posted by John Borst

April 29th to May 4th, 2007 is Catholic Education Week in Ontario. The 2007 theme is “Created in the Image of God”. The speech printed below is by Sister Joan Chittister OSB. It was delivered to American Catholic teachers exactly 23 years ago last week. It was published in Origins June 7, 1984

The Prophetic Role of Catholic Education

By Sr. Joan Chittister, OSB

“Catholic education has at its very base a commitment to freedom and a call to peace,” Sister Joan Chittister, OSB, told participants in the recent annual con­vention in Boston of the National Catholic Educational Association. Chittister is prioress of the Benedictine Sisters of Erie, Pa. “In the early days of Catholic educa­tion,” she noted, “a parochial church needed to educate for literacy, for life skills, for liturgy, for language. Now, in this time, an ecumenical church must educate for people over machines, for planet over profit, for purpose over power, or prophecy over piety.” The biblical figure of Nicodemus stands as a “challenge, a paradigm, a warning to us,” Chittister said. “What people like Nicodemus said meant something but the problem is that Nicodemus said so little to the people of his time about the issues of his times.” Religious educators must teach with their hearts, said Chittister, “not because the church is under siege, but because the world is under siege.” Courses in religion are no substitute for conviction, she added. “We must take our schools away from the secularism of pro­fessional preparation and return them to the challenge of the Gospel.” Her April 25 text follows.

In a dream, a devout disciple was permitted to approach the temple of Paradise where the great sages of the Talmud were spending their eternal lives. He saw that they were just sitting around tables studying the Talmud, The disciple wondered, “Can this possibly be Paradise?” But sud­denly he heard a voice, “You are mistaken. The sages are not in Paradise. Paradise is in the sages.”

The question for Catholic education today is still the same.

What will our students say of us: “I had teachers who taught about Paradise.” Or, “Paradise was in my teachers.”

It is out of that concern that one scriptural image arises to confront Catholic education in a special way at this period of our history. The figure is the Pharisee Nicodemus. Nicodemus is an, important character, I think, for religious educators today because Nicodemus is a study, a challenge, a paradigm, a warning to us all.

In the first place, Nicodemus was a religious figure to the Jews. He was good stock. He believed in the system and the system believed in him. Nicodemus had respectability. Nicodemus was one of those pillar-of-the-church types.

In the second place, Nic­odemus was a teacher — the teacher, the Greek text says. He had credibility: He was schooled in the law; he was a believer.

In the third place, Nicodemus was an establishment presence in Jesus’ ministry. The others who followed Jesus were rabble, or out­casts, or working class or poor. But Nicodemus was somebody. He had influence. He was a per­son of sound judgment; he had high moral prin­ciples. In the Jewish community he was a leader, what people like Nicodemus said meant something.

And those are precisely the problems:

This believer, this leader, this pillar-of-the-church type did very little.

—Nicodemus went to Jesus only at night;

—He asked questions he should have known the answers to;

—He attempted to move his own system in Jesus’ behalf only once — and then feebly;

—He asked how and was told to begin again;

—…And then he went away.

And so after that we only see Nicodemus one more time. Nicodemus appears in secret again to bury Jesus and spends a lot of money doing it.

What people like Nicodemus said meant something, but the problem is that Nicodemus said so little to the people of his time about the issues of his time. Nicodemus is indeed a study — a challenge — a paradigm — a warning; to us.

Nicodemus is the conscience of us all: We are religious figures; we are teachers; we are establishment people. We have respectability; we have credibility; we have influence. And we must also in this time, in this place, in this world perhaps go down into the womb and be born again if Catholic education is to maintain the commitment to freedom and peace out of which it stems.

Catholic education has at its very base a commitment to freedom and a call to peace. One hundred years ago Catholic education did not tolerate the self-fulfilling prophecy of prejudice; it did not tolerate domination by the govern­ment; it did not tolerate exclusion by the system. Catholic education built the cry for freedom and peace into this country. It prepared scores of foreign-speaking immigrant children to take their place in a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant society that preached democracy but practiced separatism; that promised equal opportunity but promoted anti-Catholicism; that talked in­dividualism but expected assimilation.

In the world of early Catholic education there were two types of people: Catholics and Protestants. The task was to establish the church, to win a place in the culture. In this environment Catholic education and Catholic educators did it! They scraped and struggled and sacrificed themselves to preserve the faith in a Protestant environment, to insert the faithful in a closed world. With the accession of John F. Kennedy to the presidency of the United States that task was largely accomplished.

