Eilis Humphreys
Faith schools empower students with an understanding of the spiritual dimension of life, writes Eilis Humphreys
We are living in a world that is changing too fast to be easily understood and that poses a challenge to everybody in the coming years not least those involved in our schools.
There has been much public discussion about Catholic education in recent years. Sometimes the media discussion has done more to confuse than enlighten, particularly in the light of the frequent failure to adequately distinguish between the differing contexts in primary and post-primary education.
Two fundamental questions we must face are: Who are we? How do we explain ourselves as Catholic schools?
The 1998 Education Act recognises the importance of the spiritual development of the student. However, Le Chéile schools go further and recognise the central importance of the transcendent dimension of life: we take our inspiration from Jesus the teacher who reveals God’s will and demonstrates the mind of God when it comes to how we should engage both with being human and how to create a particular community.
Public perceptions of Catholic schools sometimes remain in the realm of the 1950s when more authoritarian attitudes prevailed across all spectrums of Irish society.
We live and educate today in accordance with the new realities where there has been a dramatic shift from the experience of authority to the authority of experience. Our schools are Catholic schools not of the 1950s, but of the 21st Century.
Value
The Education Act also recognises the value of the “founding intention” of the school and the importance of maintaining its “characteristic spirit”. So an ongoing challenge will be to ensure that both the founding intention and characteristic spirit are retained in an ever-changing web of social, economic and educational contexts.
It is easy to pay lip-service to this but the challenge is not just to talk the talk but to give real witness in our schools to the narrative that we belong to and ought to be participating in.
Such an approach finds practical expression in a myriad of ways in our schools such as music, sport, fundraising, social awareness, and in the richness of the Transition Year curriculum. The education provided in all our schools strives for excellence not only in academic development, but also in all aspects of personal growth so that each student may reach their full potential.
In recent years we have faced new challenges. Historically, Irish society was very homogenous but today we find ourselves in a more pluralist and secular society and our schools have been forced to respond to this new Ireland.
In a Le Chéile school, students grow in knowledge and develop their character in the context of a caring community which derives its vision from Catholic values focused on the unique dignity of every human being.
We strive to create a welcoming community of learning that is respectful and dynamic, creative and compassionate.
Admissions policies informed by the Le Chéile Charter are based on values of respect, inclusion and a sense of service and mission in the local community. Our schools welcome and serve students from other faiths and other Christian denominations, and all traditions are respected.
Students are encouraged to grow in knowledge and appreciation of all traditions, including their own, to ensure that the dignity of every member of the school community is respected. Indeed it is an integral part of the Le Cheile vision and philosophy that students develop harmonious relationships with others and the world around them.
Inclusion is a Gospel value (Luke 14:12-14). Traditionally, our schools have operated on the basis of ‘inter-generational loyalty’ and did not tend to operate by catchment area. As our ethos is dynamic and responsive to the current reality we are striving to accommodate those who have recently moved into an area, either from outside the country or from a different area, while trying to balance our traditional intake patterns.
Change
Pope Francis famously said: “An authentic faith – which is never comfortable or completely personal – always involves a deep desire to change the world, to transmit values, to leave this Earth somehow better than we found it.”
In 2014 we opened the first new Catholic school in Dublin in over 30 years in Tyrrelstown which embodies the emerging Le Chéile spirituality based around the values of welcome, wisdom and witness. We find God by reading the signs of the times. In an era when all students in a Catholic school can no longer be presumed to be from practising Catholic families, our schools embrace the richness of diversity, and develop a faith community and spirituality characterised by welcome to all, wisdom based on the Gospels and the Catholic tradition, and witness to the love of God and one another.
While faith formation and development of the spiritual dimension are core elements in the education offered in Le Chéile schools, it is equally clear that the work of faith formation is through invitation, not coercion. In our schools, in line with contemporary Catholic teaching, students are taught how to think rather than what to think in light of Gospel values.
Such values continue to have a powerful resonance in our fast changing world as was starkly highlighted in the aftermath of the recent Paris massacre. When Pope Francis was asked how the world should respond to the atrocity he replied with just one word: “Mercy”.
The Christian faith context of the school will empower the students to understand and appreciate the spiritual dimension of life as something that offers personal enrichment and a mindfulness of the world in which we live.
Our aim is to offer an education that will equip the students to take their place in the world with a sense of their own worth, guided by a moral compass that will empower them to use their gifts and talents in the service of others.
As we look to the decades ahead we envisage with confidence a pluralist Ireland in which our current students will live and be the decision-makers.
Our vision is that they will be equipped with a set of values that will be completely respectful of the cultural, ethnic, religious and linguistic differences in Irish citizens and that they will see this as an enrichment of our community, country and culture.
Our dream is even bolder: to develop future leaders who will build communities, based on the richness of diversity but totally respectful of the right of each citizen to hold and practice their own religious faith in peace and harmony.
On Friday next the Le Chéile Schools Trust will host its annual conference in the Hodson Bay Hotel in Athlone. Le Chéile exercises a trustee role in 62 post-primary schools, seeking to promote the rich educational heritage of the 14 religious congregations who set up the trust.
The main objective of Le Chéile is to serve our students through the development of a vision of Catholic education and overseeing its implementation in our schools.
The congregations in the Le Chéile Trust are: the Holy Faith Sisters; the De la Salle Brothers; the Dominican Sisters; the Sisters of Saint Louis; the Religious of Jesus and Mary; the Ursulines; the Religious of Christian Education; the Sisters of the Cross and Passion; the Faithful Companions of Jesus; the Sisters of St Joseph of Cluny; the Patrician Brothers; the Poor Servants of the Mother of God; the Sisters of Charity of Saint Paul and the Society of the Holy Child Jesus. www.lecheiletrust.ie
Eilis Humphreys is the Education Officer with the Le Chéile Trust.