Catholic School Teachers

Very pleased to be given the chance to be with you this morning, and reflect a bit on a theme that has become very much a focal point of my own life in really a relatively short time. And that theme is the mission, the model of the Catholic school teacher. I have been chaplain at Shanley High School for about 2 and half years now. Prior to that I was in parish work at Wahpeton, and St. Thomas, and in chaplaincy at the Grafton State School.

I am the product of just about as Catholic an education as it is possible to have, from grade and high school, through college and seminary. And through all of that, I doubt very much that I ever once questioned very seriously what might be the purpose, the value of Catholic education. It was simply there. It was what one did. Of course I knew that there were other schools, but I suppose I never much believed that they were really schools. Occasionally a friend from the parochial school would quit and switch over to one of them, but usually when that happened, and the kid disappeared into the depth of the public school system, he was just sort of swallowed up like Jonah, and we never saw much of him after that. I rather imagine that if I had been asked at that time in my life, "What is Catholic education?", I would have answered in a kind of puzzled voice, "Well, it's education." And "What is the mission of the Catholic school teacher, what should they be like?", "Well", equally puzzled, "they should be like teachers. What else could they be?"

Mind you, I still think those answers are true. But I no longer believe that they are anywhere near complete. There is indeed a great deal more to be said.

For the first five years of my parish ministry, I was assistant at Wahpeton, and there we had a parish school. Quite a good one. I was associated with the school, of course, I went in a couple of times a week for religion classes, but it really didn't take up a terribly great deal of my time or attention. As assistant, much more of my concentration was on CCD. That program was pretty much my turf. So it was there, I think that my comfortable, un-reflective predisposition toward Catholic education began to become markedly less comfortable.

Clearly, the realities were not as I had pictured them. There was nothing at all monolithic or presumptive about Catholic schools. The school was part of the parish program, not the whole of it. It was a struggling concern, involving relatively few members of the parish, yet drawing on a pretty hefty chunk of the parish financial resources.

CCD on the other hand, involved, theoretically at least, a great many more kids, and yet was given considerably less support, or so it seemed, in terms of time, effort and money. Well, I think about then I began to buy in to an attitude that was pretty strong about that time. I began to suspect, for the first time in my life, that perhaps the parish school wasn't really all that important, that the strain it so clearly placed on the parish was a dis-proportionate one, and that the support of the school was in all likelihood, a misdirected effort.

So, when after a few years, we had no choice but to scale down to six grades, I can remember very distinctly thinking, "No great tragedy, really. The handwriting is on the wall. It is simply not worth the effort it would take to keep the thing going."

Well, fine. That sort of thinking made me feel pretty good, really, very much in tune with the Sixties, on the cutting edge of Vatican II, and all the rest.

What didn't make me feel pretty good was the realization, that had begun as a sneaking suspicion about my third year there, and blossomed into full blown conviction by the fifth, that simply enough, CCD doesn't work. At least, not very well.

Now, that was an upsetting notion. CCD was to be the future of Catholic education. Painful business to have to admit that the future didn't seem to hold all that much promise. Well, as long as I was in that setting, I guess I didn't have to grapple very realistically with that realization. I could, after all, still blame the school. CCD would be better if it wasn't just a poor cousin to that blasted expensive school.

So, it was something of a shock to the system to move out into the country, to a little parish north of Grafton, where there was no school, but there certainly was CCD. A long tradition of it, on all levels. A long tradition of good organization, good attendance, good teacher recruitment and cooperation. In short, an awful lot of work done by an awful lot of very good people. There was a good relationship between the parish program and the public school. They were very cooperative, supportive in terms of time, resources, and even personnel. In short, if there was a setting in which CCD could be expected to work, that should have been it. But it didn't. At least, not very well.

So for me those years were a time of real readjustment in my understanding and attitude toward formal Catholic education. I now knew very well that it was not simply education. I was made very much aware that that is not all there is from which to pick. It most certainly was not something to be taken for granted, something that one simply does because that is what one does. There are other choices, offering other good things.