Our task is a new one. Between that world and this one a whole world view has changed and with it the role of religious education. We must teach now with all our hearts, not because the church is under siege, but because the world is under siege. Not for a church without rights but for whole peoples without rights. Not because the church is in danger, but because the very planet is in danger. In the early days of Catholic education a parochial church needed to educate for literacy, for life skills, for liturgy, for language. Now, in this time, an ecumenical church must educate for people over machines, for planet over profit, for purpose over power, for prophecy over piety.

There is no time for Nicodemus now. There is no time for the silent, the stealthy, the safe. We need teachers who do not simply talk about the Gospel; we need teachers who will live it. We can no longer afford simply good leader­ship; we need great leadership now. This is what Catholic educators gave to the great social ques­tions of the past, to discrimination, to labor, to pluralism. And that is what Catholic educators must give to the great social questions of the pre­sent if Catholic education is to maintain its credibility, keep its quality and make its contribution to a better world. But those who set out to teach freedom and peace need to give special thought to exactly what that means. Nothing in scripture leads us to believe that teaching peace and maintaining freedom is a comfortable thing:

—Jeremiah ran through the streets nak­ed to get people’s attention.

—Esther faced death for her people but went uninvited to the king.

—Moses was run out of town.

No, the scripture is sure proof that stan­ding for freedom and pressing for peace has nothing to do with getting promoted, fitting in, being establishment, being approved, being safe. The question is, How can we know what it means to maintain freedom and build the peace? And then. How can teachers teach it?

The answer is not in Nicodemus.

The answer, I think, is at the healing pool in Bethsaida. Bethsaida is realty where Catholic educators need to go — not to Nicodemus and not to Boston — to discover what makes for both freedom and peace in our time because Bethsaida is a lesson in faith and obedience. Remember with me John 5:1-12, Think about it deeply. Bethsaida was one of those places, those moments on the edge of life. Bethsaida was a breakthrough, breakdown world of turmoil and peace. It was a place of both poverty and pro­sperity; of freedom and enslavement; of haves and have-nots; of self-defense and destruction; of great promise and greater threat.

Great things happened at Bethsaida; but tragic things happened there too. And all for the same reasons; Bethsaida is a place alive with possibility and the power of it, but Bethsaida is also alive with the oppressiveness of possibility unfulfilled. And that’s what Nicodemus, what Americans, what Catholic educators dedicated to freedom and searching for peace have to understand.

Breakthroughs happened at Bethsaida. Everything was not bad there. “Every year,” scripture reads, “the waters stir” and “those who get there first are healed.” For all the others, though, Bethsaida breaks down hope, breaks down promise, breaks down freedom and peace.

Until Jesus comes, walking purposefully through the rushing, running, striving crowd, among the blind, over the lame, around the paralyzed and not to the waters, but straight up the hill. To the far edge of the crowd to one who hasn’t walked upright his whole adult life, to one who has been overlooked, pushed down, push­ed out of the stream of life here year after year after year.

“Don’t you want to be healed?” Jesus asks. And the forgotten one answers not, yes; not, no; not, my turn is coming; but “Sir, there is no one to carry me down!”

Now what does the teacher teach here? After all, the paralytic had had his chance. The situation is very clear. That’s the way the system is. Some people just don’t have the know-how, the gumption, the natural ability, the character, it takes to get ahead. Some people are just inherently lazy, inherently evil, inherently dishonest, inherently inept. Some people can’t get freedom; some people don’t deserve peace. There are rules, policies, “circumstances,” ideologies to be considered. To violate the Sab­bath, to tamper with cultural expectations can do more harm than good. After all, it’s been 38 years. To wait a little longer, to be patient, to do the thing right, surely can’t be asking too much.

The point is that what happens at Bethsaida doesn’t depend on the paralytic. What happens at Bethsaida depends on the faith life of the teacher of the word. The fact is that it’s what the teacher believes that faith demands in this situation that makes Bethsaida a breakthrough or a breakdown place.

The history of spirituality identifies three possible faith responses that can be taught to the paralytic at Bethsaida:

1. The first possible teaching is an intellectualist faith. The intellectual is concerned about knowing God and mystical illumination. But in­tellectual faith lacks commitment to the earthly
city.

The intellectualist at Bethsaida says to the paralytic, “This situation is God’s will for you; it will make you very close to God if you just offer it up,” The intellectualist teaches that the church is primarily, most of all, a set of doc­trines, a range of briefs, a type of institution to be maintained, The intellectualist talks a lot about “faith” and waits for union with God.

