THE CATHOLIC SCHOOL
A school is like a church. The same liturgy suits her, and we would not be slighting the Temple of God were we to borrow the text from the Dedication of a Churches to apply it to our schools: "Terribilis est locus iste, non est aliud nisi domus Dei et porta caeli et ego nesciebam.–Terrible is this place; it is the house of God and the gate of heaven, and I knew it not."
Allow me to give a striking definition for a Catholic school. It is a sanctuary for the mind by which a student is prepared to combat the first of all evils, that is, ignorance, and to learn the first of all goods, that being truth, and to love the first of all beings, that is, Jesus Christ.
No one ever leaves a school in the same state he entered it. Better or worse are the only alternatives for any graduate. The spiritual life fostered in a school is intended to avert the moral disasters threatening young minds rich in knowledge but poor in virtue. It is intended above all to develop in a human person those values which are indispensable to the complete formation of man but beyond the reach of mere intellectual pursuit. Our Catholic schools are not born of routine or of the path of least resistance. They are born of a boundless sense of honor and an unshakable conviction that the surest use of freedom consists in placing education's resources and initiatives in the light of God, the source of freedom.
The ambition of a Catholic school is superior. It intends to deliver the mind from its doubts to the benefit of the freedom of the Faith, more strongly preferred because better understood. It wishes to deliver the will from its sinful inclinations to the benefit of the freedom of virtuous decisions, without which there is no character. The Catholic school desires to avoid loosing upon society new recruits predisposed to moral defeat or a life of mediocrity by lack of faithfulness to what is most vital to the life of the soul.
We know there are grave dangers that, sooner or later, threaten the man deprived of the means to answer the vital questions. Therein lies the success of a Catholic school. We want to answer all the important questions of life, without fear or hesitation. We want the insights of the sciences (natural science, mathematics, etc.), the insights of the formation of personal character, self-knowledge derived from examinations of conscience, and the answers of the Faith. This bundle of our powers of reflection and love is made harmonious, resulting in the power to live and the joy to die. Whoever has passed through a Catholic school is capable of instructing his fellow man in a virtue of faith superior to science, in a virtue of hope beyond the reach of science, and in a virtue of charity happy to make use of science.
We are willing to labor, to weep, to suffer, and still to advance. We are willing to stumble, struggle to our feet, and at last fall into our coffin: but we want to know why.
A Catholic school is a school where problems are not resolved by ignoring them. It stands up and looks life in the face: its mysteries, its ugliness, its sacrifices, its tomorrows, and its future. The answer that it gives is not crazy, not naive, not imaginary, but an answer received from Jesus Christ Himself and lived out by those geniuses we call saints. For that reason, a Catholic school is a terrible place. It is terrible to the evil it reproves, to the error it combats, to the sin and lies it detests. It is terrible to the fallen dispositions it rectifies. It is terrible to the defects of conscience it disapproves.
In a Catholic school, a student is not allowed to accept himself the way he is. The silence of prayer precedes the combats he must love to wage, the religious truths prepare him for the sacrifices he must love to offer, and if ever there should later occur a lamentable separation between the life he leads and the education he received, a Catholic school becomes terrible to him by the remorse of conscience it inspires.
"Why do you gaze upon me with that incorruptible gaze, O school of my childhood? Why do you trouble me with this indestructible remorse, O school of my adolescence? Except because I realize how terrible it is to have received the light only to snuff it out, the truth only to betray it, and the life of the soul only to contaminate it."
What a grandeur is in our Catholic schools, teaching man his true measure and inviting him to establish his existence upon the heights of moral nobility and intellectual certainty from where he might govern it instead of allowing it to grovel in the helplessness of materialism and the obscurities of doubt. What gratitude a nation should have for these sanctuaries of youth where the liberty we inherit is used to prepare for society men of duty with particular and definitive reasons for serving it with honor.
I have no intention of making hateful comparisons with those not given the grace of a Catholic school. The natural virtues of honor and duty may be found elsewhere. It is our exclusive privilege to endure regrettable misunderstandings and still advance toward charity alongside our brothers without the True Faith.
Having received more than many, we must give more than they. Far from isolating ourselves in a pious smugness that has no place in our Faith, we thank God for having allowed our Catholic schools to prove themselves as much by their teachers as by their students. The best of our Catholic schools have given to our nations economic and social talents, innumerable examples of devotion and service, leaders of armies and leaders of society. They have produced men living to serve the nation and men dying to save it.
Too many Catholics no longer grasp, nor wish to grasp, the importance of a Catholic school. Failure to support these schools deprives our countries of an immense, very specific aid. We should meditate on the words of Pope Pius XI spoken two or three years before his death: "If one were to ask the Pope to choose between the building of a school or the building of a church, the Pope would be seriously torn for an answer. He would probably lean toward the foundation of a middle school."
