A person decided that they wished to plant a tree in their garden. They bought a healthy and rare young tree, dug a hole filled it with compost and bone meal and planted the tree. They watered it well and finally placed a stake in the ground to secure the tree from high winds.
They continued the care through winter but in spring the tree died. But the stake sprouted leaves and grew into a fine but common tree.
Did the plan fail
A young mum approached her parish priest after mass and asked if she could have a word. She explained that the morning mass on Sunday at 8.30 was too early for most families and could we consider changing it to none o’clock?
The priest replied with a curt “no.”
“Can we at least discuss it?” The mother replied.
“We just have,” replied the Parish Priest.
A shepherd realise that he had lost one of his smallest lambs. He brought all the other sheep to his farm and set out with his daughter to look for the lamb. After half an hour of searching they found the sheep, trapped in a shallow well and unable to get out. They carried it home together and the daughter suggested that they try to find out where the lamb had broken out of the field.
After walking the perimeter of the large field, they found the hole where the lamb had escaped. They could see its wool caught on the wire and in the hedge. Despite his daughters insistent arguing the shepherd refused to close up the gap in the fence.
Who was right?
This article explores the background to a new grouping of religious orders in England and Wales based around their common commitment to education. It is crossing boundaries new and old and responding to some pressing needs in school. It is also trying to live out the interdependent and listening style of evangelising that Pope Francis is encouraging across the church. Let’s start by visiting the history of the vowed religious who re-established education in England and Wales.
Catholic education in the 1800s in England and Wales
In November 1830 Marie Madeleine d’Houët and Sr Julie Guillemet arrived in St Aloysius Parish in Somers Town in London. Within months they were running a school for the poor with 260 pupils and offered 76 free places in the first year. This was the beginning of the work of the Faithful Companions of Jesus (FCJ) in England and they were not alone. In 1834 the presentation sisters set up schools in Manchester and were joined by the Loreto Sisters in 1851 and the Xaverian brothers in 1855. At the same time the De La Salle brothers opened a school in Clapham. In 1846 The Holy Child Sisters arrived and by 1864 were educating 19,479 destitute children. The Salesians arrived in London as a newer religious order in 1887, the last foundation made by St John Bosco before his death the following year.
They were all responding to a huge need for Catholic education that Pope Pius IX identified, particularly in London where there were 50,000 Catholics who could not get to mass and 20,000 Catholic children who had no schooling at all. They achieved all this work amidst an atmosphere of bigotry and often with little or no funding from the local authorities. In time these early missionaries won hearts and minds in areas of influence. The Marshall report in 1850 placed before parliament, commenting on the role of catholic religious in education said:
There are communities of men and women who have bound themselves by voluntary compact to the special work of mercy to which their life should be consecrated, the education of the children of the poor. Wherever ignorance prevails they offer themselves as pioneers of science and truth, wherever knowledge begins to be valued they are at hand to stimulate its pursuit.
It was the heroic self-sacrificing work of religious orders in England and Wales that formed the foundation of today’s Catholic education. They were able to raise money in Europe to support new developments in teacher training, for example with the Notre Dame Sisters building a college at Mount Pleasant in Liverpool in 1853. In 1874 The Society of The Sacred Heart opened a teacher training college at West Hill in London that eventually became Digby Stuart College and is now a constituent part of Roehampton University. La Sainte Union and Fenham teacher training colleges began around 1904. A wide network of Catholic training colleges emerged in the decades following including the Vincentians who were founding partners of what is now St Mary’s University.The De La Salle Congregation in partnership with Salford Diocese opened Hopwood Hall in 1947 in Manchester.
These religious orders established strong collaborative working relationships with the Bishops, especially when the hierarchy was restored in 1850. So, by 1944 when a new education act was implemented most Catholic Schools were integrated into a new state system as ‘voluntary aided’ schools. Today Catholic schools make up about 10% of the state system. The voluntary aided status has recently been challenged by the creation of academies funded by central government and run by trusts, but Catholic education continues to be a major aspect of church life.
New Challenges
Now the main challenge to this fine tradition comes from the huge decline in vowed religious in education. In 2018 only five people made their perpetual profession in religious life in England and Wales. In 1987 that figure was about sixty. Such huge decline in religious teachers, steeped in a charism and tradition of education, is a major challenge to Catholic education in England and Wales. The ability to transmit the charism through a lay school community becomes crucial. Many schools founded by religious do not have any sisters or brothers involved and even fewer working in the classroom. How can such schools preserve, develop, and extend their charisms into a new phase of Catholic Education in England and Wales?
