ERIC ED345967: What Makes a School Catholic?

52 Pages·1991·2.6 MB·English

by  ERIC

DOCIINENT RES=
SO021644
ED 345 967
AUTHOR
Kelly, Francis D., Ed.
What Makes a School Catholic?
TITLE
National Catholic Educational Association,
INSTITUTION
Washington, D.C.
ISBN-1-55833-102-6
REPORT NO
PUB DATE
91
52p.; Paper presented at a National Catholic
NCCE
Educational Association Institute (Dayton, OH, June
1988).
National Catholic Educational Association,
AVAILABLE FROM
Publications Sales Office, Suite 100, 1077 30th
Street, NW, Washington, DC 20007-3852.
Speeches/Conference Papers (150) -- Viewpoints
PUB TYPE
(Opinion/Position Papers, Essays, etc.) (120)
MF01/PC03 Plus Postage.
EDRS PRICE
*Catholic Educators; *Catholic Schools; Curriculum
DESCRIPTORS
Development; Educational History; Educational Needs;
*Educational Philosophy; *Educational Principles;
Elementary Secondary Education; Leadership
Responsibility; *Religious Education; *School
Community Relationship
ABSTRACT
This monograph includes six papers presented at a
meeting sponsored by the Departments of Religious Education and
aucation Association. The
Secondary Schools of the National Catholi*
papers include: (1) "What Makes a School Cathol.lc?" (William J.
O'Malley); (2) "Catholicity: A Tradition of Contemplation" (Thomas
Keating); (3) "Catholic Identity and the Church" (James Heft); (4)
"Building a Religion Curriculum" (Thomas Zanzig); (5) "Facilitating
Student's Self Image" (Mark Link); and (6) "Justice and Peace:
Constitutive Elements of Catholicity" (Loretta Carey). (KM)
***********************************************************************
Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made
from the origina2 document.
***********************************************************************
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71
HAT
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SCHOOL
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CATHOLIC?
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Association
Catholic Educational
0 1991, National
Washington, DC
ISBN: 1-55833-102-6
WHAT MAKES
SCHOOL
A
CATHOLIC?
Edited by:
Francis I). Kelly. S.T.L., Ph.D.
Aar
Published by
The National Catholic Educational Association
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
Francis D. Kelly, S.T.L., Ph.D.
What Makes a School Catholic?
3
William J. O'Malley, S.J.
Catholicity: A Tradition of Contemplation
10
Thomas Keating, O.C.S.O.
Catholic Identibr and the Church
14
James Heft, S.M.
22
Building a Religion Curriculum
Thomas Zanzig
Facilitating Student's Self-Image
30
Mark Link, SI
justice & Peace: Constitutive Elements
41
of Catholicity
Loretta Carey, R.D.0
INTRODUCTION
The Second Vatican Council itself gave an answer to the important
question po:..ed by this monograph: "What makes the Catholic school
distinctive is its attempt to generate a community climate in the
school that is permeated by the Gospel spirit of freedom and
love...where personality development goes hand in hand with the
development of the 'new creature' that each one has become through
It tries to relate all of human culture to the goodness of
baptism.
salvation so that the light of faith will illumine everything that the
students will gradually come to learn about the world, about life,
and about the human person" (Declaration on Christian Education.
#8).
In June of 1988, one hundred and eighty Catholic school educa-
tors met for a week al the University of Dayton at an
Institute
sponsored by the Departments of Religious Education and Secondary
Schools of the National Catholic Educational Association to explore
these issues. This monograph includes some of the papers presented
of thousands
at that meeting so that they may be of benefit to the tens
of dedicated administrators and teachers who serve nearly 3 million
in the United States.
young people in the Catholic school system
The reader will find echoes in these pages of the conciliar goals
mentioned above and an application of them to our particular
Together with reflection on
situation about twenty five years later.
the goals the reader will alw tind suggestions for practical implem-
entation in such areas as religion curriculum building, fostering
students' prayer lives, encouraging commitment to Catholic social
teaching.
The predominantly lay staffing that is now characteristic of our
schools makes reflection on the question "What Makes a School
Catholic?" ever more urgent. Many of the externals such as teachers
It must
in religious habits no longer provide an aura of Catholicism.
be the kind of values reflected in the following pages that must
suffuse the total school atmosphere and the entire staff that will alone
This means that
guarantee the authentic Catholicity of the school.
administrators must give high priority to the selection and on-going
spiritual support of staff who will share these ideas and communicate
them effectively to their students.
May the Holy Spirit continue to inspire and direct Catholic
educators in their privileged vocation of service!
Rev. Francis D. Kelly
Executive Director
Department of Religious Education
6
EVANGELIZING THE
UNCONVERTED
William J. O'Malley, S.J.
