for this obviously importantgathering. Here we were reminded that theCongregation’s goal for the Congress was to recallthe anniversaries of the two ‘anniversary’documents and ‘to revive ... the commitment of theChurch in the field of education’.6

The programme included presentations byinvited specialists, Eucharists and other prayers,and informal discussions. A number of documentshad been handed out on registration including,importantly, a key Report titled Challenges,Strategies and Perspectives that emerge from theResponses to the Questionnaire of the InstrumentumLaboris. This Report, containing an initial synthesisof the findings, was published by the Congregation

for Catholic Education of which Cardinal VincentZani is the Secretary.7 It contains the results of thequestionnaire for use during the work of theCongress. A more complete publication is to bepublished after the Congress.

RESPONDERS TO THE QUESTIONNAIRE

The Report informed us that a total of 149questionnaires had been collected from 62countries. Responders came from: Africa 9%, Asia12%, Europe 33%, Latin America 1%, NorthAmerica 7%, Oceania 12% and South America27%. Overall Catholic Bishops’ Conferences andreligious congregations were the most frequent ofthe official responders ahead of universities,schools, dioceses and religious associations. InNorth America most responders came fromdioceses (30%) and universities (30%), in SouthAmerica from religious congregations (27%) andschools (32%) and in Oceania from dioceses (50%)and Catholic Bishops’ Conferences (31%). Thecompilers of this Report noted ‘that universitiesused an almost completely different vocabularyfrom that used by the other categories’.8

I found all this background illuminating. Yet thereal jewels in the crown for me were the findings. Isought these even more after we were informed ofthe extent of the analysis, both quantitative andqualitative, that had taken place prior to theCongress. This was confirmed by those presentersat the Congress who had carried out this analysis.

FINDINGS

The initial work of collation and analysis of thequestionnaire results was carried out by ThePostgraduate School for the Development of CivicSociety of LUMSA – The Libera Università MariaSs. Assunta in Rome, directed by Professor ItaloFiorin, one of the speakers at the Congress. Thequantitative method used was backed up byqualitative analysis using techniques of sociology andsocial psychology to assess strengths and weaknesseswithin the structures of Catholic education.9 The

4 (Lineamenta Presentation, 2015, pp. 1-2)5 (Lineamenta Presentation, 2015, p. 2)6 (Educating Today and Tomorrow: A Renewing passion: Programme, 2015)7 (Zani, 2015)8 (Zani, 2015, p. 49)9 (Zani, 2015, p. 187)

Catholic Schools and Universities: A Global View

John McMahon


responders contended thatthe major educational challenges faced todayby the world’s Catholic schools anduniversities, in a multicultural society inprofound change, can be traced back to …creating a workable model of holisticeducation for young people, which preservesthe institutional identity of an educationalcommunity of evangelisation.10

This means that Catholic schools anduniversities are primarily communities and not justworking organisations, further, they are educationalcommunities and not just training services, andthird, Catholic schools and universities areeducating communities of evangelisation becausethey deliberately set themselves to be instrumentsproviding an experience of Church.11

From the global perspective, the respondentsnominated the following four challenges:• the challenge of identity,• the challenge of holistic education and• the challenge of education and the faith and• the challenge of the poor.12

1. IDENTITY

The responders linked the identity of theCatholic school or university with its mission.More specifically they saw mission as puttingidentity into practice. They identified some tensionbetween conservation and innovation lest, forexample, ‘the cold wind of secularisation … sweepsaway every reminder of the sacred and thetranscendent’.13 For Pope Francis, the worstsolution to this is ‘to entrench ourselves in our ownlittle world’.14

Respondents believe we need to be fullyimmersed in the reality of our own time, revivingour identity in proactive ways with newterminology. Catholic schools and universities areimportant today because:• they are engaged in ways that substitute for or

assist the State when the State’s action isinsufficient and

• they carry forward evangelisation and thus sharein the universal mission of the Church.15

Many responders stressed the need for academicquality and concern for evangelisation to go handin hand. ‘It is not enough to attend only to didacticquality or student services, while neglecting thetask of evangelisation’.16

Education today is challenged in its deepestvalues - the primacy of the person, the value of thecommunity, the search for the common good andcare for the weak. These values are challenged byindividualistic competition, the adulation ofefficiency and success at all costs. As theCongregation for Catholic Education states, ‘Theschool [or university] should not give in to thistechnocratic and economic logic, even if it is underthe pressure of external powers and … is exposedto attempts at manipulation by the market’.17

Rather, as human beings, we are called to respectthe ideas of others, encourage open debate, discussand research in an atmosphere of friendship andcooperation. Our strongly held belief, say responders,is that everything must lead ‘to an encounter withthe person of Jesus, the living Christ’.18

