Spiritual Foundations

Groome Explores What Makes Education Catholic

BY KATHLEEN SULLIVAN

STAFF WRITER

The vast network of Catholic schools likely constitutes the largest single system of education in the world today. This enormously influential educational system has some 55,000 schools, ranging from kindergartens to research universities, located in 200 countries, and serving more than 150 million students.

But what exactly does it mean to place the word “Catholic” before such terms as school, education, or teacher?

In his new book, What Makes Education Catholic: Spiritual Foundations, internationally renowned religious education expert Thomas Groome explores the history of Catholic education from its spiritual roots to present day, to define what Catholic education is and provide a reflective resource for today’s Catholic school educators.

“I’ve been thinking about this book for about 40 years,” said Groome, a professor of theology and religious education in the School of Theology and Ministry and founding director of the Ph.D. program in theology and education.

He recalled an experience decades ago in Pakistan where he witnessed what he called an excellent example of Catholic education. Unlike the Catholic schools he was familiar with in his native Ireland or in the United States, the Pakistani school was staffed predominately by Muslim teachers and the students were also Muslim. Groome has seen

School of Theology and Ministry Professor Thomas Groome.

photo by caitlin cunningham

a similar phenomenon in places like Korea and Hong Kong—Catholic schools delivering a Catholic education even though the educators and student body were primarily not Catholic.

“Catholic schools educate from a faith perspective and for a faith perspective,” said Groome, a Boston College faculty member since 1976 and an award-winning author whose other publications include Educating for Life, What Makes Us Catholic, Will There Be Faith?, Faith for the Heart, and a widelyused textbook series.

The curriculum of a Catholic school should give students an academically rigorous, competent, and capable education that prepares them to make a living, he said, but also to have a life grounded in some kind of faith perspective as they engage in the world.

This doesn’t mean imposing Catholicism on students, he added, but rather inviting students “to consider a spiritual grounding for their lives in the world that might make them a little more meaningful, worthwhile, purposeful, ethical, and might sustain them in the tough times.”

In the face of the declining presence of the ordained and vowed religious in Catholic schools, said Groome, the key to maintaining the Catholicity is forming and nurturing teachers and staff in the deep values that undergird Catholic education and Catholicism: mercy, compassion, justice, integrity, truth-telling, care for the poor, respect, and care for the neighbor and the common good.

A Catholic school also needs its top person to be a spiritual leader who can articulate the school’s faith-based vision, with support from a cadre of faculty and staff who know the charism and can serve as custodians of the institution’s Catholic identity, Groome said.

In What Makes Education Catholic, Groome offers brief overviews of some important voices in the Catholic intellectual tradition and Catholicism with whom he feels Catholic educators should be familiar, such as Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Julian of Norwich, Ignatius of Loyola, Angela Merici, and Mary Ward. He shows how these foremothers and fathers of Catholic education can ground and shape the spirituality of Catholic educators in today’s postmodern world. These foundations ensure that Catholic schools deliver the education they promise to students—not only to Catholics but to those of many religious traditions. Prompts throughout the text encourage readers to engage in reflection and dialogue.

Catholic education is best realized in practice, added Groome. It is seen in “how teachers go about teaching and principals go about administering schools: the environment, the atmosphere, and values the school reflects in its own way of being.”

Groome would like to see What Makes Education Catholic become a catalyst for a fresh conversation among Catholic educators around the world. Since the book’s launch, Groome has been contacted by educators from Canada to Australia who are interested in getting What Makes Education Catholic into the hands of Catholic school teachers and principals.

“There is great purpose in Catholic schools: They are the Catholic Church’s contribution to the common good,” Groome concluded, “and they have never been more needed.”

Irish Studies Event to Mark Tragic ‘Bloody Sunday’

The Boston College Irish Studies program will mark the 50th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday”—a tragic milestone in the decades-long Northern Irish conflict, “The Troubles”—with a symposium on February 18 and 19 that will examine the events of the fatal day and its legacy.

On January 30, 1972, British paratroopers opened fire on a protest march for civil rights in the Bogside area of Derry, Northern Ireland, shooting 26 unarmed Catholic civilians, 14 of whom died. Bloody Sunday—which is still memorialized by the Bogside community— became a foundational moment for The Troubles and its repercussions continued to reverberate over the following decades.

Unsatisfied by a flawed tribunal, the bereaved families launched a campaign demanding truth and justice. As part of the peace process that led to the Good Friday Agreement, in 1998 a Bloody Sunday inquiry was established and, following a lengthy and comprehensive investigation, in 2010 the British prime minister David Cameron issued a public apology.

The BC symposium will include screenings of two dramatic films based on Bloody Sunday and presentations by Julieann Campbell, an award-winning author—and niece of a Bloody Sunday victim—whose new book on the tragedy will be formally launched during the event; political scientist and historian Niall Ó Dochartaigh, a researcher of the Northern Irish civil rights movement; and Salem State University historian Margo Shea, whose book Derry City: Memory, and Political Struggle in Northern Ireland was published last year.

BC speakers will include Sullivan Professor of Irish Studies Guy Beiner and Robert Savage, interim director of the Irish Studies program, speaking as part of a panel chaired by Rachel Young, a Ph.D. candidate in history.

“Derry’s Bloody Sunday in 1972 has a universal relevance as it relates to other events in which state forces used excessive violence against civilian protesters,” said Beiner, who will give the talk “Bloody Sundays: Remembrance of State Violence Against Civilian Protest” and introduce “Sunday,” a 2002 film directed by Charles McDougall and written by Jimmy McGovern that narrates the events from the point of view of the families of the dead and the injured.

“Television images of the shootings were broadcast around the world, undermining the British narrative that its soldiers were in Northern Ireland to keep the peace. Televised reports spoke of a massacre of civil rights marchers provoking international outrage that damaged Britain’s standing as a leading global democracy,” said Savage, whose presentation is titled “Televised Terror: The BBC’s Coverage

An iconic photo taken during “Bloody Sunday” in 1972, when British troops opened fire on a protest march in Derry, Northern Ireland.

of Bloody Sunday”; he also will offer an introduction to the 2002 Paul Greengrass film “Bloody Sunday” that was inspired by the Don Mullan book Eyewitness Bloody Sunday: The Truth.

In addition to her talk “Bloody Sunday: Then and Now,” Campbell will launch for a United States readership her book On Bloody Sunday: A New History of the Day and its Aftermath by Those Who Were There as part of a memorial tribute in Connolly House that will close the symposium. That event also will recognize Shea’s Derry City and Ó Dochartaigh’s Deniable Contact: Back-Channel Negotiation in Northern Ireland, published last year.

The schedule for the symposium, and registration links, will be available through the Irish Studies website [bc.edu/irish]. —Sean Smith