Lasallian Family News

The Lasallian Educational Mission

International Association of Lasallian Universities Cuernavaca Conference
29 October 2004

Brother William Mann, FSC

An Expression of Thanks

Before saying anything else, I want first of all to thank you most sincerely – in the name of the Institute – for

• The pedagogical excellence & innovation and the attention to persons so evident in your fine educational institutions on the tertiary level.
• The relationships that are so evident and growing among the various Lasallian centers of higher education in IALU.
• The increased collaboration that we are observing in more and more sectors of the Institute between the Lasallian institutions of higher education and the network of other Lasallian educational institutions on the District level.

I was to assure you of the profound appreciation and gratitude that I have for the significant and essential role that is yours within the Lasallian educational mission in these early days of the twenty-first century.

A Framework for Understanding

I would like to suggest to you the image taken from “systems theory” as a way of understanding the remarks that I intend to make today. The image is that of a “family mobile” … where two (or more) families join together … each bringing its own qualities and rituals … where knowledge about the families from which one comes helps one to understand better the customs and behavior … when it is put in its proper perspective …

Each of your institutions is, like any family, the result of a number of distinct influences. Like with each child whose two parents, whose “families of origin,” bring a distinct influence to the person of the child, I invite you to think of your institutions is a similar manner.

De La Salle and the Lasallian tradition is “one side” of your institution’s family heritage and history. However, the country or state in which you are located … the educational and cultural regulations and traditions of which you are a part … the ecclesial (church) context … other religious congregations involved in the story of your origins or operation … all of these are, potentially, the “other side” of your family’s heritage.

In speaking about your school’s “mission” from the Lasallian perspective, I do not presume to be able to speak about the whole of your mission in all of its richness and unique individuality. Rather, I speak only or principally about the heritage or influence of one of the parents or families in which your school has its origin. Knowledge of this heritage or influence can only help one better understand who or what one is.

Also, drawing from systems theory, I would like to make an additional remark by way of introduction. The origins of a person’s or an institution’s “family” or “heritage” or “tradition,” while having significant influence, are in no way a hindrance to growth, development, or creativity.

We need to recall that there are two fundamental principles of all living systems. Living systems want to change, and they want to remain the same. We want growth and development, and we need stability, coherence, and continuity. The Lasallian educational mission needs to remain grounded in the origins, but it also needs to grow and evolve in bold and creative ways to present day needs and realities. We cannot depend on our origins in seventeenth-century French primary education for answers of a “road map” for answers to questions of twenty-first century international tertiary education.

In this regard, I have always found encouraging an image I came across in a book by M. Scott Peck entitled The Road Less Traveled, where he writes about the need for caution when coming down a steep hill on a bicycle. If one goes too fast, one will fall off the bicycle. If one goes too slow, one will never get down the hill. We need to continue to move forward prudently as our understanding of the Lasallian educational mission evolves in response to present reality. All living systems want both to change and to remain the same.

Some “Family” Characteristics

The schools of John Baptist de La Salle were a particular kind of school – a response to a social, cultural, and religious situation in France in years following 1680. One way of enumerating the characteristics of this “educational tradition” would be:

• A respect for and knowledge of each individual
• An educational work of quality, within which interiority (spiritual living) is fostered and strengthened and useful skills and knowledge are acquired
• From morning to evening (the first reward of a good teacher as proposed by De La Salle is more work)
• Manifesting an openness to and solidarity with the poor
• Conducted together and by association…offering students attractive witnesses and accessible role models…student involvement and responsibility fostered
• Requiring preparation and ongoing education and formation of adults for this work (we tend to forget that De La Salle’s own involvement in this project was focused on the professional preparation of the teachers)

The key to Lasallian education for De La Salle was the relationship of teacher and student. Teachers invited students into a new way of seeing and understanding themselves, others, God, and the world around them (teachers  students). This was intended to be a relationship that served an invitation for students to enter into a new way of being in relationship with one another (students  students), and there were many occasions in the educational system of De La Salle where teachers deliberately stepped back and fostered learning to be happening on a student-to-student level.