So when I moved into explicit Catholic education at Shanley, I suppose I was ready to be re-adjusted even further. And that is exactly what happened. I am now convinced that the mission of formal Catholic education, or better, Catholic educators, is not quite like anything else in the experience of the Church. At least, not anymore.

The place, the role of formal Catholic education, and so the model of the Catholic educator in the Church today is a very specfic one, I think. And we do indeed have the language we need to describe that role. The challenge we face is not so much to find the language we need to allow us to speak realistically about ourselves. We have that language. Our challenge is not to shrink from it. And because all of that is true, the Catholic school teacher does indeed have a very specific mission in the Church today, and is clearly called to develop the intellectual, emotional and spiritual strengths necessary for the completion of that mission.

I'd like to propose a couple of brief sentences to you which I will try to use as sort of hooks on which to hang the rest of my reflections. And the first has to do with what I see to be the mission of formal Catholic education.

I don't believe it is the same as it was 20 years ago, and may well not be the same 20 years from now. I think, simply enough, that mission today is to raise up Catholic leadership capable of functioning in a divinely re-shaped Church. I suppose if we were to make a list of phrases that describe the challenges facing the Church today, somewhere fairly near the top of that list would have to be the phrase, "vocation crisis". It is a popular one, certainly popular with school administrators, who, over not too many years, have had to adjust to a staff with perhaps one sister, and an occasional visit from a priest. However we may think of it, it is simply a fact that the marked drop in the number of priests and sisters available has had a marked impact on Catholic institutions. Schools feel it, parishes feel it, chancery offices feel it.

And sooner or later, whenever people talk about vocations, the question comes up, "What went wrong? What is the problem?" All sorts of answers get offered to that question, some very reflective and insightful, some pretty silly. Well, I am certainly not going to challenge the validity of any of those answers. Rather, I am going to challenge the validity of the question. Simply enough, I don't believe that there is a vocation crisis in the Church, or in the schools, or anywhere. I don't believe the number of priests and sisters is a problem. I am convinced that what we interpret as somehow some sort of failure is in fact the hand of God, very powerfully, very surely, re-shaping His Church, according to His design. By the time the students in our classrooms are functioning adults, the Church will wear a different face. It will no longer be nearly as clerical an institution as it has been. Some of that change has already been begun, some of it has already even become familiar. But I don't believe we have even begun to see that change that is yet to come.

And if it is true that the Father is in the process of giving His church back to all of His people, calling them to reclaim ownership of the Church, or at least stewardship if not ownership, then it is also true that the shape of the Church as it will be twenty years from now cannot really be mapped out, at least, not by us. The Father notoriously resists blueprinting. That means that the Catholic Church of the future must be able to open itself to the direction of the Father. It will not be able to rely simply on the good advice, the good example, that we provide. And in response to that direction, the Church of the future must be able to adjust itself, reform itself, respond to grace in new ways.

And all of that simply means that there will be a great need for leadership, prophets, visionaries, dreamers, thinkers, doers. Men and women of confidence, and ability, and faith. Men and women able, and ready, to act on the strength and authority of their own faith, without reliance on clerical decisions in any number of areas.

And simply enough, it is the Catholic schools that must provide those leaders. They cannot come from anywhere else. Now, it seems to me that that notion calls on us to do some re-evaluating of some pretty familiar attitudes. I think we have to stop worrying about numbers. Prophets and leaders never come in big bunches. I think we have to stop worrying, and apologizing for what seems to some to be a disproportionately large investment of parish money and resources in a school. The immediate object of that investment may be few, but the investment itself is in the whole of the Church. Those few are being prepared not for their own benefit, but for that of all of us. I think we have to learn to stop worrying about being elitist. We are that. Christ, after all, addressed very few. He said, "Let those who can do so take what I say. Let those who have ears for Me hear My words." Christ put a very great deal of time and trouble into the preparation of only twelve. And it worked. That effort was not wasted, even though there must have been moments when even He thought it was.

