CEWA Governance Day

Speech

Most Rev Timothy Costelloe SDB
Archbishop of Perth

Wednesday 13 November, 2024
Catholic Education Office, 50 Rusilip Street, Leederville

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Good afternoon.

Thank you for the opportunity to spend some time with you today and to share some thoughts on the role of Catholic Education here in Western Australia. While I have, in the past, spoken about this vital dimension of the work of the Catholic Church here in Western Australia, I have not had the opportunity to speak to the particular group of people who have gathered here today.

At the outset, I want to express my gratitude for your presence here as those who are responsible for the governance of a significant number of Catholic schools which, alongside what we call the diocesan schools, are a vital part of the Catholic educational landscape here in our state.

We have gathered together to acknowledge and strengthen the relationships between the various bodies which govern our schools and we do so in the spirit of the accord, entitled communion and mission, which expresses our desire to honour the diversity of our governance arrangements which, of course, only has meaning within the deeper reality of our unity.

As you are probably aware I have just returned from Rome where I was involved in the recently concluded second assembly of the Synod of bishops which, under the direction of Pope Francis, focused on the call to Synodality. It is interesting to note that this Synod has had as its governing theme the call to become a more synodal Church by developing three interrelated ideas: communion, participation, and mission. The word Synodality, as you probably know, comes from a Greek word which means “walking together”. That we here in Western Australia, in relation to Catholic Education, have grown in our understanding of the importance of walking together, maintaining unity while respecting and fostering diversity, is an encouraging sign that here in Western Australia we have the opportunity to model and share our experience with the wider Church across Australia. One of my hopes for Catholic Education in our state, especially at the level of governance, is that we can demonstrate in practice that the existence of diversity does not lead to competition or rivalry, but rather to a recognition of the giftedness of each other and to a willingness to share our gifts with each other.

In this regard, it is interesting to note that the Synod, when reflecting on Catholic Education, makes the following statement: Catholic schools (and the document also mentions Catholic Universities) can become fertile contexts for friendly and participative relationships. They become contexts that give witness to life; in them, the skills and organisation are, above all, lay-led, and the contribution of families is prioritised. In particular, they play an important role in the dialogue between faith and culture and in providing moral education on values …. Thus, they become capable of promoting an alternative to the dominant models that are often driven by individualism and competition, thereby also playing a prophetic role.

This idea off providing an alternative vision of what it means to live together, to be together, to journey into the future together, Is very important to me and does capture something of the particular gift which has system of education can offer to our wider society. When we speak of what is really a typically Catholic notion of unity in diversity, we are being invited to think first of all of what it is that ties us together, what it is that grounds our unity, what constitutes our common purpose.

At the risk of repeating what I have said in other places and on other occasions I would like to dwell for a moment on this question of piracy fundamental unity. When Wayne invited me to speak to you he asked me to focus on what I see as the priorities for Catholic Education here in W.A. This is certainly one of them.

To put it quite simply, while recognising, of course, that nothing is ever really that simple, I would say that my main priority for Catholic Education in this state is that it be what it claims to be: a work of education of the young, which is truly Catholic. The second part of that phrase “Catholic education”, is, I presume, not at all controversial or challenging, although it does, of course, require enormous commitment and skill and dedication. We are on about providing the best education possible to the children and young people whose parents choose to send them to our schools. The other dimension, the Catholic part, is for some, and perhaps for an increasing number, a little more challenging or even confronting. The task for all of us is, I believe, that of holding the two together in harmony and in creative tension.

A simple way of saying this is to note that any Catholic school, be it the local Catholic primary School, the regional diocesan College, Mazenod College, Mercedes College, or any other of our independently governed Catholic schools, cannot be a good Catholic school if it is not a good school. This, of course, is stating the obvious: parents choose schools for their children and young people which they believe will give their children the best, most complete, and most rounded education possible. They want dedicated teachers, a quality curriculum, good discipline, the best possible facilities, and a nurturing and supporting environment in which their children can thrive and grow to their full potential. I would hope and expect, and my experience gives me confidence in this regard, that every Catholic school in this state is fully and firmly committed to doing the best for the young people who have been entrusted to them by their families. Certainly not every Catholic school is equal in terms of the facilities that can provide all the depth and breadth of the curriculum it can offer, but I would hope that every Catholic school is equal in terms of its determination to provide the very best education possible to the children who come to the school.

But if a Catholic school cannot be a good Catholic School if it is not a good school, it is equally true that a Catholic school cannot be a good Catholic school if it is not Catholic. In a sense, this is also stating the obvious, but I am not so sure that there is as much agreement about what makes a school Catholic as there is about what makes a school a good school.

Often in the past, when I have raised the question of what it is that makes a school Catholic, the first thing which seems to come to many people’s minds is what is generally called the quality of the pastoral care offered by the school. If you drill down into this idea you quickly discover that people, when giving this answer, are expressing their hope that the school will be focused on the well-being of the young people in their care, that individual needs will be catered for, and that sensitivity and understanding will be shown to the many complex situations in which children and their families often find themselves. I am sure we are in full agreement with this. A school certainly couldn’t claim to be Catholic if it was not doing it very best to provide this kind of care for its students and, I would add, for its teachers, other staff, and the families of the children. But surely this is true of every decent school in our states, whether that be a government school a Catholic school or independent school. Teachers in the local government school down the road from your school would be rightly offended. Were it to be suggested that they didn’t care as much for their pupils as we do for ours.

