Embracing a Common Future

 

 

Edmund Rice Christian Brothers

North America

Thursday, 09 August 2007

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September 2005

FORGE A NEW PATH

Br Philip Pinto,

Congregational Leader, Christian Brothers

 

Br Philip was speaking of his experience at a gathering in Melbourne last year when the Charter for Edmund Rice Schools was being accepted in St Patrick’s Province.

I remember a gathering in Melbourne last year when the Charter for Edmund Rice Schools was being accepted in St Patrick’s Province. Each school present argued why it felt it was an Edmund Rice school. I was impressed by the earnestness of the young people who showed that their school reflected the values by which Edmund Rice lived. Most noticeable was the fact that almost every school spoke about its involvement in social justice. It was such a strong message that these young people were sharing with the rest of us! We in the audience could sense their passion and their idealism. It is at such moments that one feels something worthwhile is happening, even as we watch.

It was a group of young school-leavers like these that I visited a few years back. When the Principal introduced me and asked what would they like to hear from ‘Brother who has come from Rome’, one young man at the back of the class replied, ‘Anything, so long as he doesn’t use the "J" word, the "G" word or the "C" word!’ I managed to leave out the offending words — Jesus, God and Church — and spoke about the situation in our world and how our silence perpetuates the imbalances in society. Once again, I was amazed by the energy of young people to get involved in the issues of our world; by their indignation at the way in which the odds are stacked against the poor; and by their deep inner goodness, generosity and honesty.

What is all this saying to us who are called to be educators of youth?

A Buddhist saying goes like this:

We must find the courage to leave our temples and enter into the temples of human experience, temples that are filled with human suffering.

Edmund Rice discovered in the poor a God he never knew. It was that discovery that left him disturbed at the way his society excluded people and marginalized them. Today, our young people have an experience of life that leaves them dissatisfied with and suspicious of organized religion. We cannot expect old and trite expressions of our faith to evoke any enthusiastic response from them. It is our task as educators to discover another language that will put them in touch with the deep spiritual realities of their lives. Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it so well:

A time will come when we will once again be called so to utter the Word of God that the world will be changed and renewed by it. It will be a new language, perhaps quite non-religious, but liberating and redeeming.

There is such a change taking place in Christian Brother schools around the world. In many instances, there are few or no Brothers there. None of this happens by chance. Somewhere in all of it is the design of God drawing all of us into a deeper realization of what it means to be truly human. If all you wonderful lay people who now administer and work in these schools are to be true to the best in our tradition, you must forge a new path.

You are called to leave behind any vestige of elitism or patriarchy that was associated with our schools. You are not to imitate the past, but to move into a future that will be different.

God is inviting us Brothers and you lay men and women to give flesh to a spirituality that is an alternative to the dominant institutional spirituality of our Church. To do anything less is to let down the young men and women, boys and girls, to whom we minister and who minister to us.