Perhaps that word I used a little bit ago sits poorly with you. The word "elitist." I said I think we should be that, and unabashedly so. Well, it is worth emphasizing that I certainly do not mean an economic elitism. Money, or social position, of course must have nothing to do with whether or not a person benefits from a formal Catholic education. That would be a travesty.

Nor do I mean an intellectual elitism. Intelligence is a wonderful thing, but it certainly is not the foundation of the Church. Never has been, never will be. The New Kingdom, after all, does not give ACT tests.

Nor do I mean a moral elitism, exactly. We would be naive indeed if we were to characterize our students as angels who never screw up, never make mistakes, never sin.

But I certainly do mean a spiritual elitism. That is, those, those few if that is the case, who truly accept that the values of Christ are real values. Those who are willing to believe, or struggle to believe that there is more to the human experience than what assails the senses... those who struggle, at least, to see the world as God does, know it as He knows it. People who simply enough, buy the fact that it God's world, and that the only way to live in it successfully, is to learn to do so on His terms.

So, for the mission of formal Catholic education, I propose the phrase, "to raise up prophets and kings... leaders for the people."

And for the mission, the role of Catholic School teachers, I propose that we must be for those future prophets and kings a persistent, pervasive witness to the truth of Christ's message. And I think each of those three words is important. Persistent, pervasive, and witness.

Perhaps another word for "witness" is "model." Example, a living witness. Simply enough, it all means that at the heart of anything else we may or may not do, try to do, we must be people whose whole lives clearly and explicitly testify that what Christ tells us about God, about the world, about ourselves, is true, and that to know it, to accept it, affirm it as such, works. That it makes life better, richer, fuller. In other words, to witness to the fact that to be God's people is a good thing, better than to not be such. If we are to raise up a generation of prophets and kings, we must begin to give shape to a generation of men and women utterly convinced that faith works, convinced because they have seen it work, in us, convinced because they have seen in us that faith brings a richness, a meaning, a joy to the business of being human.

Well, all of that means a very great deal. It means that as Catholic school teachers, we must be so much more than practitioners, proponents of an alternate system of education. We must be people of an alternate vision. There must be truly a prophetic dimension to the role that we play in the lives of the students. If there is not, then we are really just another version of public education. Good, perhaps, but just not good enough. We could spend, I suppose, a good deal of time studying the mission of prophecy, especially in the Old Testament. And if we did, I think we would find that prophecy has little enough to do with words. It has everything to do with a lived vision. If the prophetic message is not lived, it simply is not delivered. That is what "testify" literally means. To put all of what one is behind the truth of what is being said.

And we must offer that testimony across the spectrum of human experience. It must be clear that to be God's people is not a sometime, or a Sunday thing. There is no skill, no sensitivity, no discipline in us that is not Godly, not claimed by Him for His purposes. And we must offer that testimony again and again, in season and out of season, as St. Paul puts it. When it feels right, and when it doesn't, when it seems to pay off, and when it doesn't.

And it seems to me that we as Catholic school teachers are in a uniquely favorable position to do just that. Perhaps the greatest resource we have to bring to bear on the fulfillment of our mission of raising up prophets and leaders who clearly and articulately live in God's world, is also the most obvious. So obvious in fact that perhaps we sometimes overlook its immensely formative potential. And that is the fact that we have the kids in the same place, all day long. Or perhaps more nobly put, the opportunity afforded us by the school setting to provide a prophetic witness, a model, across the range of disciplines. And that means a lot, I think. It means a chance to lead the students to the eminently Scriptural insight that there simply is no purely secular wisdom. The realization that God's Word is relevant to God's world, all of it. The realization that there is nothing, no idea, no insight, no skill, no accomplishment the reality of which cannot be more deeply plumbed, more clearly seen and loved when the effort is made to see it as God sees it.

But remember, we are calling out of the people leaders, men and women who will be able, willing, to act in the world as Christ would, and do so on the strength of their own faith, their own initiative. And that means, I think, that it is critically important that we do not take in this the same attitude that seems to be taken in so many other "religion" schools. That of trying to "Christianize" human understanding by generating an artificial confrontation between religion and any other discipline, setting up a "which is right?" kind of situation. The classic example, I suppose, would be something like the evolution vs creationism conflict, or better, pseudo-conflict.