If pastoral care, then, is not unique to Catholic schools then where else might we look to identify what it is that makes the Catholic school unique? In seeking to respond to this question many people involved in Catholic Education would point to what they would call Gospel values: our school, they would say, is grounded on these gospel values which shape the way we respond to everything we do in the school. I would hope and expect, as indeed we all would, that this is very true of our schools. But again, when asked to spell out what these gospel values are, many people will talk about hospitality, respect, recognition of the dignity of each human person, reconciliation, equality, and so forth. These are undoubtedly gospel values: they permeate every page of the gospel tradition. But in a very real sense we must say they are gospel values because they are human values. Catholic schools do not have a monopoly on these values. Christians do not have a monopoly on these values. We can say with conviction that a school cannot claim to be genuinely Catholic if it is not based on these values. But we cannot say, and must not say, that a commitment to these values does not characterise many, and probably most, government and independent schools as well.

What is it then that makes a school Catholic? The suggestion I would make is that a Catholic school, a good Catholic school, makes room for what I would call the “God question”, and that it does so from within the Catholic tradition of Christianity. In saying this, I want to insist on something that Pope Benedict said on a number of occasions and Pope Francis has also repeated often. In relation to the Christian faith, the task of the Church is to ceaselessly propose but never impose.

In the Catholic tradition of Christianity, the “God question” has three related elements, all of which belong together. These are, firstly, the existence of God as the creator and sustainer of everything that exists; secondly belief in Jesus Christ as the Son of God who fully reveals in Himself the mystery of God, the face of God, to us in a way which we can grasp and understand; and thirdly the Church as the place in which God, in Christ, can be most fully encountered.

A good Catholic school will be a school in which belief in God, made known in Jesus Christ, and made accessible in the life of the Church, is ceaselessly proposed, and proposed enthusiastically and consistently and joyfully.

Why is this so important? Why is it not enough for a Catholic school simply to be a good school where people, inspired by the example of Jesus, put themselves at the service of others, in this case the young?

Let me explain it this way. I used to live quite close to a government school which had the school motto “Learn to Live”. This simple motto can be understood in two ways which, of course, are not contradictory but complementary. From one point of view the motto can be understood to mean “learn in order to live - to make a living”. From another point of view it can be understood to mean “learn how to live”. This second meaning opens up a wider horizon for us: schools exist not just to give the young people the skills they need to get a good job: schools exist in order to enable young people to reach their full potential - to live their lives to the full. For people who believe in God, and for Christians who believe that God has made Himself known in Jesus Christ, and for Catholics who, along with many others, believe that it is in the Church that encounter with the God of Jesus Christ most fully takes place, then the God question becomes a vital question to address. For people of faith, the existence of God is not a minor matter, or something only for those who have some weird kind of religious bent in their personality. For people of faith, the existence of God is the most fundamental truth of human existence. It changes everything. For people of faith, to exclude the God question, to banish God to the margins, to pretend that the existence of God is somehow insignificant or inconsequential in terms of reaching our full potential, might almost be described as a nonsense. Catholic schools arose in the modern history of Australia in response to a notion of education in the nineteenth century which believed that education should be free, compulsory and secular. While this was partly a response to the sectarianism of that time, it was a response which, to put it mildly, sat very uncomfortably with the Catholic community. Catholic parents wanted their children to be educated in an environment which allowed for the development of the spiritual lives and understanding of their children to keep pace with their development in all other ways. It was their conviction that to educate their children with no reference to God was to ignore and essential part of what it is to be human.

This remains the fundamental raison d’être for the existence of Catholic schools today. Our schools exist because of our conviction that God matters and that to exclude God from the educational enterprise, from the educational journey of our children and young people, is to do them a grave disservice.

Of course, the social, cultural and political context of 21st century Australia is very different from that of 19th or 20th century Australia. When I was a young boy growing up in Melbourne in the 1960s, the values of many in our society were still in harmony with the values of Christianity. Protestants and Catholics may have seen some things very differently, and often enough saw each other as rivals, but their values and the values of the wider society were largely indistinguishable from each other. This is no longer the case. Proposing the Christian faith to the young people who come to our schools will inevitably need to be done in ways that differ from the past. The support of many parents who send their children to our schools is often not as strong as it once was in relation to the religious dimension of our schools. The ability to staff our schools with teachers who are deeply committed to a Catholic worldview is proving to be increasingly problematic. The pressure to abandon or ignore many central elements of that Catholic worldview is growing all the time. We must not pretend these challenges do not exist, or refused to engage with them in the hope that they will go away. We must be prepared to change and adapt as the world around us changes.

But in this change and adaptation, we must constantly resist the temptation to sell our young people short by either compromising on the essential dimensions of the Catholic world view, or by sidelining, by the practical decisions we make at the local level of our schools, the God dimension without which our schools simply cannot be good Catholic schools.

As I mentioned at the start of this talk, Wayne invited me to share with you my priorities for Catholic Education here in Western Australia. As the Archbishop of Perth I cannot really speak for the other bishops of Western Australia, but it would be my strong conviction that we are on the same page in relation to this question. My fundamental priority is to do all I can to encourage our schools to remain Catholic in the deepest sense of that word by ensuring that the God of Jesus Christ is not an afterthought, or an inconvenient distraction, or an embarrassment, but is, in fact, the heart and soul of all that the Catholic school seeks to do and to be, in the local context in which it finds itself.