A missionary in the Australian outback has it easier than a religious
I concede the missionary's
educator in a posh suburban school.
physical discomfortsthe ticks and leeches, the alligators, the dust,
the curare-tipped blowdarts, the malaria. But at least he or she can
me." In
say every night, "Some people didn't die today because of
contrast, the teacher here at home has most of the bland comforts
of the middle class; there is little drama beyond an occasional stink
bomb in the sophomore lockers, little nobility Ileyond the reassurance
that "I did not kill Donald Dorgan today."
And yet there is a very dramatic and very noble struggle going
challenge to
on in our dust-free, air-conditioned paradises: the
discomfit the comfy, to penetrate impenetrable smugness, to unnerve
incurable
young people who are convinced that being spoiled is an
diseasebut also convinced that they are good Christians because
In brief, our task is to evangelize the baptized but
they are "nice."
At least windmills fought
unconverted. Don Quixote had it easier.
back.
I submit that it would be easier to convert a cannibal than to sell
distributive justice to boys from Scarsdale and girls from Beverly
Hills. You'd have a better chance selling acne.
What's more, if we are truly honest about our mandate, we are
also trying to subvert precisely the two most precious hopes our
students' parents have for them: first, that they have "the good life,"
and, second, that they not suffer.
We aren't visibly noble warriors, like the missionary in the outback,
but there is an unsung nobility and drama to our lives. John LeCarre
and Martin Cruz and Len Deighton could write novels about us. We
arc the Church's moles, her double-agents, her subversives.
OUR PURPOSE
If you asked our parents why they don't take advantage of their
school-tax money, I imagine many would answer, "Catholic schools
If that's what they're after, their children
have better discipline."
would have gotten even better discipline in the Marines. Not to
If that's all they want for children in Catholic
mention prison.
schoolsto be self-disciplined, upwardly mobile, to assure them of
Rev. William O'Malley, S.J. teaches religion at Fordham Preparatory School, the
Bronx, New York, and is a frequent contributor to America on the issue of
adolescent religious education.
3 7
swimming pool, and
life" (viz: a six-figure job, a
"the good things in
faculties should be chalking
recorder), then all our lay
a video-cassette
working in munitions factories.
and fewer headaches
up more money
"Get yourselves
should say with Jerry Starrat,
and all the religious
another set of vestal virgins."
mobile.
make our young upwardly
Catholic schools aren't there to
offer them security.
wrinkle-free life. Nor to
Nor to assure them of a
They're
them.
take all that away from
They're there precisely to
the road.
security and come out onto
there to lure them to give up
gospel of Jesus Christ must,
to embody the
Any school that claims
subvert all the siren
of the time in vain) to
by definition, try (most
Babysitter. and make
heard from the Electronic
songs our young ever
apostleship
ordained to be at baptism, an
them the apostles they were
confirmed at Confirmation.
they themselves allegedly
brainwash-
what they still call "Catholic
Despite all those years of
(a) not hurting
believe being a Christian means
ing." our children
that make
people. But how would
anybody and lb) being nice to
ethical atheist? They
different from a good Jew or an
a Christian any
But
be nice, too.
people either; they want to
don't want to hurt
they're not Christians.
do only
Christianity has something to
Again, our children think
drugs. No, no,
pimping. no pushing
with morality: no abortion, no
insofar as
about moralityexcept
Ihristianity is not primarily
no.
Moslems have
Jews have to be moral;
Christianity presumes morality.
morality. One has
Christianity has no monopoly on
to be moral.
you're them, at the level
merely to be hu.nan. Once
to be moral
the call to be
have a chance to hear
of humanity. then you may
Christian.
OUR PRODUCT
humanity-plus;
natural. Christianity is
Humanity is our nature; it's
be unbad; it asks
Christianity doesn't ask us to
it's supernatural.
of your students would
But I'd wager that 99.7%
us to be
holy.
when
called "holy." And yet,
called a bad name as be
as soon be
"pious." They meant
"holy," they didn't mean
Jesus or any Jew said
together."
patois, "having ah your act
"whole," orin the modern
and where you're going.
You know who you are
acknowledge
students with ourselves to
We want to lead our
acknowledge
God, and yet we also
humblythat we are not
That we are his sons and
proudlythat we have been
chosen.
missioned, just
That we have been
daughters, peers of the realm.
Jesus has no hands but
missioned, At this moment,
as Jesus was
hearts. We are his embodi-
He has no hearts but our
our hands.
present to
Catholic school wants to
This is the life-ideal a
ment.
its students.
especially by the
is to serve, to be used,
The call of the Christian
oblige. We
of the reals, then noblesse
undeserving. If we are peers
4
for "the good
have it on the highest authority that the only norm
how
life" is not, on the one hand, how high your SAT's were, or
in
much money you made, or how many times you got your name
that the only question
the papers. We have it from Jesus himself
living is: "I was
which will determine whether your life was worth
did
I WU the one they called 'nerd.' What
hungry.