Rather our goal should be to bring our students to a deeper appreciation of the fact that in reality there is no conflict between what God has said, and what He has done, between His Word, and His world. And if there sometimes seems to be, then it is our understanding that is at fault. The by-word, I think, is synthesis, a bringing together of sensitivities, experiences, insight. And the great value to those who benefit from that realization, immediately the students, and ultimately the Church which they will lead, is a sense of balance, a sense of the harmony of creation, all of it. In a very real sense, that is the witness of the creation account, where the clear presence of God co-exists with humankind, and with nature. Well, as Catholic school teachers, we are in a unique and enviable position to generate that synthesis, pass on that balanced view of God's world, pass it on to the church of the future, through those who will be its prophets and leaders.

But again, as with every truly prophetic message, such a synthesis is a vision that must be lived. If our students do not see that balance in us, they simply will not see it at all. Before we can ever give spiritual shape and depth to the leaders of the church to come, we must see carefully to our own spiritual shape and depth. Before we can hope to form, we must be formed.

I think then, as Catholic school teachers, there are some pretty specific insights and attitudes around which we must center our own spiritual growth, and which must be made obvious in the prophetic proclamation that is our own lives. I'll run over a few of these with you right now... it is by no means an exhaustive list. You can add to it. And in fact, n just a few moments, I'll as you to do just that.

And the first of these insights is one on which I believe a good deal else depends. I think good, useful language here might be that used by Avery Dulles in his book, "Models of the Church", especially when he speaks about what he calls the "Sacramental" model. The heart of it is the realization that there is a dimension of grace, a dimension of divine creativity, and therefore divine effectiveness, to everything that the people of God set out to do. More familiarly put, there is always more going on than meets the eye, more happening than seems to be. Every act of the Church, everything done explicitly in the presence of God and His people, is a human act, and an act of God, just as, for instance, the Consecration of the Eucharist is at once a human act, and an act of God. In a real sense, then, sacramentality, that mysterious blend of divine and human design and effort, is a mark not only of the seven formal sacraments, it is a mark as well of the life of the Church, of all of God's people.

I am convinced that this insight is absolutely central to our lives as Catholic school teachers. We say so often that it almost seems cliché that what we do must be more than a job, a profession, that it must be a way of life. And it is precisely this sense of the sacramentality of what we are that is the core truth of that cliché.

And I think that the more deeply aware, convinced of the truth of that sacred, divinely creative dimension to what we do, the greater our own sense of purpose, and our own confidence in the realization of that purpose.

I think such an insight can add greatly to our sense of satisfaction, a sense of rightness about what we do, because it underscores the dimension of divine power in our appreciation of the inevitable effectiveness of what we do. It can help us to resist that sort of cyclic temptation to give in to a sense of futility, of in-effectiveness, because it reveals to us a dimension of effectiveness that simply does not depend on what we do, does not flow from our efforts, is not caused by them. Rather there is revealed to us, promised to us, a dimension of effectiveness that flows from the action of God, the movement of grace in the life of the students.

Let me put that most directly. The truth of the matter is, God acts on the students through us, through everything that we are and do.

Now it seems to me that that sentence can be read two ways, depending on where you put the emphasis. It can be GOD acts through us, or God acts THROUGH US. And each of those emphases, I think, has implications of its own. On the surface, those implications can seem to be almost directly contradictory. In fact, they are not, however.

And the implication of the first emphasis, GOD acts through us, is that there really isn't any very good way at all to measure any sort of direct, obvious, cause-and-effect connection between what we do, and what we hope to see the students become. Now, I suppose to some degree, that is always true of teaching, in any setting. But how much truer it is of us, who hope to see generated in the people with whom we work, an effect of grace, a divine effect, who hope to see generated people who not only know the world, but love it, reverence it. So to the old and perplexing question, "Are my efforts and abilities adequate to the task posed for me?" there is a very simple answer. "No, of course not. Don't expect that they will be. Don't expect that they should feel adequate."

