Catholic
Education From stories, hints of transcendence
By FRED HERRON
The approach of Christmas in St.
Clares parish on Staten Island was a bittersweet time this year. Like the
rest of New York City, St. Clares had been deeply scarred by the events
of Sept.11. Thirty parishioners had died at the World Trade Center, and the
past several months seemed like an endless procession of pain and grief. The
ordinary events of Advent, usually guaranteed to raise the spirits of the most
hardened Scrooge, seemed vaguely muted and subdued this time.
The eighth-grade Christmas pageant, a moment that students and
their families waited for throughout grammar school, looked to be almost an
afterthought this year. When the day finally arrived, more than 200 parents,
grandparents, family and friends, along with students from the grammar school,
packed the parish church. Cameras clicked, parents nudged one another and
pointed to their child, and finally the ancient Christmas story began to
unfold.
Somehow the mood in that church began to change, and everyone
recognized that something remarkable was happening. When John the shepherd
finally led the rest of the flock to their place before the manger, our pastor,
Msgr. Joseph Murphy, stood to thank the young people for their message. His
voiced cracked, however, and there was not a dry eye in the church. He told
these eighth-graders that they had given parishioners hope again, joy in a
dismal time. In that sacred moment everything that is best about our Catholic
tradition and our Catholic schools shone as brightly as any Christmas star.
Our Catholic tradition reminds young people in a hundred different
ways that God made humans because God loves stories, and our lives are the
stories God tells. Fr. Richard McBrien has suggested that there are
various characteristics of Catholicism, each of which ... it shares with
one or another Christian church or tradition. It is their distinctive
combination in Catholicism that gives it a unique flavor. McBrien
concludes that nowhere else except in the Catholic church are all of
Catholicisms characteristics present in the precise configuration in
which they are found within Catholicism.
In his final talk, Thomas Merton challenged his listeners to
search for the essential elements in their faith. He reminded them that
Zen people have a saying: Where do you go from the top of a 30-foot
pole?
What is at the top of the 30-foot pole for those who struggle to
create Catholic schools that embrace this rich imaginative world? What is at
the heart of our stories?
Somewhat like God
Fr. Andrew Greeley has argued that the essential quality of
Catholic stories is an imagination that tends to be sacramental.
Catholics assume a God who is present and active in the world. Everything in
the world, its events, objects and people, tend to be somewhat like God.
Catholics are thus more likely to see God as acting in the world
and to place great value on community, institutions and the hierarchy. Our
stories emphasize ritual and ceremony. They demonstrate an interest in the fine
arts and take great comfort in angels, saints and especially the Mother of
God.
What do we hope to pass on to our children in our Catholic
schools? Rules, doctrine and sophisticated religious education programs with
lots of bells and whistles do not attract people to the church. Greeleys
research suggests, in fact, that the sacramental imagination is stronger in
those who have grown up in the post-Vatican II church. He reports,
Catholics under 40 are significantly more likely to imagine God as
mother, lover, spouse and friend than are Catholics over 40. This is not
to discount the role of doctrine and dogma. But, as the poet Kathleen Norris
has so aptly put it: We go to church in order to sing, and theology is
secondary.
People are drawn to religion by experiences in which they come
into contact with someone or something providing hints of transcendence.
Greeley suggests that the kind of things that can be religious experiences in
ordinary life are reconciliation after a quarrel; meeting an old friend, say,
in an airport; a smile on a kids face; Christmas dinner; the lights of
the city at night. Every transcendent moment can serve as a rumor of
angels for young people, he writes.
Religion in the lives of young people begins with an experience of
a graced reality that renews hope. These experiences are encoded as pictures
and shared as stories. These stories evoke parallel experiences in others and
call them to share their experiences of hope. Our stories build solidarity and
community with others. Consequently our young people become parts of a larger
storytelling community that we call church.
Pastors, administrators, parents and all who support a Catholic
school are anchors and points of contact with that great storytelling
tradition. Students struggle to find language to express their transcendent
experiences and a forum in which to share their stories. Everyone committed to
the life of a Catholic school helps to define its mission by encouraging
students and providing them with an opportunity to articulate these experiences
and to relate them to a larger Catholic storytelling tradition.
The Catholic school exists to meet this fundamentally human and
religious challenge. Our academic endeavors, our extracurricular activities,
our athletic programs, our disciplinary procedures, as well as our service and
worship programs, all flow out of our desire to foster the spiritual journeys
of young people. The structure of the Catholic school provides a living story
that strives to articulate our communal transcendent experiences of the
presence of God and the activity of the Holy Spirit. Our schools have come into
existence not because of a state mandate or a desire for power. Rather, they
are a response to the living God who calls us to spread the good news.
Fairy tales that are true
The parents who came to that manger at St. Clares wanted
that for their children. They hope to pass on that rich Catholic story.
Anna Quindlen described it this way: I think those families
are people ... who believe in something, ... people who feel that in a world of
precious little history or tradition, this is theirs. We will pass down the
story to our children: There was a woman named Mary who was visited by an
angel. And that angel said, Do not be afraid and told her that
though she was a virgin she would have a child. And He was named Jesus and was
the Son of God and rose from the dead. Everything else our children learn in
America ... will make this sound like a fairy tale, like tales of the potato
famine in Ireland and the little ramshackle houses with grape arbors on
hillsides in Italy. But these are my fairy tales, and so, whether or not they
are fact, they are true.
When Msgr. Murphys voice caught in his throat, as he thanked
the angels and sheep and John the shepherd led the flock to the manger, not an
eye in the church was dry, and every heart knew that this, too, was their
story.
Fred Herron is director of campus ministry at Fontbonne Hall
Academy, Brooklyn, N.Y.
National Catholic Reporter, March 22,
2002
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