Overall, Catholic schools and universities areseen to have the following features: • a strong sense of vitality, a life of faith that

pervades the whole person• a sense of social justice and a search for the

common good, the building of a united andfraternal society

• the involvement of students in activities outsidethe school [and university], with visits toinstitutions that are most in need.In countries where Christians are in the

minority, leaders believe their commitment toeducation is part of the evangelising mission of theChurch. For them the best approach to mission iswitness, not proclamation. This leads to ‘anopportunity for dialogue, encounter and sharedcommitment to the common good’.19

The Report contained a number of directquotations from the replies such as the following fromthe Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Bangladesh:

10 (Zani, 2015, p. 5) 15 (Zani, 2015, pp. 9-10)11 (Zani, 2015, p. 6) 16 (Zani, 2015, p. 10)12 (Zani, 2015, p. 6) 17 Quoted in (Zani, 2015, p. 12)13 (Zani, 2015, p. 8) 18 (Zani, 2015, p. 13)14 (Zani, 2015, p. 8) 19 (Zani, 2015, p. 13)



as soon as people enter a Catholic school, theyperceive a difference compared to otherinstitutions. The difference is not that the schoolhas an abundance of resources available, nor is itabout glamour. What they perceive is rather “thesense of the presence of the divine”.20

From the contributions received from thevarious places whose only form of mission is thatof silent witness, the following traits werehighlighted: • a cultivation of respect for the identity of others• the promotion of dialogue and cooperation• a special attention to the civic, moral, intellectual

and spiritual dimensions of the person.Globally lay people are becoming more

dominant in the leadership and staffing of Catholicschools and universities. They have a greaterawareness of the institution’s Catholic identity andthe charism that inspired it. Many respondentsreported on the real involvement and closecollaboration between lay and religious personnel.‘It is important for the lay members of staff toknow about the founder’s charism, to feel part ofthe school’s mission and to have their roles andresponsibilities recognised and accepted as gifts’.21

A final dimension of the identity of Catholicschools and universities is that of community. TheReport summarises a community as one

that is born of a passion for education, ofdeeply sharing the same values, where there isroom and shelter for all, without excludingthe poor and needy. It is a community thatrequires building up and development whichis not something limited to the teaching staffand students, but includes all those who formpart of it, particularly the students’ familiesand the wider social community.22

Community then is both an aim and a means ofeducation.

2. HOLISTIC EDUCATION

In its paper Instrumentum Laboris, theCongregation states ‘Learning is not just equivalentto content assimilation, but is an opportunity forself-education, commitment towards self-improvement and the common good’.23 This implies

the need for each person in the educationalcommunity to grow from an integral and holisticperspective – in the cognitive, affective, social,ethical, spiritual and professional dimensions. Atall times the focus is on human development, thedevelopment of ‘the person’, focusing on faithformation and personality development. Threeaspects of this development are:• The creation of learning opportunities for all• A focus on the circumstances in which the

community operates and• The professional development and formation of

staff.24

Respondents acknowledged the significantnumber of Catholic students who, because theycome from disadvantaged backgrounds, cannotafford to attend Catholic schools. As a resultnetworking is encouraged to provide differentlearning opportunities so as to keep the mission ofCatholic education alive – one that has an impacton individuals and society at large. This may callparticipants to be creative, be willing to set out andrestructure, innovate, discover and adopt newapproaches.

Catholic Universities today operate in a globalisedworld that is dictated largely by materialistic andutilitarian goals. The main intent of most Catholicuniversities is to embrace the Catholic intellectualheritage, a search for truth which is based on theCatholic faith. Three features are emphasised:1. Integrating intellectual progress with spiritual

growth2. A commitment to social justice and peace,

reflecting a belief in what is right, in serving asagents of change, focussing on the commongood and

3. A commitment to establishing supportive andenriching relationships leading to a sense ofservice.25

3. EDUCATION AND FAITH

Instrumentum Laboris describes Catholic schoolsand universities as communities of faith andlearning. A coordinating Office for DiocesanSchools in Spain reinforces this:

The educational community must offer a

20 (Zani, 2015, p. 13) 23 (Instrumentum Laboris, 2014, p. 7)21 (Zani, 2015, p. 15) 24 (Zani, 2015, p. 19)22 (Zani, 2015, p. 16) 25 (Zani, 2015, pp. 20-21)


John McMahon

witness of life that makes the Gospel messageattractive and attuned, and must accompanythis with more advanced training concerningthe Catholic school’s identity andevangelising vocation.26

Catholic schools and universities are trying torespond proactively to the challenge of a moresecularised teaching staff, as well as the difficultiesin attracting and recruiting teachers who arequalified on the professional, moral and religiouslevels.

A better and more effective coordination isconsidered essential for guiding the trainingprocesses for teachers for Catholic schools at theearly stages of their university studies.