How many among us understand the Pope's conviction to the point of being "seriously torn" between a vacation at the seaside and a school to save? Between vacant real estate and a school to build? Between jewelry to collect and a school to maintain? Or between profit to be gained and a school to rescue?
I wish that our Catholic schools would appear to you so formidable in consequences for the individual, for society, for the nation, for eternity, that you would leave here "seriously torn" and ashamed not to have considered it normal, natural, and obligatory to do much more and much better for their survival and their development.
With your coming to their aid, count on the audacity of the Church to build them, to buy them, to rebuild them, to buy them back again. Then you will understand her prodigality in lavishing on them the best of her intellectual and monetary resources, her preoccupation with assuring the integrity of her doctrine and learning, her obstinacy in demanding a top-flight and complete education.
When a school rises from the earth, the Church sings. When a school is filled, the Church gives thanks. When a school is threatened, the Church offers herself in sacrifice. When a school is closed, the Church weeps. If, in order to console her, the State or school district offers to impose upon her a compromise [in the domain of curricula, administration, faculty, or enrollment, etc.–Ed.], the Church cries even harder. Her response is to catch her breath, go a little farther down the road, and build a new sanctuary of the mind just as true as the ones before it. Being herself divine, she knows that the wisdom of God cuts no deals with the dirty calculations and compromises of men. If she happens to reach out to men for their instruction, it is not that she might dabble in their errors or heresies. She does so only that she might summon from the depths of their souls the very image of God graven for eternity upon sinners and just alike. And God is incorruptible.
The very teaching of God cannot be corrupted. The only attitude to take toward God is to become like Him by the teaching of the Truth, and this attitude is of value too great to be estimated. It is inestimable to face life as Christ did, that is, loving without fear our duty of state. It is inestimable to come upon a cross and know by what end to take it up and to what resurrection it will lead. It is inestimable to live amidst our modern uncertainties strong with the certainties of God. It is inestimable to know from where we have come, where we are going, who and what we are, what we can do and what we must do, why we weep and why we merit. It is inestimable to go beyond ourselves and give ourselves over to the demands of God with prayer in order to be fully understood, with the sacraments in order to be fully victorious, with the Faith in order to be fully confident, with hope in order to be fully courageous, and with charity in order to be made fully content.
I understand the stubbornness of the Church wanting to see in her schools her own life and not that of another. I understand her insistence in asking us to construct these temples of truth, without which the sanctuaries of love that are our churches will never be filled.
I do not say to you, "Save our schools." I say to you, "Build others." I know a corner of France where the workers are building their own Catholic schools for their children. I know a man who prevented the closing of a Catholic school by mobilizing the resources of a town to the tune of six million francs [about one million US dollars in current exchange–Ed.]. I know men among you who are bleeding yourselves dry defending the autonomy of your Catholic schools. I salute you, and even more profoundly do I salute your sense of God, your sense of life, and your sense of the integral value of the godly man.
When a school is at stake, we should balk at nothing. Every virtuous audacity should motivate us, that is, the audacity of service, of sacrifice, of charity, and the audacity of resolve. These audacities are simply the expression of the highest form of love of country (and to my mind its most indispensable form). Genuine love of country is our anxiety to maintain in the homeland the knowledge of God, without which a society can only know the coercions of materialism and the insufficiencies of strictly human knowledge.
O Knowledge of God, hidden in our schools as one might hide a living spring in order to conserve its purity so that the river may be magnificent, remain in our centers of learning. Remain intact as on the lips of Christ, remain entire as in the heart of His Mother, remain burning as in the souls of the Apostles. Remain, for we have never had such need of Thee to instruct the youth and speak reason in an age that has lost its reason. Bestow on this generation a firm grasp of all Truth, of the hopes it gives to us, of the fears it inspires in us, of the sacrifices awaiting it, and of the tasks we will hand on to it when its turn has come to continue the work of Christ and we ourselves leave to read in the face of God the recompense for our efforts. Amen.
Published in Carnets Spirituels, No.6, October 2005, pp.20-27. Sermon delivered July 2, 1950, in Sainte-Marie du Havre Church by the Rev. Fr. de Chivré, O.P., for the Festival of Catholic Youth of the region of Le Havre, and which appeared in its entirety in the "Bulletin of Catholic Education," supplement to the Diocesan Life of November 24, 1950, No.7. Edited by Fr. Novak for Angelus Press.
Fr. Bernard-Marie de Chivré, O.P. (say: Sheave-ray´) was ordained in 1930. He was an ardent Thomist, student of Scripture, retreat master, and friend of Archbishop Lefebvre. He died in 1984.
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