That is the question that called many religious congregations together to form a new association of Religious Orders in Education. (ROE) Sr Brenda Wallace FCJ, a member of the executive committee said,
Our vision is to see21st century Catholic education enhanced by the distinctive charisms of religious orders continuing to animate and enrich the schools and colleges of which they are founders or trustees.
There are many concerns about the future of religious charisms in education:
Two strands
Roe has developed two strands to its work of supporting charism in religious schools. The first is a legal dimension which will explore the ways in which schools founded by religious orders can secure their distinctive character. That will include maintaining trustee numbers and supporting schools through the transition to other structures where members of the religious congregation are no longer able to do so. Recent developments with the DfE on a single model for Catholic schools will be a significant focus for this aspect of ROE’s work. The second strand of work is concerned with developing awareness of charism across schools and especially with senior leadership. To that end ROE has run three symposia on charism this year with a great response from the network of lay staff around the country. These are the men and women who have inherited the spirit of their founders and will carry it forward into a new stage of growth.
Both these strands are based on a fundamental commitment to a collaborative style of working. Maureen Mee talked about new bridges that need to be built that will take patience to cross. Speaking about the inter-congregational dimension of the work Hilary Thompson said that “we can learn so much from each other and share more widely what we have to offer.” This move to inter-congregational working is not only a response to a need in education but also a response to a more collaborative approach to ministry across the church
Working Together
So, as a Catholic Church in England and Wales we have 47,546 teachers working in the ministry of educating our children. That is a huge collaborative network of full-time vocational work that needs to resist the harsh secularism of the current educational environment. Those teachers need encouragement in their spiritual resolve to educate with the selflessness of the first religious who arrived in this country in 1800s. They need to know that they are part of a tradition rooted in the Gospel. They need to recognise that they share a journey that links them to a world-wide network of education, part of a movement of the Holy Spirit that will never end.
These forty-seven thousand teachers are already a new generation of charism-based workers. They will carry the spirit of Edmund Rice, St Julie Billiart, Don Bosco and many other founders into new places and will develop new ways of being faithful to their charism. But they need help to grow into understanding and into awareness of their inheritance and its vocational importance. Charisms feed the soul, build resilience, bond us to community and sustain a depth of meaning in life. The fewer religious still have a role to play in handing on the charisms since they are steeped in their tradition. But it is a collaborative role: working alongside lay colleagues, supporting their formation, and linking them to a wider network.
Modelling a new way of being church
The collaborative theme is also obvious in the way that religious congregations are working together. At one stage religious congregations were quite self-contained and often centralised in their planning and decision making. Now, lead mainly by the women’s congregations, there is so much more partnership working. One of the effects of sharing of events, projects, buildings, and retreats is a deeper awareness of where charisms overlap and where they are distinctive. Working together has not diminished but enhanced the identity of each religious charism. Such collaborative working with so many schools, parents, and staff can model a new way of being church for us all.
Pope Francis has been encouraging this shared way of working by developing synodality. It’s not a pretty word but it literally means walking together. Being on a journey and facing the same way, in touch with the Spirit and discerning choices together. It is this approach that Pope Francis believes can renew the whole church and it is at the heart of ROE as it seeks to re-shape charism-based support in our schools. The key verb in this collaborative process is listening. We need schools that listen as well as teach, young people who can be heard in school and at home. We will find the way ahead as ROE by listening to schools with the Gospel and our charisms in mind. We will carry the rich and hard-won heritage of those early pioneers safely into a new future by walking with them into a collaborative church.
During the last year we have shared so much via zoom with school leaders across the country. We have placed the heads at the centre and given them a voice through “Talking Heads” videos. We have felt their hunger for an integrated spirituality and been overwhelmed by their commitment to their task and to the Gospel. At times that dedication verges on the heroic and often goes unrecognised. In our first year we have touched the presence of a sleeping giant in our church in the faith, joy and love of so many educators in catholic education. We have started the long process of networking and resourcing these wonderful people with the tools they need to sustain their work and to sustain themselves in their vocation.
ROE will continue to develop its support structures in the legal and charism dimensions of school life since education is a key part of Catholic evangelisation. Religious orders will continue to be present in education, they will not go away. Their role will however adapt as numbers change and lay leadership becomes ever more articulate in living the charism. You could say that the religious orders have broken open their treasures for a newly emerging lay church. Or you could just say that the Spirit is still at work in unexpected ways.
David.OMalley@salesians.org.uk
September 2021