The terms ‘leader’ and ‘leadership’ are mentionedoften in the questionnaire responses. So too is theconcept of ‘spiritual leadership’ in an environmentof increasing secularisation of staff, including thosein managerial roles. Responders see as critical theimportance of excellent recruitment and highquality training of leaders for the future of theworld’s Catholic schools and universities.27 Theintroduction of post-graduate programmes ineducational leadership is now widespread in manyparts of the world.

In Catholic schools and universities, leadershipis understood as a quality of the whole community,disseminated at different levels within and outsideeducational institutions. Respondents highlightedcommunity building as a constant challenge inmulticultural, multi-religious and increasinglysecular contexts.

In the Second Vatican Council’s DeclarationGravissimum Educationis parents are seen as theprimary educators. Educational institutions,particularly Catholic institutions, are required todo all that is possible to work with families bypromoting dialogue, participation and sharedresponsibility.

Respondents highlighted the importance ofpromoting the participation of families as isexpressed in this response from a school in Spain:

Education needs a significant partnershipbetween parents and educators, so as to offereveryone an education rich in meaning, an

education that is open to God, to others andto all life in the world. This partnership is evenmore necessary because education is apersonal relationship. It is in the process thatwe see revealed transcendental faith, family,Church and ethics, with an emphasis on thecommunity dimension.28

This is not always easy, as explained by anotherquotation from the responses quoted in the Report,this time from the Chile Catholic Bishops’Conference:

Many families seek out a high school not forits faith formation, but for the emotionalsupport and academic quality it offers. Theyfail to value what the school offers in terms ofspiritual formation towards the transcendent,both for themselves and for their children.29

The response from the Catholic Bishops’Conference in Russia develops this:

It is obvious that only if parents clearlyperceive our schools to be offeringoutstanding quality teaching, will the Churchhave the possibility of providing meaningfulwitness through this activity, and ofpossessing a unique and attractive form fordialogue. The formation of staff, teachers,administrators and the families of thestudents is essential.30

Catholic schools and universities certainly favourthe participation of parents. This participationincludes listening to the families’ needs, invitingthem to formation meetings (formation in thefaith, formation about their children’s studies),participation in events and moments in the life ofthe institution and one-to-one meetings. However,some seek a greater level of cooperation andintegration.

4. THE POOR

Catholic schools and universities are frequentlycalled to pay attention to the poor. Respondentsfocused on material poverty and the lack ofresources needed:• to lead a dignified life;• to continue one’s studies and

26 (Zani, 2015, p. 22) 29 (Zani, 2015, p. 28)27 (Zani, 2015, p. 24) 30 (Zani, 2015, p. 28)28 (Zani, 2015, p. 27)


• for people with disabilities and specialeducational needs.Added to this, people have relational, cultural

and spiritual needs related to the crisis ofcommunity, the weakening of affectiveinterpersonal relationships, questions of solidarityand the spreading of social exclusion. Finally, thereis the need to give meaning to one’s life.

Attention to poverty – old and new, material andspiritual – is a fundamental trait of our educationalinstitutions’ identity, an imperative that Catholicschools and universities cannot avoid withoutlosing their very essence. Colleges and universitiesendeavour, said a religious congregation fromChile, ‘to provide comprehensive quality education,addressing all dimensions of the human person,without social discrimination, but focusing mainlyon the poorest’.31

Secularisation is a breeding ground for a form ofspiritual poverty which is spreading rapidly. TheReport states:

in mainstream culture and common thought,God is increasingly less present and everydaylife is dominated by a sense of self-sufficiencythat renders any reference to Christian valuesredundant. These values are often confided tothe private sphere, are seen as being a leftoverfrom childhood, or sometimes are decidedlyignored.32

Respondents believe the urgent need forCatholic schools and universities is to learn tospeak to the human heart and grow in their abilityto rekindle the question about the meaning of lifeand reality, which risks being forgotten. They askedhow can we help people’s choices to evolve ‘so thatwhat prevails is not a utilitarian choice, but a choicefor a holistic formation’?33

Catholic schools and universities live daily withthe challenge of having to do more with limitedresources. The economic crisis has given rise to newforms of poverty, even for those who oncerepresented the middle class. On the one hand thishas made school fees unaffordable for manyfamilies; on the other hand, it has increased theneed for subsidies to education for the poorest, who

no longer have any social coverage because of thedownsizing of welfare protection by the State.