But to that answer must be added the deeper truth, they don't have to be. Our efforts don't have to be adequate, because God's will be. Our efforts need not be adequate, all they need be is sincere. Our skills need not be sufficient, all they need be is exercised. But that as skillfully, as insightfully, and with as much good will as we can muster.

And that, really, is the implication of the second emphasis I mentioned earlier. God works, accomplishes His ends, through us, through what we do, what we are. The point is that there is nothing at all passive, or limited about our role. For us to let our grasp of the action of God in what we do become an excuse for doing less ourselves, for allowing ourselves to limit our effort, our concern to the classroom, or to the exercise of our academic skills, then we badly misunderstand the nature of the sacramental model of the Church, and our role in it.

It is perfectly true to say that we cannot do what needs to be done. It is perfectly true to say that God can, and will do it, through us. But while it is true to say that the effect cannot be generated by us, it can surely be blocked, prevented by us. It is an odd sort of emphasis really. In the mission of teaching, we may not be able to do it right by ourselves, but we can sure as blazes do it wrong by ourselves. I said that as teachers we are truly sacramental agents, sacramental signs to use the more traditional language. Signs of the life giving power of grace. Well, the way to do that wrong is to be a poor sign, to not be very much alive at all, to be dull, sluggish, intellectually, emotionally, spiritually, morally.

And all of that, I think, poses a very complex question, and a very simple answer. The complex question is, "What is there in me, what elements of what I am does God claim to use as His signs? What facets, dimensions of my life are relevant to the teaching process, and must be used in His way, and which are not?"

Well, the simple answer to that question, is "Absolutely everything." There is nothing at all about me, that is irrelevant to my teaching mission, should lie unused in the pursuit of that mission. There is a good reason for that, one made eminently clear in Scripture. God calls people, not machines. God sends out prophets, not functionaries, not messengers. Everything He made us to be, He calls us, sends us to use.

There is familiar phrase drawn from teacher's manuals that speaks to something of this. It is "to teach by modeling." That the impact I might hope to have on the students will flow ultimately not from what I say, but from what I am. And that is a good phrase, certainly, it is true. But for us, it doesn’t say nearly enough. We must take that notion infinitely further.

And that can be confusing for us. It can even be offensive. It is very easy for us to say, "Look, I teach science. What in the world does my personal spirituality, for example, the way I conduct the relationships in my life, the way I use my material goods, what do those things have to do with my effectiveness as a science teacher, as long as I know my discipline, and enough about classroom technique to present it clearly? All of that other stuff might be true for religion teachers, but why for me?"

Well, it is true, and for a whole lot of reasons. One of them, the heart of it, I suppose, we have already considered. For us there just isn't a whole lot of difference between teaching science and religion. Or there shouldn't be. We are a people of a different vision. We don't present the world in bits and pieces. For us, life is not a matter of competing disciplines, conflicting interests. Rather it is a whole thing, a thing of integrity, oneness, a oneness centered on the One Who is One, Who is truth. Actually, "whole" and "holy" mean pretty much the same thing, in their English roots.

So our professional skills are only a part of our mission as teachers. An important part, certainly. If I am going to be an effective sign of grace, a witness to the sacredness, the "wholeness" of my discipline, then I had better know my discipline. Because pretty clearly, the better, the more thoroughly I know it, the clearer sign I am of the mind of God, Who knows it perfectly.

But it is really not enough for us to simply know our discipline. We must love that discipline. We must stir up in ourselves a sense not only of the truth of what we teach, but of it's beauty, it's holiness as well.

I think another strength we must develop in ourselves, another dimension to our own spirituality, and so to our teaching mission, must be a deep sense of the dignity and effectiveness of the individual. As I've said a couple of times, I really believe that the great value to the Church of our mission, is the opportunity that we have to raise up from the people prophets and kings, outstanding individuals, leaders for a Church that will be more and more in need of such leadership in the future. We cannot shape the people of God. But we can raise up the leaders who will give it shape. And we are the only ones who can.