2. The second teaching about faith is rela­tional or personalist. The teacher whose faith is personalist looks to the personal beneficence of God and is a very devotional person. The personalist at Bethsaida says a rosary a day or reads a book or meditates on the sufferings of Christ and sits down with the paralytic to wait for the waters to stir next year.

Personalists teach about “building community” and talk a lot about love.

3. The third dimension of the teaching on faith says that faith is performative. The teacher who says that faith is performative says that the Gospel is only fully taught when the word becomes transforming action. Performative faith is a commitment to upbuilding the kingdom by establishing on earth a just society out of which peace and freedom come. Teachers whose faith is performative want Nicodemus to begin again and again and again, as long as it takes to free us from a mentality of the enemy being the other, as long as it takes to win the peace rather than the war,

Teachers who teach a performative faith are “Our Father” people. They pray daily: “Thy kingdom come; thy will be done,” then they do something to bring it. For those whose faith is performative the church is servant, and the ser­vant church goes to Bethsaida not simply to give testimony there; not simply to give a talk there; not simply to be a warm presence there. No, the servant church goes to Bethsaida to see what needs to be changed there; to see who needs to be carried down.

If we really care about freedom and peace, if we are really committed as Catholic educators to maintaining freedom and building the peace, then we must realize this morning that the whole world is back at Bethsaida again. While Nicodemus questions whether or not he has the reason, the resources, the courage to begin again, to teach a better lesson, to free the newfound bound, to bring peace to minds at war — while Nicodemus rationalizes, this morning the whole world is back at Bethsaida again, a whirling, bubbling, promising and oppressive place.

This morning we are in the greatest ecumenical era ever. In Walter Buhlman’s The Coming of the Third Church, he states that by the year 2000, 60 percent of all Christians in the world will live in the Third World countries of Latin America and Africa. But given the present trends, by the year 2000 only 16 percent of the world population will be Christian at all! The question is not, Will we be a sign? The answer is, Definitely. We have no choice but to be a sign if for no other reason than by virtue of our rari­ty. The only question is, What kind of sign will we be? What will Catholic education be remembered for in. this period?

We are in the most autonomous period in history ever. In 1775, two-thirds of the world was under colonial domination; in 1945, one-half the human race was controlled by foreign forces; and in 1984, only one-half of 1 percent. In 1945 there were 50 member nations in the United Na­tions; now there are 157.

Point: A new world agenda is emerging and it is not being set by us. There will be more stress now on human development, social needs, the common good; there will be much less stress on old structures, old values, old centers of control.

We are in the midst of the world’s fastest total transformation;

—Biological development from prehominid to homo sapiens took 5 million years;

—Social development from tribe to stratified society took 5,000 years;

—Technical development from agriculture to industry took 500 years;

—Global development from national sovereignty to planetary interdependence linked by social standards, technology and economic networks took only 50 years. We live in a world in transformation.

But in times of major transformation two things occur: a sense of powerlessness or breakdown and a sense of possible or breakthrough.

We know and teach great breakthroughs in our time:

—We know we can eradicate hunger. (We have the scientific capacity. The problem is that we do not have the political will.)

—We can realize the truth of human uni­ty. (Telephone, television, transportation take, show, tell us our common values and hopes.)

—We have global cooperation in enough things to prove we can do it in others. (We work together in mail, medicine, weather, environmen­tal issues.)

—We all share a new world view from outer space — power to insignificance).

But the question is, Are we teaching as well that the symptoms of breakdown are everywhere too for those for whom the system does not work? Are we teaching anyone to speak to:

—Hunger: Fifteen thousand people will die today from malnutrition; by the year 1000, one-third more will die every day if the present trend continues.

—Land loss: One-third less land by the year 2000 due to erosion, population and in­dustrial abuse.

—Disenfranchisement of one whole species: One-half of all the peoples of the world are women, but they have little or no part in deci­sions of government, the military, economies or social structures that affect them.

—Air and water pollution: The Amazon jungle supplies one-fourth of the oxygen supply for the entire earth. It is called “the lungs of the world,” but the American copper-mining in­dustry has raped the vegetation and so reduced the oxygen production there.

—Technical dangers: Toxic waste, accor­ding to the American Cancer Society, is respon­sible for 80 percent of cancer in this society due to environmental and technical-scientific causes which threaten the gene pool, the ozone layer, the soil.

—Global illiteracy: The United Nations tested teachers in 100 countries on global literacy. American teachers scored 100th out of 100 on that test.