However, the real wisdom of De La Salle, I believe, was his insight that this kind of shift within the educational community – and hopefully in the larger society also – would only occur if the invitation of teachers to students … if the encouragement of students to be in a more humane and Christian relationship with one another … was modeled in the way that the teachers interacted with one another (teachers  teachers). As he wrote on numerous occasions, “example makes a much greater impression on the mind and heart than words.”

What I have provided here, as a brief overview, is just one of any number of summaries or listings of what constitutes the characteristics of a Lasallian educational institution. You will find others in the footnotes.

“Family” Characteristics Reflected in Present Day Institutions

Hopefully, it will serve, however, to explain why – within this kind of education that is called Lasallian – we see in Lasallian higher education such things as:

• Teacher training programs – that are concerned with the education and formation of adults for this work.
• Catechetical and campus ministry programs … business management, engineering, nursing, agricultural, technology programs … hotel management and culinary arts programs – that ensure that knowledge and useful skills are acquired.
• The concern for the individual person – the key to Lasallian education.
• A commitment to excellence in teaching – De La Salle, in his concern that the schools run well and that learning was adapted to the level and need of the learner, elevated “the despised function of schoolteacher…to the status of a vocation worthy of the dedication of a lifetime.”
• The preferential option for the poor – the social category whose material, educational, and spiritual abandonment in seventeen-century France called into association De La Salle and his first companions.
• Pastoral ministry programs, volunteerism and service opportunities – both the present path toward interiority and its most concrete expression (spiritual living).

Examples from Modern Lasallian Institutions of Higher Education

One of the benefits and joys of my role as Vicar General of the Institute and of the Lasallian family is that I get to visit and know many Lasallian educational establishments in diverse parts of the world. The stories or examples that I will now share in this conference are intended to invite reflection and understanding.

La Salle University in Philadelphia, USA

On a visit around the United States of America two years ago, I spent a day in meetings and visits with the faculty and staff of La Salle University in Philadelphia…being incredible impressed by the articulate grasp of Lasallian mission…wondering “who are these folks?” and only realizing during the luncheon that followed that they were enrolled in the Region’s Lasallian Leadership Institute…an experience that provided a vocabulary, but obviously fanned to flame a prior gift that already burned inside.

But it was my visit to the La Salle University sponsored “health clinics,” operated by the school’s nursing program in the poorer sections of Philadelphia…where students and graduates of this university put into practice what they learned in the classroom… It was in these local community health clinics for at-risk populations – a Lasallian story really worth telling again and again – that I touched the charism…the soul of the institution…the thread that runs throughout and integrates so many of its excellent programs – pastoral ministry and youth catechesis, teacher preparation, business, communications – preparing today students with the compassion, the capacity, and the skills to make the world of tomorrow a better place.

University of St. La Salle in Bacolod City, Philippines

In Bacolod City, Philippines, the University of St. La Salle has what is called “socialized tuitions.” Those who are financially better off pay a higher tuition, and those who are financially more vulnerable pay a lower tuition. The voluntary involvement of students, faculty, and staff in projects on behalf migrant workers, spiritual formation, and outreach to the poor is nothing short of amazing. The university has recently opened under its sponsorship a center that houses eleven delinquent youngsters at their “Bahay Pag-Asa [House of Hope] Youth Center” … an educational and residential treatment facility.

Yes, this work could seem tangential to the core intellectual discipline of a university; but it is itself an example of the “family heritage” of schools that self-identify as Lasallian. The way in which the university understands itself and its relationship to the social environment in which it is situated is formative of the “idea of a university” and of “the learning experience” in this setting. Students have the opportunity to bridge what might be perceived as a gap between the world of learning and the world of work. The core values of the educational learning environment are put into practice. It is the “flowering” that it indicative of the life of this particular kind of “plant” that we call Lasallian education.

De La Salle University System in Manila, Philippines

Another of our higher education centers that I have visited, De La Salle University of the Philippines, has an outstanding reputation, an illustrious list of former students, the highest academic category of accreditation available in the country, and a record of bold and creative responses to urgent needs.

In his inaugural address of 13 August 2004, Brother President Armin Luistro observed: “while the DLSU System has grown by leaps and bounds, progressing from one year to another, our nation has been continually wobbling… And so we ask ourselves, how much of a resource for Church and Nation have we truly become?”