I was it- Arsty.
you do about tt atr
unnerving,
If our young find that gospel message boring and not
gospel message.
then our young have never really heard the
And it is the
So: that's the intimidating product we
offer.
Catholic or not.
touchstone by which our schools will be Judged
Not Just: "the
offer it?
And what is the audience to whom we
disquieting point wtwn
young," but these youngwho have a very
they say, "You were never my age."
OUR AUDIENCE
of college
Our audience is convinced that, within ten years
their parents; that
graduation, they will be living at least as well as
before them toward Oz;
the Yellow Brick Road stretches inexorably
As in 1984, they are
that being spoiled is an incurable disease.
thought controL and
already adept at using Soma, recreational sex,
egotists to
It's nearly impossible to lure self-absorbed
double-think.
him,
God? One is doing quite splendidly without
an act of faith.
Where's the profit?
thank you.
whom we are missioned
BUT, paradoxically, the young people to
timeprecisely the opposite of world-
are alsoat one and the same
They are deadly (and I use the word advisedly)
beating egotists.
It's almost as if Arnold Sch-
aware of their own
shortcomings.
it into a hoop, so
wartznegger had taken the spectrum and twisted
paranoid at the same
that our young could be both egotistical and
narcissism: Oz
timewhich is precisely the classical definition of
and impossible.
is, at one and the same time, inevitable
mirror, testifying
For the paranoid, everything on earth is a
the commer-
unarguably and ceaselessly to his or her shortcomings:
the mugger, the joneses.
cials, the Little League tryouts, the SAT's,
has turned into
What in my youth was a dispiriting deluge of guilt
the
formless anxieties. Paranoids are humbled to
a gluey morass of
the abjectly humble
point of paralysis. And yet, with pathetic irony,
their faults, deifying
also try to grab center stage and monologize
of being perfect to
their ineptitude, refusing to surrender the job
It's nearly impossible to lead a paranoid to an act
Someone Else.
Where's the guarantee?
of faith.
God?
Human Nature need not corrupt
As C.S. Lewis said, the Enemy of
murderers or potentates of porn or genocides.
our youngsters into axe
they have plenty of
All he has to do is give them a mirror. And
Whether they
handed to them.
mirrors; many we ourselves have
with reflections of their own indomitable charms or
are mesmerized
!)
5
shortcomings, the result
with reflections of their own ineradicable
is the same: they are paralyzed.
the first place, take
Tell that audience of narcissists: "If you want
have two coats, and your
the last place." Tell that audience: "if you
of your coats." Tell that
brother has none, give your brother one
forget security and come
audience: "If you want to be truly fulfilled,
of
To the Me Generation, in the world
out on the road with Me."
suggesting deicide.
monopoly capitalism, that's equivalent to
TILE CAUSES
gospel so unappealing?
What brought all this about? Why is the
vacations more important
Whyto give only one concrete exampleare
dropped by two-
than vocations? Why have vocations in America
like Eastern Europe and
thirds in fifteen years? And yet, in places
healthier and healthier. Keep
the Third World, vocations are looking
There may be a clue there.
that in mind.
stole the fire from our
When searching out the culprit who
Rain's classic command
churches and schools, we can look to Claude
And there they
usual suspects."
in "Casablanca": "Round up the
Avenue, the Pill, the stock-
all stand: television, Playboy. Madison
the marijuana and cocaine
holders of the Trojan Condom Corporation.
Metal rockers who look like
peddlers, and all thost garish Heavy
storm troopers in drag.
be too humble to allow
But in that unseemly line-up, let us not
Church and as individual parents
prominent places to ourselves, as a
and teachers.
the objective truth, our
If we can lower our defenses and see
show compared to our more
Church puts on a rather lackluster
Danny Kaye
professional opposition, a liturgy whose script even
pastel paeans to a God who
couldn't bring to life; the hymns are
challenges, twanged out on guitars
always cherishes and hardly ever
les brothers; the homily
which make the Trinity as folksy as the Bart
twenty-minute ramble consisting
not always, but far too oftenis a
school students I've taught,
mostly of detours. The majority of high
schools, seem to have been given a
most of them from parochial
of Christianity I have
gospel emptied of any challenge, a concept
If they read the
Fuzzy."
belabored elsewhere as "Jesus, the Warm
least to me (and
secular or diocesan press, they see what appears at
scandal of people on our own
I'm 100% committed) the embaaassing
another.
side of the barricades lobbing grenades at one
I think it
institutional Church.
But all the fault is not with the
the good intentions of American
is also rootedagain paradoxicallyin
unwittingly, defused
I think Catholic parents have,
Catholic parents.
children from a reality which
the Gospel by trying to shield their
but also the sine qua non of
is not only the bedrock of the gospel
experience of suffering.
achieving even an integral humanity: the
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