The cost of Catholic education is affected bythree main structural drivers of change:1. More sophisticated learning environments

signify a push towards increased costs inpremises, new technology, staff training andexpansion of support resources;

2. The reduction of religious personnel leads togreater reliance on lay teachers, who tend to bepaid more;

3. New systems of accountability – with theconsequent emphasis on documentation,transparency and procedures – introduce newforms of inflexibility in educational processes,with more upward pressure on the costs ofcompliance.34

The shortage of resources is a global problem forCatholic schools and universities. Responses to thequestionnaire suggested the need to developpolicies for financial assistance, both directlythrough scholarships and indirectly through feedifferentiation. The Queensland CatholicEducation Commission offered a possibleapproach:

Co-responsibility is used … [in the religiousinstitute schools] to contribute according totheir possibility and receive according to theirneed. Co-responsibility supports schools withmostly low socioeconomic families tofunction with little fee income.35

Overall, respondents highlighted the supportiverole played by Catholic schools and universities inassisting students, with a clear movement towardsa policy of giving scholarships to students andfamilies in need.

CONCLUSION

Between 1971 and 2012 the numbers ofstudents in Catholic schools and universities grewfrom thirty-one million to fifty-eight million, anincrease of eighty-four per cent. Growth has beenparticularly significant in Africa and Asia. Thisgrowth provides a background to the responsesfrom across the world to the principles laid out in


31 (Zani, 2015, p. 34) 34 (Zani, 2015, p. 36)32 (Zani, 2015, p. 34) 35 (Zani, 2015, p. 37)33 (Zani, 2015, p. 35)


the Declaration Gravissimum Educationis and theConstitution Ex Corde Ecclesiae. The Reportnominates some key emerging questions:1. What are our institutions’ defining characteristics?2. Can we really be satisfied because our

institutions are sought after?3. How do we respond to the disengaged or

uninterested Catholic families who want aCatholic education for their children?

4. How do we help students and their familiesdeepen the religious meaning of educationwithin a Catholic school or university?36

Even in extreme circumstances where the Churchis present but silent and where the proclamation ofthe Gospel is limited to the witness of our lives,there are Catholic schools and universities offeringa humanly rich educational environment, quietlybuilding bridges that favour the encounter betweencultures and between religions.

Finally, based on this analysis of thequestionnaire responses, the Report proposes thefollowing guidelines for the mission of Catholicschools and universities:1. Research - That there be more cooperation

between Catholic schools and universities toovercome a great superficiality regarding moraland meaning-related issues.

2. Witness - Understood as coherence of life andpassion for others, witness is the primary formof communication and, in some cases, the onlyone possible.

3. Dialogue - involves the search for mutualunderstanding and a desire to find points forencounter. It involves searching for possible waysto cooperate with a focus on the common good.

4. Service - Catholic education should leadstudents to make their knowledge and skillsavailable to others. ‘If we can overcomeindividualism, we will truly be able to develop adifferent lifestyle and bring about significantchanges in society’.37

5. Inclusion - The real test of whether the serviceoffered by Catholic schools and universities isauthentic is the attention they pay to the poorand those in disadvantaged circumstances.

6. Hope - In the context of education, hope makesus believe it is always possible to develop newways ‘of going out of ourselves towards theother’.38 We walk in hope, in the midst ofdifficulties, without losing joy, in the certaintythat the Father will give us all that we require.I have found it a privilege to participate in this

Congress and to study the responses from Catholiceducators from around the world. The findings canonly augur well for the contribution Catholiceducation, at both the school and university levels,can offer our future.

Throughout the Congress, the atmosphere wasone of prayer, reflection and conviviality.Participants gathered at every opportunity ininformal language groups to chat informally andshare their thoughts. I left feeling optimistic aboutthe contribution today’s Catholic educators aremaking to the building of the Kingdom.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Educating Today and Tomorrow: A Renewingpassion: Programme. (2015). Rome.

Francis, P. (2015). Laudato Si’. Strathfield: StPaul’s.

Instrumentum Laboris. (2014). Paper presentedat the Educating Today and Tomorrow: A renewingpassion, Rome.

John Paul II, P. (1990). Apostolic Constitutionof the Supreme Pontiff John Paul II on CatholicUniversities. Retrieved 7th March 2016http://w2.vat ican.va/content/ john-paul-ii/en/apost_constitutions/documents/hf_jp-ii_apc_15081990_ex-corde-ecclesiae.html

Lineamenta Presentation. (2015). Paper presentedat the Educating Today and Tomorrow: Arenewing passion, Rome.

Paul VI, P. (1965). Declaration on ChristianEducation Church Documents on CatholicEducation. Strathfield: St Pauls.

Zani, V. (2015). Challenges, Strategies andPerspectives that emerge from the Responses to theQuestionnaire of the Instrumentum Laboris. Paperpresented at the Educating Today and Tomorrow:A renewing passion: Lineamenta, Rome.

John McMahon

36 (Zani, 2015, p. 39) 38 (Francis, 2015, p. 162 (N208))37 (Francis, 2015, p. 163 (N208))