Bishop Donal McKeown address at Edmund Rice College, Glengormleyto celebrate 30 years
The world of the 10 lepers must seem a long way from Edmund Rice College, St Bernard’s, the Valley Leisure Centre, St Enda’s, Lidl and Cartmills – to name but a few of the more obvious features of 21st century Glengormley. But like all scripture passages, today’s Gospel is not just meant to be a window on the past – where we can learn about the borders of Samaria and Galilee and the social customs of lepers – but also a mirror on the present. After all, we know that, while historical circumstances can change radically and rapidly, human nature seems not to have changed all that much down through the centuries. Our hard wiring seems to ensure that, in all centuries we are capable of great goodness and terrible evil, tremendous generosity and awful greed, heroism and cowardice. The world is still full of human borders and outcasts. And the Gospel is always an invitation to engage with those realities, rather than with the pseudo agendas that others will create for us.
This Gospel tells of Jesus going from the security of his native Galilee and heading for the stable centre of his Jewish faith in Jerusalem – but having to go pass through the dodgy territory between Galilee and Samaria, and encounter the shadow world of a leper colony. He is not afraid of dealing with awkward questions or people in need. This passage is just one more insight from the life of Jesus when we are asked to look at how he responds to human beings in need, how not everybody is able to be grateful, and how goodness is to be found in the most unexpected of places. It is also an example of how some people can see Jesus as a cash point, to be approached when he is useful and then forgotten when we have other priorities. And how it is a despised Samaritan who can get beyond the religious structures - incarnated in the priests to whom the lepers are sent - and see Jesus who is the only one whom we are here to serve and promote.
Hearing a deeper meaning behind familiar Gospel stories is not easy. It needs time. And we gather today and each Sunday, not to be entertained but to be nourished. Many believe that they get enough nourishment from plenty of noise, watching plenty of people kicking a football, and maybe from even kicking one themselves. But on Sundays, Jesus invites all of us to look beyond the surface of life and get in touch with something even more real than Ramsey Street, Albert Square or Big Brother. He wants to heal people and not just distract them. He knows that, because we’re all worth it, we need more than the squeals we get from using the latest anti-dandruff shampoo to help us believe in our worth and dignity. He invites us to gather each week with the others that are seeking truth and wholeness, love and hope, energy and community – in a world that promises only fun and long life but seems to also deliver danger, fear and antagonism.
We celebrate 30 years since this school was opened here. This is worth celebrating, for it has had to survive and thrive in difficult times since 1977. But this school is not just a young, free-standing establishment with no roots. The Irish Christian Brothers have been working in Belfast since 1866, just 22 years after the death of Edmund Ignatius Rice. With some of the enthusiasm and concern for the poor that had inspired their founder, three initial schools were opened within 8 years in the centre of the burgeoning city – Divis Street, Donegall Street and Oxford Street. With the introduction of Technical education in 1900, the Brothers were quick off the mark. Hardinge Street opened it doors in 1903 and stayed there for 70 years. That school was the immediate father of this College, after a brief sojourn on the Park Lodge site. So what we celebrate today is just one more branch on the tree that was planted almost two centuries ago with the official foundation of the religious community in 1778. And it is one more opportunity to acknowledge the huge generosity of the men – and later, women – who have kept this passion for education. In our own generation, the Edmund Rice Educational Trust is pledged to continue to ‘provide Catholic education in the Edmund Rice Tradition’.
I suppose that this is all an example of what we mean by a Catholic school. Each of the 550 individual schools in NI is different, groups of schools in religious trusteeship have their distinctive tradition and identity – and yet we seek to form a network that provides a huge range of support for all young people in our modern society. If anyone believes that we have no poverty and that schools are just about teaching the three Rs and that there is little need now for the generous dedication of Blessed Edmund Rice, then they must be singularly unaware of the society in which we live. Just last Friday a Cambridge University Professor published a report on primary school children in Britain. The London Independent headlined its report as follows: our young children are anxious, badly behaved, stressed, depressed and obsessed with the cult of celebrity. And added throughout the country, children expressed similar fears which plague their everyday lives outside school – traffic, the lack of safe play areas, rubbish, graffiti and gangs of older children. Inside the classroom, the recent proliferation of tests …were frequently described as ‘scary’ and stressful. [1]
Now I know that this is not England – and we on this island still have much in terms of culture, sporting associations and family cohesion. But when England sneezes, we risk getting the cold. The relentless pace and pressure of turbo capitalism risks swamping us as well. The human equivalent of mad cow disease, foot and mouth disease and bluetongue disease can blow over here very quickly. So there still remains a huge need for the idealism of Edmund Rice. He was not just a generous but a shrewd man. He was conscious of the degrading effect that ignorance and poverty had on human beings. There are still many people, not just abroad but in our own city, who feel left out and left behind by the successful of society. The recent Stephen Nolan programme about helping six unemployed young people to find work is just one more example of how many of our fellow citizens lack confidence and basic personal skills. But Edmund Rice was also aware of the effects of spiritual poverty – those who had never heard in their hearts about God’s love and forgiveness for them and of their own dignity in the great scheme of things. That is what is meant when the ERST says that it is committed to ‘promoting an approach that goes beyond the utilitarian… (seeking) to offer a broad vision of education’.