He went on to state, “In urging everyone to think of ways so that the DLSU System could increase its stake in social transformation, I am not asking our units to drop what they are doing. On the contrary, what we should aspire for is to excel in the things that we do… Let me stress that in the pursuit of performing our tasks extraordinarily well – be that of teaching, administrative service, social action, or research – we need to be very conscious of the social dimension and consequence of our actions, how far we have contributed, in meager or in the most significant ways, in transforming others and our nation.”

This concern for the consequences of the Lasallian kind of education on the society of the Philippine Islands cuts to the heart of a Lasallian mission, whose Founder was a theologian of the Catholic Reformation. As the Letter of St. James, a principal text for theology of that period, states so clearly, “Faith that does nothing in practice is thoroughly lifeless.” Faith in God and love of my brothers and sisters expresses itself in action.

Bethlehem University in the Occupied West Bank, Palestine

For my fourth example, I would like to turn to Bethlehem University. For some thirty years now, the Brothers of the Christian Schools and our Lasallian Partners have conducted this university in the Occupied Territories on the West Bank in Palestine. It was at the specific request of Pope Paul VI, who himself was an Affiliated member of the Institute, that we began this work in the hope that Christian Arabs of the Holy Land might be able to receive a quality higher education without leaving their homeland. From its inception, both Christian and Muslim were welcome at the university.

Were you to visit Palestine you would come to know a reality…where Lasallian students and teachers on the way to classes at Bethlehem University are every day subjected to discrimination, humiliation, and harassment as they pass through Israeli checkpoints on their way from home to school…where a huge concrete wall is presently being constructed…where they are often made to get off the bus…to wait on long lines…to have their bags and identity cards checked…their bodies searched…their human dignity violated.

During this past month of September in Italy, a peace congress was sponsored by the Sant’Egidio Community of Rome in conjunction with the Vatican. More than sixty countries were represented. One of the panel presentations concerned the topic of “Israeli-Palestinian” conflict, and one of the panelists was a former student of Bethlehem University. He has worked for some years in the security forces of his country. He is highly regarded “for his openness of mind and his ability to listen. He based his presentation on the need to by-pass the historical perspective, the questions of rights and wrongs and unpaid debts.

“As he sees it, the first need is for Palestinian and Israeli Arabs to get to know Israeli Jews. In the discovery of mutual humanity, they will find mutual interest and ways of coping with the seemingly intractable problems of the right to return the settlements and Jerusalem. He has…spent two periods of three years in Israeli prisons. He now has friends among Jewish Israelis; his children play with their children when they visit in Tel Aviv.”

Would it be too much to hope that – among the many and myriad influences on the formation of the mental and moral map of this one individual – might be that of the education he received on the university level? I would like to believe that one’s intellectual formation and exposure to ideas and to persons changes the way one perceives reality and interacts with others and invites to “fullness of life.”

Some Other “Family” Characteristics & Examples from Today

While there are so many other examples that allow glimpses or intuitions into the manner in which the story of the origins impacts or is lived out in your present day educational establishments and forms a part of a tapestry that is over three hundred years old, I only intend to share two others.

I presume that you are all aware of the following two realities about John Baptist de La Salle and the time of the origins.

• De La Salle was constantly engaged in the difficult job of finding the funds so that the teachers could live … The schools were primarily supported by benefactors … He was constantly negotiating contracts with Church and city officials …
• For those working adolescents who were a bit older and for whom the schools of De La Salle had arrived on the scene too late, the Sunday schools were opened … No one should be deprived of the possibility of education.

St. Mary’s University of Minnesota, USA

During a five-year period (1996-2001), I served as a member of the Board of Trustees of St. Mary’s University of Minnesota. It was then that I came to have a better appreciation of the kinds of issues facing universities today – curriculum, student development, academic research and ongoing faculty education, fundraising….

The school has an extraordinary university pastoral [campus] ministry program in which students are invited to grow in interiority, to develop their faith life, and to be witnesses of Christian values in a variety of volunteer activities. In fact, I might be inclined to say that “volunteerism” was a hallmark of the young people at this university.

