THE SECRET OF CATHOLIC EDUCATIONAL INFLUENCE

New Zealand Tablet, 20 April 1911, Page 731

THE SECRET OF CATHOLIC EDUCATIONAL INFLUENCE

At a recent educational conference a president of a secular university remarked to c a Catholic rector: 'You people get a hold on your students that we can never compass, try how we may; and your hold of them is as strong outside the classroom as in it. You get into their hearts and minds and stay there when they go out into the world. How do you manage it?' The rector despaired of finding an answer that would be intelligible to his questioner, but replied: 'By being a Catholic institution. Our hold on our students is the Faith we hold in common, or rather its hold upon us —a vivid, conscious, definite Faith that is mutually and equally binding. Regarding the effect it generates, I would say the secret is reverence. Catholic teaching and practice had been instilling this reverence in our students from their cradles, and when they come to us it is a lever ready to our hands.' Well,' said the secular educationalist, we have no such lever, and if we had we should not know how to use' it.' The answer had not greatly enlightened him (writes Rev. M. Kenny, S.J., in America), but it marks well the spirit that differentiates the religious from the secular system. . The Catholic child in a truly Catholic household grows up in an atmosphere of Faith. Its mysteries are to him as real as his surroundings. He knows ami feels as by physical contact the presence of God, of His Holy Spirit, of Christ the Saviour, of His Virgin Mother; and the household of Godthe saints and angel spirits whom he is taught to invokeis as near to him as his own. To him the Church is God's house, not an earthly edifice, for he knows that as he kneels God comes down upon the altar, and to the upraised Host he bows in adoration as he would before the Throne of Heaven. And the priest, whose mystic words have wrought the wondrous mystery, he regards not as a man. He is the anointed of the'Lord, empowered to call on the Divinity, and lo! day by day his God is present to his summons. With tho office of washing away the primal stains; with power to

bless and teach and save, to free the souls of men frprtt sin and fill .them with grace from sacramental fountains*; God has dowered him. To him the Catholic doffs his hat, not as an act ,of conventional courtesy, but of religious reverence, and % the appellation, ' Father,' springs spontaneous to the lips. He, may possess or lack personal distinction, but wherever the Catholic finds a priest ordained and sanctioned by the Church, he reveres him as God's minister. He-reveres his Church because it is God's;;;he respects his government, and laws because their authority' is from God; he respects liis neighbor, his own soul and his own flesh because they are from God. By its relation to God his respect for everything in heaven or on earth is measured. . ~ 1 ;,?,=• This spirit of reverence, unconsciously informing heart and mind and strengthened by transmission through generations, accounts for many things in Catholic lands, which to strangers reared in other traditions are an. enigma. Mr. Birred declared recently hi the British House of Commons that the inmates of a miserable hut in Connaught know how to welcome a stranger and dispense hospitality with a civility and grace unsurpassed by any class in the King's dominions. He - apparently deemed this phenomenon peculiar to Ireland, but had he read a work issued a few weeks previously by another distinguished Englishman, he could have • appraised its origin more accurately. In his Life Lessons from Joan of Arc, Father Vaughan attributes the case of the peasant maid, 'as though to the manor born,' in the. King's entourage, to tins Catholic, spirit of reverence which ' lends a strangely wondrous grace even to the peasantry,' and has produced 'the refinement and charm of manner that belong to the land-tillers in Normandy, in Ireland, and in other places where the people have not been robbed or starved out of religion.' The Catholic peasant's courtesy is an outgrowth from a religious root, the living flower of the tree of Faith and Charity; and its bloom is perennial, for it knows no winter uuless sin should nip its blossoms. : :;;..■;. The Catholic student, in less or greater measure according to his character and rearing, brings this gracenurtured reverence to school • and finds there a teacher whose vocation is the cult of reverence. At the start there is between the two a bond which the friction of life and divergences of taste and temper cannot sever. - The

student may not have been reared in the ideal Catholic household he may have failed to respond to the influences of Catholic environment, and his sense of reverence may be of the slightest, but so long as he has Faith there are means and hope for. its development: there is a foundation on which to build, and in the sacraments there is ample material for the -builder. The student goes forth from the school of reverence; whatever unpleasant emotions he may bear with him are soon ground out in the mills of time, but the reverence remains, strengthening with the years. Grievances are forgotten, surface wounds, if any, are healed and leave no mark, and he returns to seek out the teacher who had devoted to him his life and .whom he now recognises as his truest friend, the friend of his soul. . The jars and jolts are a subject of laughter, the teacher an object of reverence. There ■ are, of course, exceptions to this rule. Not all Catholics avail themselves of their opportunities and not all Catholic students attain the ideal before or during college life. There have been non-Catholic teachers, too, who have inspired respect and affection, and Catholic teachers who have not; but it is only those who have consecrated their lives to the cause of Catholic education who can win from their pupils a holy, it might be called a sacramental reverence. It is a •phenomenon that Catholics easily understand, and there are not a few non-Cath-olics, even outside those who send their children to Catholic schools, who recognise, though they may not comprehend it. It solves the university president's difficulty and

also explains the progress, multiplication; and development, in. the face of otherwise insurmountable obstacles, of Catholic educational institutions. An incidental passage in Canon Sheehan's novel, Luke Delmege, is pertinent in this connection. Entering a school, whoso pupils were;noted for their -courtesy and conduct, Father Delmege overheard the teacher thus address them : '? ' Reverence is the secret of all religion and happiness. Without reverence, there is no faith, nor hope, nor love. Reverence is the motive of each of the Commandments of —reverence of God, reverence- of our neighbor, reverence of ourselves. Humility is •founded on it; piety "s conserved by it; purity finds in it its shield and buckler. Reverence for God, and all that is associated with Him. His ministers, His temple, His services is religion. Reverence for our neighbor, his goods, his person, his chattels—that is honesty. Reverence for ourselvesclean bodies and pure souls —that is chastity. Satan is Satan because he is irreverent. There never yet was an infidel but he was irreverent and a mocker. The jester, and the mime, the loud laughter and the scorner, have no part in the Kingdom.' The teacher was asked, 'How many pupils on the rolls?' He replied, 'Fifty-six.' How many in attendance?' The reply was the same, ' Fifty-six.' It is the teaching and practice of reverence that wins and holds the pupils of all ages to .School, to Church, and to God.'