—Urbanization There will be 2,000 new cities by the year 2000, resulting in increased unemployment, ghettos and a widening gap bet­ween the rich and poor; this will give rise to new world tensions and militate against freedom and peace,

—Militarism: In a country where once we could teach children that wheat was our major export, we must now tell them that weapons are. We arm our friends to fight our enemies, our friends to fight our friends, our enemies to fight our friends, and friends who then become enemies. In a country that claims that its only role in the arms race is deterrence, it is we who have developed every weapons system first and we who have threatened the use of nuclear force nine times since 1945 for political reasons — six of those times against non-nuclear nations. In a country that can destroy the planet 50 times, Christians argue that they cannot sleep easy with the psalmist unless they’re assured that tomor­row they’ll be able to perform planetary suicide 51 times. To those who say we need defense, I say isn’t once enough!

—Multinational powers control the economic balance of the world but are subject to no system of international control.

Or think of it this way:

Consider the world a village of 100 peo­ple. Six of the people live in Western Europe and North America in a glass house where they eat and drink and wear and collect for themselves two-thirds of everything that is made in that village while the other 94 sit on the lawn and watch. And it is getting intolerable to them. No wonder those six buy so many guns.

Indeed, Bethsaida is a familiar place. It’s happening all around us. The waters stir today too for the wealthy, for the West, for white males. It’s not true that the whole system is in chaos. Some people are getting on, getting up, getting rich. But others wait their turn and are denied while the rest of us, like Nicodemus, say nothing. That is this day’s threat to freedom; that is this time’s real obstacle to peace.

Who will see the situation?

Who will be born of the spirit, be willing to begin again?

Who will be healed of their own sexism, racism, militarism and neurotic nationalism? Who will hold themselves accountable for the op­pression of others?

Who will do away with the process and politics of it all?

Who will hear the answer to begin again and to speak in the light as Jesus did?

Not by saying, offer it up. Not by say­ing, let me hold you up. But by cutting through sexist, militarist and nationalist systems saying; get up, and then staying to raise them.

Tests are teacher things. Let’s take one. Do you want to know the reality and depth of your own teaching of the faith life? This morning after the session ask a friend to tell you what three things you stand for and what three things you did to prove it.

Do you believe in just distribution of resources? What have you done to prove it?

Do you believe in peace? What have you done to prove it?

Do you believe in the gift of life? What have you done to prove it?

Do you believe in equality of women in church and society? What have you done to prove it?

I am not saying that everyone is guilty; I am saying that everyone is responsible. The questions are important because this time it’s our turn at Bethsaida, What we teach and how we teach it may well make a difference in a world that hasn’t stood up straight for at least 38 years. Why? Several pieces of research give in­sight into what it means for Catholic educators to speak for freedom and peace today to under a system that wants profit not prophecy; that wants to go on, not be born again.

In the environment that spawned World War II, Gertrude Stein, a German philosopher and convert, said that the most important thing for Germans to learn was disobedience.

In 1973 Gerda Lederer, an American sociologist, did a comparative study of authoritarianism. And authoritarianism, the will­ingness to submit to authority uncritically or a disposition to blind obedience, was the hallmark of German culture and the keystone of Bismarck’s military regime and Hitler’s Youth Corps. Social psychologists used the concept of authoritarianism to explain compliance of the German Christians with the Jewish Holocaust. (The problem, remember, was not only Hitler, but the fact that the German people permitted massive evil in the name of resistance to evil because of blind obedience.)

The conclusion was that by 1973 German youth were less authoritarian than American youth though they had further to come.

Worse than that, in 1966-74, the now-classic Milgram studies found in replication after replication that two-thirds of the participants were willing to inflict excruciating and deadly pain on other individuals simply because they were directed to do so by an authority figure. They never questioned the reasons or results of their action. They simply “followed orders” on the assumption that if the authority figure said the action was necessary, then it must be.

During that same period (1973), D.C. Bock established a positive relationship between belief and obedience to a destructive command, i.e., religious believers were consistently more obedient; they delivered and inflicted more pain than any other group — more than doctors, more than lawyers, more than students, more than blue-collar workers — more than any other identifiable types in the study.

Point: Catechesis is not enough. The role of Catholic education today is to teach holy disobedience.

We live in a world where science, not in­dustry, has become the great high priest of our time. The motto is no longer, “The greatest number of desirable goods for the maximum number of people at the cheapest possible cost.” Now the motto of science is, “What can be done must be done and will be done” — whether it ought to be done or not. Not the limits of the marketplace but only the limits of the mind will determine which products control our environment.