That is why many people are so angry at any notion that the education system should be skewed so as to give priority to the ambitions of a minority. There is a need for excellence for all. But unless our system advantages the disadvantaged – rather than further advantaging the already advantaged – then it is not a system worthy of a Christian country. If all are looked after, then we all benefit. If some are neglected, we will all pay. That is why so many people are frustrated that, at a structural level, there is the frightening lack of decision within the Department of Education about the end of the very damaging academic selection at 11. Minority interests cannot be allowed to skew the education system to suit themselves. The desire to assert political egos and agendas cannot take priority over the welfare of children and communities. In fact, nothing is more important that the future of our young people. If political parties see that they cannot agree to take and implement necessary decisions, perhaps should we ask them to have the integrity to move out of the way and ensure that we do have structures where outcomes are delivered. Schools exist, not for the welfare of the school but for the good of the children and their communities. Similarly, political structures exist, not for the benefit of the politicians and alleged future benefits - but to deliver services to the community, now. They need to deliver and not just promise, to lead and not just to plead. The education of young people should never be reduced to the level of a political football. Our young people and communities deserve immeasurably better than that.
In the meantime, within the Catholic school sector – the largest provider of schools in NI – we are committed to developing a network of schools that can boast of excellence for all and not just for the few, whatever action or inaction we see at the political level. I know that all of this will require difficult decisions in an age when there is a huge drop in the number of children available for all schools - and the recent announcement about the closure of St Gabriel’s College was a very painful one for all concerned. I was at a meeting with St Gabriel’s staff and parents last December and I know the anguish that this is causing for many people. But despite reports in one newspaper, the Trustees are not trying to sell off the sites of closed schools “to swell church coffers”. But along with the school staffs and communities we have to seek sustainable ways forward that will offer quality educational opportunities to everyone. The worst decision to take over the next few years is not to take any decisions. We cannot complain about that lack of decisiveness on the part of the DE and the Education Committee – and lack any sense of direction ourselves. Edmund Ignatius Rice did not set up the Christian Brothers by hoping that someone else would do something. As a man of profound faith and love, he believed – like Jesus - that the future could be different from the past. Like His Lord, who walked with Samaritans despite much opposition from his fellow countrymen, Edmund Rice he saw that national and cultural identity was an important element in self confidence – but that national identity without compassion could become a weapon to oppress and divide people, rather than heal and liberate them. Cultural identity without the creativity that comes from spirituality risks becoming one more commodity that stimulates the body but does little to nourish the human spirit. On its own, it will do little to heal the broken heart of the world.
Today we give thanks for the Jesus of the Gospel, whose compassion and wisdom inspired Blessed Edmund Rice. We celebrate the selfless dedication of so many Christian Brothers who inspired thousands to go beyond their comfort zones and believe that they and the world could be better. This was done in pushing students to learn when many told them not to waste their time, on the football and hurling fields, in the promotion of the Irish language and culture – and it is still clearly promoted in all Edmund Rice Schools, whether in their academic and sporting achievement or their concern for work in developing countries, through the Immersion Project. We gather – as Edmund Rice did each day - to hear God’s dream for the world and to join in God’s victory over sin, death and division through the death of Jesus. Guímis beannacht Dé orainn uilig atá cruinnithe anseo inniu sa dóigh is go mbeimis in ann súil a chaitheamh thar gach sort de theorann daonna – chun comhbhrón agus maithiúnas Íosa a spreagadh go speisialta dona daoine óga a thagann chun ár scoileanna. This is the prayer of all of us, with the intercession of Blessed Edmund Rice, through Christ our Lord. Amen.