I remember hearing one young graduate, who was then in his second year as a full-time Lasallian Volunteer living in a community of Brothers and working with the poor, expressing his motivations in this way. “My grandparents and my parents wanted a better life for their children, and they succeeded. Given their success and the good education that I have received, I know that my child will have at least as good as I had. Therefore, it is my time and my obligation to do something to assure that the children of less fortunate families might also have their opportunity for a more full and satisfying life.”

But the specific point that I want to make here is to acknowledge how difficult is the work and how important is the commitment of those men and women in Lasallian universities to whom the task of fundraising has been entrusted. Without sufficient funding, teachers receive living wages; and schools cannot stay open. At St. Mary’s University, I grew really to appreciate the people that do this hard work; and my present connection with the Board of Regents of Bethlehem University, a school that is almost entirely dependent on outside financial assistance, has only strengthened my appreciation.

If it is any consolation to those who do this challenging work, the Founder himself spent more time and energy doing the work that you do than he ever spent in the classroom!

La Salle School & Teacher Training College in Abancay, Peru

Flown into the interior of the Peru in November 2001 … driven by car for hours over mountains and through valleys … arriving at a K to 12 school and teacher training college called La Salle … a school serving simple, peasant farmer folk of many small villages … a joy-filled communion of Brothers, teachers, students, parents … There was a nursery attached to the training college for the babies of poor, unmarried mothers … a nursery that was opened by the decision of the faculty and Brothers … to keep these vulnerable women in school … the only real chance of a future these women and their babies had was a good education that might lead to meaningful employment.

Sitting on the floor in that nursery with babies and their mothers, I could feel the presence of John Baptist de La Salle, who let no obstacle hinder him in his efforts to be Good News for the children of the artisans and the poor … for whom no one should be denied access to a fully human and Christian education.

De La Salle was bold and creative in his heroic efforts to make a quality Lasallian education accessible and sustainable in a variety of circumstances.

The Core of Lasallian Mission

The Rule of the Brothers of the Christian Schools states that the “purpose of this Institute is to provide a human and Christian education to the young, especially the poor, according to the ministry which the Church has entrusted to it.” Furthermore, it states that the

“educational policies of Lasallian institutions are centered on the young, adapted to the times in which they live, and designed to prepare them to take their place in society. These institutions are characterized by the determination to make the means of salvation available to young people through a quality education and by an explicit proclamation of Jesus Christ.

“When the Brothers [and we might add “our Lasallian Partners”] work in the area of adult education, they put the same emphasis on the importance of persons, adapting their methods accordingly.”

A worldwide network of Lasallian schools and child care agencies in more that eighty countries and embracing approximately nine hundred thousand students … making the vision and the kingdom of Jesus both visible and tangible. And well more than one hundred thousand of those students are in the institutions represented in IALU.

There is a painting that hangs in the “winter chapel” of the Motherhouse in Rome … Gagliardi’s painting of “De La Salle Distributing Bread”:

• De La Salle at the door of the family house in Rheims.
• In a time of famine, distributing his wealth as bread to the poor in the streets.
• A young boy … whose lively curiosity is awakened … as his hunger is satisfied.
• A young girl … a mother drawing the attention of an infant to the selfless humanity of one who gives living expression to the Gospel … in whom it is possible to reach out and touch Jesus, who holds nothing back for himself.

It is a vision and kingdom best expressed in the gospel of John 10:10 (“I came that they might have life and have it to the full”) and in John 10:11ff (“I am the Good Shepherd” … who goes in search of the lost … and excluded). The gospel imperative at the root of these passages and at the heart of the Lasallian educational mission is best found in the words of Jesus. “I came that they might have life and have it to the full.” This is the key to understanding and living out the Lasallian educational mission.

How do we as Lasallians make visible and tangible “the fullness of life” Jesus offers to all? You do not work with children, as did John Baptist de La Salle and the first Brother teachers in seventeenth-century France. Your work is with adults in a university setting. How do you share what you have with your students … and encourage them to share with one another … in the hope of helping make a “fullness of life” possible for them and their families (in the present, in the future, and for all eternity)?