The question is, Who will teach freedom and peace to science?

We live in a world where technology has not made the world smaller: Technology has made the world one. War in the East stops pro­duction in the West. Scenes of famine show on the TV screens in American restaurants. Scenes of American two- and three-car garages show on street-corner TVs in Third World villages. Deci­sions which make corporations in one country wealthy create an imbalance of employment and development in another.

The question is, who will teach freedom and peace to Western capitalism?

We live in a world where Christians have invented the high art of planetary cataclysm where Christians argue “matchstick parity” and worry about who has the most matches in a situa­tion where, when they are up to their neck in gasoline, it will only take one to do the job. We live in a world where the end of the world has been created by us and is stored in the cornfields in Kansas, where we have chosen to be Sparta rather than Athens.

The question is, who will teach freedom and peace to militarism run amok? The answer depends on whether Catholic education succumbs to the caution of Nicodemus or is born again in our time to the courage, com­passion and a critical consciousness of Jesus.

More than ever in our day we need religious education;

—That leads rather than certifies;

—That contributes to a just future rather than simply to an economically satisfying present;

—That is willing to question whether or not what is scientifically, organizationally and economically possible is also humanly appropriate;

—That is built on curriculums of cons­cience not just curriculums of content;

—That knows that peace is based on justice and bends itself to build it;

—That realizes that freedom is based on the sacraments of creation and restructures itself to reflect the equality given by God.

The way is not easy. Nicodemus, remember, never returns again after he’s told to begin over.

The obstacles to peace and freedom — just like their call — are deep within us too. We must confront in ourselves the fear of polariza­tion. “You have to understand, Sister Joan, there are people in the parish who will not like this! They’ll remove their children. There are those who would preach prudence to the crucifix! We worry so much that some people will be upset that we are willing to let other people’s human rights wait forever. We have to remember on those days that from the time of Peter and Paul the church has known that tension does not have to divide; tension can also stretch and complete it.

We must confront institutionalism, establishmentarianism and complacency. It is not enough for our institutions to be viable; they must also be prophetic. Simply doing better what others do is not enough. Otherwise institutionalism will defeat us no matter how much it succeeds. Our institutions must be Christian centers devoted to world peace, to equality, to social justice or none of them can be justified no matter how financially sound they are. As Nicodemus noted: Courses in religion are no substitute for conviction.

We must confront and change the theology of domination. Once we believe and teach that God built inequality, inferiority, submissiveness into the human race, that some humans are more human than other humans, that some humans are by nature in charge of all the other humans, then it is a very short step away from the napalming of the yellow, the lyn­ching of the blacks, the extermination of the Reds, the gassing of the next generation of Jews. Sexism, racism, militarism are of a piece and sex­ism is their cornerstone. If we are committed to peace, our own institutions will have to give more than theory to the freedom and equality of the sexes. Our textbooks will have to change; our roles will have to change; our language will have to change; our budgets will have to change

Finally, we must confront the cancer of civil religion in the universal church. We have to teach the peace pastoral; we have to prepare students to make informed decisions about conscientious objection; we have to critique nationalism in a world village; we have to give the Rus­sians a face; we have to ask the right questions. The right question is not, who is for peace? Who isn’t for peace; who prefers war? No, the right question is, how would Christ achieve peace and who can best achieve peace? Those who make weapons or those who dismantle them? There is no justification for submitting the human com­munity to this threat. Not even nationalism it seems. Not even communism apparently.

The problem of Nicodemus and Bethsaida is clear. If we want Catholic educa­tion to make a contribution to freedom and peace in our day we ourselves must teach new role definitions first; we ourselves must teach new standards of living first; we ourselves must teach new military policy, foreign policy, economic policy first. We must take our schools away from the secularism of professional preparation and return them to the challenge of the Gospel. Nicodemus alerts us to what happens when we buy into a system. Jesus at Bethsaida shows us what can happen when we have the faith to change one. But do not be misled. There is a cost.

They tell the story of a German woman during World War II who hid Jews. When her friends found out, they said, “Don’t you realize that if you are discovered you yourself will be imprisoned, perhaps even executed?”

The woman said clearly, “Yes, I know that.”

“Then why in heaven’s name,” they ask­ed, “are you doing it!”

And she said simply, “Because the time is now and I am here.”

This time is our time. This place is our place. We are the inheritors of a system bold with freedom, burdened with the challenge of peace. Who will turn the Gospel into good news in our time? If not us, who? If not now, when?

May Paradise live in us wherever we teach!

Copyright, Origins, 1984
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