Mass for Catholic Education Week 2008

1.     By happy providence, today is the feast of St. John Bosco, a priest and educator who was arguably ahead of his time in educational practice. He founded the Salesians whose primary apostolate to this day remains the education of children and young people. John Bosco firmly believed in educating the whole person, body, mind and soul. He remains an inspiration for everyone who works in Catholic education and who is committed to the integral development of children and young persons. And I would like first of all to encourage the Catholic schools of Port Glasgow in their mission to educate the children and young people of this area in the best traditions of Catholic education and to strive always for excellence, not least to become excellent Catholic schools. I am also pleased to greet the civil and education authorities who are responsible for educational provision and for the good administration of the schools.

2.     From the point of view of religious education and formation in faith, a dimension of the Catholic school which should permeate every aspect of education and learning and life in the school, I would hope that a Catholic school would help pupils to grow in their faith in Jesus Christ. To know him is to know the Father. To be one with him is to be one with God. This may seem to some as if I am only interested in Catholic schools as serving a narrow church interest. This could not be further from the truth. As the prominent American Catholic author, George Weigel, recently wrote, the great human questions, including the great questions of public life, are ultimately questions about God. How men and women think about God – or don’t think about God –has a great deal to do with how they envision a just society and with how they determine the means to build that society. Consider too that for the overwhelming majority of humanity, religious conviction provides the storyline through which life’s meaning is read. The curiosity is not that millions of Catholics flock to Rome, Lourdes, Fatima and other shrines every year. The curiosity is not that millions of Hindus ritually bathe in the Ganges, or the Hadj to Mecca, or the Shiite pilgrimage to Karbala. The curiosities, the things that need explaining are not these. What needs explaining is why so much higher education, politics and journalism in western society is tone deaf to what the majority of human beings thinks is vitally important.

3.     Catholic schools in Scotland are part of the public provision of education. What they can do to serve the public beyond the Catholic community is to educate children and young people to speak rightly and seriously and meaningfully about God, and understand faith and faith discourse in a global society in which religious ideas are a dynamic force in the world’s unfolding history.

4.     Again from the point of view of religious education and formation in faith, I would hope too that a Catholic school, in partnership with families and local parishes, would help its pupils to belong more to the church. I am thinking particularly of encouraging their pupils to attend church and receive the sacraments. Of course this is the responsibility firstly of the home, and I call on parents above all to exercise that responsibility. But if the school needs the families, so do families need the school in order to bind young people more closely to the Church. This too may seem to some as a narrowly church interest. But again it is not. People of good will recognise that the Church is a universal force for good in the world: for human rights, for education, for health, for justice, for peace, for life. It surely serves society to have its young people deeply associated with a historic global reality such as the Catholic Church among whose primary aims is the promotion of the true dignity and humanity of every human being.

5.     Finally, Christ taught us to love one another as he loved us, which is to say, unselfishly, abundantly, fully. He gave us an example of love to the very end. I would hope that Catholic schools would form their pupils in a love of that kind. So many people in the world need our love. I would expect Catholic schools to be models of service to and care for the poor and needy, and indeed they are. This is love which clearly serves the Church, society and the wider world. This is love which needs no explanation because love is its own justification.

6.     Catholic schools, I believe, bring something really important to the public provision of education. With that thought, I encourage you to continue your mission to your pupils, to the Catholic community and to the wider community in partnership with government, local authorities and officials. May God bless you all.

Holy Family, Port Glasgow

31^st January 2008.