Catholic educators must bring ‘shalom’ to schools
By Deborah Gyapong
Canadian
Catholic News
OTTAWA (CCN) — The mission of Catholic educators is to bring the experience of “shalom” into the schools.
That’s the message
Rev. Raymond Carey, a priest with the Portland
archdiocese, brought to the 50th annual general meeting of the Canadian
Catholic School Trustees Association (CCSTA) June 3-5 in Ottawa.
Carey, a clinical psychologist,
said “shalom” is usually defined as peace, but its real
meaning is much broader. “It means perfect wholeness, perfect
balance,” he said.
It is perfect action of opposites
together; “all is as it ought to be” with happiness as a
byproduct, he said.
“Shalom is what God
accomplishes in us,” he told the several hundred Catholic school
trustees from across Canada June 5.
Carey broke the mission into
four tasks: experiencing shalom at the level of the self; sharing shalom
with our neighbours; bringing shalom into the environment; and experiencing
shalom with God.
It is God’s will that
we experience shalom — balance, all is as God intended it to be
— in our deepest, inmost selves, he said.
“If you look in the
mirror and see a construction project, you are missing shalom,”
he said. Instead, shalom is knowing that “you are God’s
beloved, made in God’s image” in partnership with God’s
ongoing creation.
Schools must be places where
students can experience “shalom” at the level of their own
person. He warned that suicide is the most frequent cause of death among
young people aged 15-24, largely because they are missing shalom. Students
must be valued as persons simply because God values them, he said, stressing
cynicism and sarcasm have no place in the classroom, because they can
“rip the heart out of a child.”
In sharing shalom with our
neighbours, Carey said schools must be places where no one is excluded.
“Jesus acted as a minister of shalom even to the ones who were
crucifying him,” he said. He praised Canada for being the first
country to come to Haiti’s aid after the devastating earthquake.
Catholic schools must create a mandate to love our neighbour as ourselves,
he said.
He spoke of the covenantal
nature of love and how shalom changes those who give as well as those
who receive. He told the story of how former Portland Archbishop Thomas
Murphy used to regularly visit a small school that often sent him invitations,
he said. The archbishop loved the students there and always accepted.
When he developed a pernicious form of leukemia, the students organized
a blood drive so the ailing bishop could receive a transfusion.
Afterward, Murphy was able
to visit the school to attend a ceremony there. He told the students
he loved them. “I have your blood in my veins,” he said.
“I am having a glimpse of what it means to have Christ’s
body and blood in me.” The school is now named after the archbishop.
Carey also spoke of creating
an environment of shalom in the schools, where “kids feel safe
and know that they are.”
Bullying is no longer grabbing
a hat or a fight in the school yard, he said. It’s now 24 hours
a day, on the Internet, in cellphones, “in your face.” He
also spoke of the horrendous mistake young people are making through
“sexting,” and sending images of themselves naked to other
teens. Those images now last “longer than Styrofoam,” he
said.
He recalled a student telling
him years later that though he was not the best English teacher she
had ever had, “you protected us from becoming broken,” through
getting involved in drugs, or other self-destructive behaviour. “Shalom
is what she was thanking me for,” he said.
Lastly, Catholic educators
must cultivate shalom with God. “We are to have with God the ‘Abba!
experience’ Jesus had,” he said. “Abba means ‘papa.’
It’s an expression of great intimacy.”
He decried the previous lunacy
in Catholic education that created Catholic guilt, remembering Saturday
afternoon sessions analyzing the nature of mortal sin.
“It’s not religiosity
that’s our challenge; it’s relationship that is our challenge,”
he said.
Called to be ministers of
shalom in the name of Jesus, Catholic educators can test whether their
experience is real by whether it leads to loving service or narcissistic
self-absorption. If it is the latter, it is not of God, he said.
“Our Catholic schools
have done monumentally well in imbibing children with the spirit of
loving service,” he said.
Other keynote speakers included
two high-profile Canadian Catholic academics: Michael Higgins, who spoke
on the Canadian contribution to the universal ministry of Catholic education,
and Mark McGowan, who traced the history of Catholic education in Canada
with a look at the challenges of the third millennium.
The CCSTA presented Patrick J. Daly of the Hamilton-Wentworth Catholic District School Board the 2010 Justice James Higgins Award for outstanding leadership in Catholic education.
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