And all of that means that we must do some real re-arranging in ourselves. We must stir up in ourselves a profound sense of the mystery that each individual is. A sense, a real faith in the fact that the power and effectiveness of the individual is literally infinite, immeasurable by us, by our testing instruments, by any yardstick society may propose to us. We must resist the temptation to measure the value of what we do in terms of return on investment. So much progress made by so many people, in return for so much time and money invested. That is the yardstick of the marketplace, and it simply doesn't apply to us. The next time that you hear someone complain that Catholic education is disproportionately expensive, too much money for too few students, tell them that prophets and kings are not a commodity. When E. F. Hutton speaks, they don't listen. And neither should we.

But there is another side to that sense of mystery on which we must base our understanding of our students, and our approach to them. Simply put, it is that the selection of prophets and kings is not our prerogative. Rather it is the prerogative of the Spirit. If there is a danger to the notion that formal Catholic education is meant to immediately benefit the few, and not the many, that danger would be for us to give in to the temptation to decide which few. The danger is that we find ourselves standing in front of thirty kids, and teaching only two or three, those few that meet our standards of leadership potential. That is another way for us to screw up our mission. From the very beginning, the Father has worked great wonders through the most unlikely prophets. And He will continue to do so. That means that we must give the very best we have to give, to the most unlikely kids, as well as the most likely ones. As I said, I think it is true. Catholic education is not meant for everyone. But it is meant for those who want it, not just for those who seem to benefit from it in easily measureable ways. As long as a student is at least struggling to center his life around the values of the school, even if, sometimes, he is not doing too terribly well in that struggle, we have to have a place for him. We have to find room for those who choose in. And we have to let go of those who choose out.

But if we must resist the temptation to measure the response of the student with easy yardsticks, so too must we resist the temptation to do the same with ourselves. We simply never know, nor should we expect too, what it will be in us, that will stir up in the student the action of grace, the action of the Spirit. This underlines, I think, what I said a bit ago about the prophetic mission involving every dimension of what we are, not just our professional skills. I can easily think of a student about whom I can say, "This kid just doesn't have a spark of kingship or prophecy in him. It's obvious. He's not in the least bit moved by any of my very best lectures."

Well, perhaps not. But perhaps he will be moved if he sees me worship, if he sees that I mean what I say about prayer. Perhaps he will be moved if he sees that I am the same person in and out of the classroom, that I use the same kind of language, pursue the values I teach, that I live honestly, I use my personal wealth well and fairly, that I value other things much more highly than that. Perhaps he will be moved if he sees that I conduct, live out my personal relationships gently, patiently, with forgiveness, with fidelity, with love. Perhaps he will be moved if he sees that I am ready to bear a cross or two if they are laid on me, not happily, perhaps, but willingly. I just don't know what there is in me that will move that child, that will stir up the Spirit in him. But I do know that if I have offered him only my lectures, then I have offered too little, and I have taught poorly.

So. Seen from any perspective, one of the spiritual strengths that we must develop as Catholic school teachers is the ability to live comfortably in the presence of mystery, the mystery that is our students, that is ourselves, and that is the relationship between the two. And that says a lot. It demands a lot of auxiliary skills. It demands patience, and hope. It demands forgiveness, and resilience. It demands self-confidence, and an endless generosity.

Well, this is a list that I suppose could go on all day. And we don't have all day. But before I close, I would like to underline one more spiritual skill that I think we must develop. And even though it may not seem all that spiritual, it certainly is. And that is a real spirit of joy, of good humor. The ability to take pleasure in one another, in ourselves, our work, our world. I think, in a mysterious way, that is at the heart, really, of the leap of faith, the choice that we make, to believe, to be God's people. Somewhere along the line in our own spiritual pilgrimage, perhaps not explicitly, perhaps not consciously, we must each of us make some pretty fundamental choices about the world God has made for us. And one of those is whether or not the world is, at the heart of it, a grim and dangerous place, a battlefield, full of risks and pitfalls, or rather a garden in which to delight, a beautiful thing, full of opportunities and pleasures.

Well, enough for now... let's go on with the day.