The Urgency of the Lasallian Educational Mission Today

The 43rd General Chapter of the Brothers of the Christian Schools in May and June of 2000 asked “Lasallians working in universities” … to contribute to the Lasallian educational mission, in a special way, by your commitment to research in the field of faith development of young people, whatever their religion, and by the training and accompaniment of those persons entrusted with the difficult task of sharing the Good News in an increasingly secularized and multi-religious context.

The General Chapter encouraged “Lasallian centers of higher education” to “bring their own specific strengths to bear on” the “urgent issues [needing particular attention] through their programs of research and professional training.”

And what were the issues with which the whole of the Lasallian network needed your help?

• The rights of the child in a world in which the abuse of those rights is all too real.
• Educational renewal at a time when very understanding of the nature and the means of learning is developing rapidly.
• The explicit proclamation of the Gospel, where possible, in an increasingly secularized and complex culture.
• A strengthening of our Lasallian presence and dialogue within the reality of cultural and religious pluralism.

Who would ever have foretold in June of 2000 – as the 43rd General Chapter was drawing to a close – the war … the terrorism … the political division and instability … that have plagued these opening years of the twenty-first century? What is increasingly clear is that taking “cultural and religious pluralism seriously may be the most important issues at the beginning of this century.”

Consequently, I find it very meaningful, and perhaps even prophetic, that the 43rd General Chapter identified and affirmed the following characteristics that should be visible in educational establishments that self-identify as Lasallian:

• “The sense of community and fraternity as a response to individualism and loss of identity;
• The fight against poverty and situations of injustice;
• Education for justice and peace, tolerance and solidarity;
• Formation of persons who are both just and free.”

You have in your institutions of higher education that portion of the Lasallian Family most likely to become the future leadership of Church and Society. What are we doing in the intellectual education that they receive to form generations of leaders committed:

• To fight against poverty and systems of injustice?
• To be champions of peace, tolerance, and human solidarity?
• To the responsibility of civic responsibility and stewardship?

The Contribution of Research for the Lasallian Mission

Proposition 12 of the 43rd General Chapter called for progress in the educational service of the poor, and the response around the world to this proposition has been overwhelming. Proposition 13 of the 43rd General Chapter called for Regions, Districts, and Delegations to establish Commissions concerned with the faith development and apostolic commitment of young people, and the response to this proposition has been “underwhelming” in so many sectors of the Institute. I do not believe that is indicative of a lack of good will. Rather, I think that in many parts of the world we are overwhelmed by the task that faces us and unsure of what to do.

In 1994, Brother Frederick Mueller, a member of Manhattan College’s Board of Trustees, completed his doctoral thesis at Boston College; and he observed that, while there was strong consensus on the level of secondary schools around the articulated characteristics of a Lasallian school in the USA/Toronto Region, there was confusion around the Catholic identity of these schools.

In 2004, Brother Michael Sanderl of Saint Mary’s College of California completed his doctoral thesis at the University of San Francisco; and he observed that, while young collegians at Lasallian universities in the USA/Toronto Region saw the significant contribution of campus ministry programs to Lasallian identity on the seven campuses, the contribution to Catholic identity remained unclear.

What is this all telling us? The doctoral research done by these two men is helping us to understand our reality better. There is presently statistical research being done in Paris by university professors, at the invitation of Brother Nicolas Capelle, the Institute’s Secretary of Education, to help us analyze the trends of the past thirty years in Lasallian education around the world. Aren’t these the kinds of questions you’re your universities – more than our Districts – are better able to address?

You are undoubtedly aware of the evolving sense of “shared mission” and the emerging reality of Associates within the Lasallian educational mission. In August 2004, Brother Lorenzo Gonzalez Kipper completed his doctoral dissertation at Universidad de Montemorelos, Mexico; and he observed that, at least in the Regions of Latin America and Spain/Portugal, it appears that educators (including Brothers) associate with the educational mission primarily around three areas – work, relationships, and charism. His research is helping us to understand better the evolution toward inclusion and partnership … for the sake of the mission … that is another of the mandates of the 43rd General Chapter.

