This week the Catholic Primary Schools Management Association (CPSMA) held its AGM in Athlone. The CPSMA provides advice and support for Chairpersons and Principals of Boards of Management in over 2,800 schools in the Republic. It collaborates with other management bodies and negotiates on behalf of these schools with the Department of Education and with other education partners. Bishop Tom Deenihan (pictured above) of Meath celebrated Mass during this week’s gathering and delivered the following homily:
Homily
There is a wisdom in accepting the readings of the day instead of selecting ‘special readings’ for special occasions. Today is a case in point. There may have been a temptation to select readings and steer the homily today but that might be to impose one’s own will excessively on the liturgy and to limit the word of God.
Despite that, today’s readings do have some relevance and have something to say to us as a Management Body for Catholic Primary Schools, albeit in a time of challenge and debate. I am talking about the opening comment of Christ in the Gospel. He himself had declared that there is no respect for a prophet in his own country.
Could we substitute ‘Catholic Primary School’ for prophet and wish that we were in the United States, England, in fact, anywhere else? After all, it does seem that the Catholic School is the reason for every current ill in the world of education.
Indeed, about nine years ago, an academic in the History Department in UCC, Gabriel Doherty, who sadly died a few months ago, told me that it was a feature of the papers that he was correcting in Social History that every one of the social ills that Ireland experienced was due, in the minds of his students, to the influence of the Catholic Church. Pure revisionism and an unreflective absorption of a narrative. Yes. There were atrocities. We share that shame. But Catholic orders and congregations were providing education long before free education in Ireland and religious congregations were providing care for those who were sick too. It is also important to note that those who offered those views were third level students and many were graduates of Catholic schools.
But back to the Catholic school being the prophet not recognised. How does one define a Catholic school. I believe that referring to Patronage, while technically correct, does not always give the full picture.
I re-read an article that was written by an educationalist, Frank Steele, in 1995 called the Gospel School in the context of a talk I was giving recently.
That article, which has stayed with me over the years spoke of what a Catholic school should be:
A Catholic school … is about people.
Bearing all that in mind, a Catholic school must be about people as they are in the here and now! It must be about all people, to borrow the analogy in the parable of the Prodigal Son, it’s about the son who stayed and the son who strayed.
A Catholic school treats all its’ students equally, … and, if it were to be biased at all, would be biased in favour of the weak. … a Catholic school accepts people as they are. A Catholic school is a school that can say of itself that quotation from John 10:10 ‘I have come that they may have life and have it to the full.
To read the Bishop Deenihan’s Homily in full please click HERE
