First day back at school. Different, this time. No uniform but still the obligatory photo. No locker to find but now an office. I am returning to the staff of a school where I was a student.
My old school, Xavier College, is a Jesuit school, and I am a Jesuit, in a program of formation for Catholic priesthood. I take my place through the induction days beside teachers and support staff. A few of them are as new to this as me, their first job in a school. Most know the drill, are ready for the sessions to come.
Even though many of the incoming staff I was with were veterans of school inductions there was an openness to learning about how this particular school expressed its Catholic identity. A seasoned teacher commented simply, ‘I’m so pleased to hear about “the why”’.
This week some 98,000 staff have returned to Australia’s 1751 Catholic schools to assist in the education of some 768,000 students. We will each approach ‘the why’ question differently, based on our experience and knowledge.
DIVERSE AND VARIED
Australia’s Catholic schools are a diverse and varied network. Almost all belong to state-wide Catholic education offices, but many continue to carry a particular flavour, a charism, from the religious orders who founded and ran them. Along with Catholic hospitals, aged-car facilities and social service organisations, Catholic schools are in many cases the legacy of the service of religious women and men. Many new Catholic schools represent the emerging and culturally diverse Church that grows in new and developing suburbs, on the fringes of big cities and in the regions.
There is great variety in those 98,000 staff, even more in the 768,000 students and their families. Some are deeply committed to their Catholic faith and its expression in worship and service. Others are not Catholic, or religious, in any way and may not have thought much about faith; others still are considered agnostics and atheists. There is a range of motivating factors for why people come to work, and choose to educate their children, in those schools. I return to the world of Catholic schools with my own motivations as one who loved my time at school, and who sometime later, set out to train to be a Catholic priest.
The ‘why’ of Catholics schools is best addressed, in my experience, in terms of relationships. I think that’s what draws me back now. Memories of teachers and support staff who inspired, encouraged and nurtured. Memories, of course, of friends made in the classroom, out playing sport, in the school musical. Friends who remain in my life.
It seems to me central to the claim Catholic schools make about themselves that those relationships are grounded in an invitation to relationship with Jesus, and through Jesus the whole Trinity, the relationship of the Three-in-One God. My own experience has been that Catholic schools become an invitation to relationship with those who also seek after God. Usually not in the exactly the same way, or at the same pace. But to form friendships which hold the possibility of conversation about the things that matter is a blessing I savour.
BUILDING COMMUNITY
Such relationships are hardly the exclusive preserve of Catholic schools but building community, in the way it helps the human person live in relationship, seems to help serve the common good. That ceases to be so if a community is enclosed, self-referential, let alone hostile to conversation with the wider society. Such a community wouldn’t be Christian, either. Pope Francis is clear in last year’s encyclical Fratelli Tutti that ‘[c]losed groups … that define themselves in opposition to others tend to be expressions of selfishness and mere self-preservation’ (para 89). Whereas, Francis recognises that ‘love calls for growth in openness and the ability to accept others as part of a continuing adventure that makes every periphery converge in a greater sense of mutual belonging (para 95).’
Catholic schools can work as communities of belonging; communities whose peripheries continue to expand. The relationships cannot just be inward, the products of fixed boundaries. Some of the relationships I remember most fondly from my time at school are with people I met while on service activities. For many of my friends at the time it was younger students from migrant backgrounds who my mates tutored with real comradery and affection. For me it was visiting older men, who’d lived knocked-about lives, in a home. They delighted in the arrival of us students on a Friday afternoon. They loved to tell a yarn, share a joke, hear about what was on our minds. I remember visiting one of these men in hospital after school one day, his mind fading, his dance card pretty empty. I can still see his big grin and remember my own smile back.
INVITATION
Sitting among teachers and support staff as we are inducted in questions of ‘why’ and later, the practicalities of how a contemporary school campus operates, I found myself excited at the prospect of being invited into these relationships again. Maybe now being in a position to invite students into a wider set of relationships, too. Also being aware that, for me, these remain communities distinguished by encouraging the outward relational movement precisely because of the centring relationship with Jesus Christ.
Julian Butler SJ is a Jesuit undertaking formation for Catholic priesthood. He previously practised law, and also has degrees in commerce and philosophy. Julian spends time in social service, communications and young adult ministries and in a school.