The main point that I am trying to make here is that the institutions of higher education in the Lasallian Family have much to offer the rest of us … not by doing what everyone else is already doing or is capable of doing … but by bringing into the service of the whole Lasallian network precisely that expertise and those talents which are the particular gifts of university professors.

Two Final Observations about Higher Education Today

There are two final observations that I would like to make. One concerns “secularization and Catholic higher education,” and the other concerns “the need to have Catholic intellectuals” on the faculties of Lasallian institutions of higher education. Both ideas are really twenty-first century issues; and, while they have relevance in great relevance in terms of the identity of Lasallian schools and the importance of the teacher in Lasallian education, we will not easily find answers to this questions in the writings of De La Salle.

I am dependent here on the ideas and the words of James Heft, SM, the university professor of faith and culture and chancellor of the University of Dayton. Brother Frederick Mueller, who I mentioned a few minutes ago, and Dr. John Wilcox, the vice president for mission at Manhattan College, helped to focus my attention along these lines.

Secularization and Catholic Higher Education

Concern is voiced in some “higher education circles” about the question of the Catholic identity of universities that identify as Catholic. I personally find the following quotation taken from a lecture by James Heft, SM, to be quite to the point for Lasallian institutions of Lasallian higher education today.

In the past, for many “Catholic families seeking a Catholic college education for their sons and daughters, religious and priests were visible signs that the institution was Catholic. While the presence of religious and priests on the faculty and staff may not have consistently ensured a vital intellectual life, their presence did ensure parents that their children would interact with people who had dedicated their entire lives to Christ, the Church, and the gospel. Now that there are fewer priests and religious, and now that we are moving to more and more lay leadership, what will be the visible signs that the college and university is Catholic? How will the research agendas, the curricula, the campus and liturgical life, art and music make that clear in the new era that we are entering, an era that I am confident is led by the Holy Spirit?”

The Need to Have Catholic Intellectuals in Catholic Higher Education

You are, all of you, far more knowledgeable than I am about the centrality of “the intellectual life” for a university or institution of higher education. My concern here is that – those of us espousing the importance of education and formation in Lasallian identity and Lasallian mission for all members of the learning community – we might forget an equally fundamental and perhaps more profound an aspect of faculty life in your institutions.

Once again, I take the following quotation from a different lecture by James Heft, SM, to be quite to the point for Lasallian institutions of Lasallian higher education today.

“For our Catholic universities to have a future, we need to have Catholic intellectuals on our faculties. If knowledge and religion remain separated, it is impossible for a Catholic to be an intellectual. And indeed, there are those…who believe that not only is a Catholic university an oxymoron, but so also is a Catholic intellectual. Without Catholic intellectuals, we will have no Catholic universities. Catholic intellectuals, however, are guided by certain habits of thought. For example, they know that the more deeply one gets into what it means to be human, the more inescapable are ethical and religious questions; the more deeply one gets into any form of knowledge, the more necessary it is to make connections with other areas of knowledge; the more intellectually vibrant a religious culture is, the more it will learn from and shape the wider culture. The Catholic intellectual is a believer, one who is nourished by the Word and the Sacrament. Without Catholic intellectuals, we have no distinctive academic experience to offer in our universities.”

Conclusion

By way of conclusion, I would like to refer to a “Statement of the Community of the General Council” that was addressed to the whole Lasallian Family in September 2002 by Brother Superior and General Council. We stated clearly that we “endorse the significant role to be played by our institutions of higher education within the network of Lasallian ministries.” I hope that you have seen that document, and it is my sincere hope that we can be partners together.

May your time here at the Cuernavaca Lasallian Conference support and sustain you in your efforts to make our ministries accessible, sustainable, and welcoming to all. Thank you for the invitation to be part of the dialogue that you and your institutions are having here these days.

I know that the issues facing you in your work are diverse and challenging … I know, also, that they are a glorious opportunity … The peace of the world … the dignity of the human family … depend on it … this holy work of God.

God bless you … God bless your work … God bless your networking these days together … Thank you.

The Lasallian Educational Mission

International Association of Lasallian Universities Cuernavaca Conference
29 October 2004