(Left to right) Rev. Dr Niall Coll, Managing Editor of Le Chéile, Baroness O’Loan and Prof.
Peter Finn, Principal of St Mary’s University College, Belfast were joined by other guests to celebrate the 30th edition of the journal. A significant milestone was marked in Belfast on Friday January 4 with a celebration to mark the 30th edition of the Le Chéile journal. Published by St Mary’s University College, Belfast the journal seeks to celebrate and promote the values and work of Catholic education across the North.
Rev. Dr Niall Coll, Managing Editor of Le Chéile used the opportunity to draw attention to the vital contribution that the journal makes to helping teachers, school managers and the wider faith community deepen their understanding of the faith-based nature of Catholic schools.
Prof. Peter Finn, Principal of St Mary’s paid tribute to Fr Coll and the other staff involved in ensuring that Le Chéile continues to have a lively engagement with helping schools maintain their unique Catholic ethos.
Fr Coll pointed out that “it need hardly be said that our schools exist in a climate of intense media and political scrutiny. The constraints imposed on staffing levels and resources by the climate of austerity and political stalemate locally are painful,” he said.
However he pointed out that “for all that, we know that our schools, primary and post-primary, are academically high-achieving and much-praised by the Education and Training Inspectorate for the pastoral, spiritual and social outworking of their ethos.
“We know, too, that our schools more than happily coexist alongside state-controlled, integrated and other types of schooling. That is not to imply, however, that they are not under pressure from a broader educational landscape that is increasingly shaped by utilitarian and more secular tendencies,” Fr Coll pointed out.
According to Fr Coll, “when Catholic schools are faithful to their own distinctive ethos they transcend those pragmatic and utilitarian philosophies that understand the educational enterprise as merely an instrument for the acquisition of information that will improve the chances of worldly success and a higher standard of living.
“Catholic education at its best has a profound spiritual and social vision that builds up our capacity for empathy with others, especially the poor and the newcomer. This vision is more necessary than ever in a world so marked by the breakneck speed of technological change and the impersonal networks mediated by smartphones and iPads which so dominate the lives and imaginations of the so-called i-Gens – those born after 1995,” he said.
Fr Coll insisted that “Catholic educators need to articulate and give concrete shape to their vision of education as essentially a humanising endeavour characterised by love, hope and social justice, forming young people who will serve the world with their gifts”.
One of the guests at the launch was Baroness Nuala O’Loan. She praised the work of Le Chéile in being a vital resource for anyone involved in articulating and promoting a Catholic vision around education. She pointed out that Catholic schools remain overwhelmingly popular with parents not simply because the schools excel academically, but because parents value the holistic and pastoral approach adopted in the Catholic sector.
She said that Catholic schools face a challenge in an increasingly secular society to put flesh on the bones of what their ethos means. However, she also insisted that Catholics schools should be inspired by the fact that even Catholic parents who don’t regularly practise their faith choose a Catholic education for their children. This, she said, gives Catholic schools the opportunity to try and reactivate that faith dimension through the communal witness to Gospel values in the school community.