The Reunion... New Lamps for Old

New Lamps for Old
The feeling of community that grew, from the moment of arrival at the reunion to the moment of departure, still grows as part of new structure that most of us heard about on the second day of the reunion. It’s called the Edmund Rice Network. Anyone who has ever been connected with the Christian Brothers in any way is regarded as a member. Each person, of course, elects to do something or nothing, and can elect to opt out. But even those who do nothing or opt out are regarded as stake holders. Their lack of interest or even anger holds a message about the Congregation’s effectiveness. Another way of putting it is that the point of such a conceptual structure is that it keeps those deeply involved aware of a larger body of people whose interests are at stake in what they do. It is a way of extending the mental boundaries of community beyond the “cloister”, the school, the Province, the Church, to people’s homes and workplaces – to people’s lived experience. This is reflected in the incredible diversity of roles now undertaken by Professed Brothers; and the efforts being made in Brothers’ schools to set aside the distinction between “lay” and “religious” teachers in the formation of communities dedicated to nurturing the common humanity of all involved – staff, students, parents, and anyone in any way connected with the schools. Indeed, there has been a radical restructuring of the management of Brothers’ schools. They have been absorbed into a corporate structure that has been separated from the Congregation itself and is now managed mainly by people in the wider church community. Members of the Congregation, of course, continue to be involved at that level, but as co-participants in the process rather than as agenda-setters. And this broadening of community involvement has been instituted within the very structure of the Congregation itself. All of the Brothers in Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and other Pacific Ocean states have been amalgamated into one Province, known as the Oceania Province. Four aspects of its management have been “outsourced” if I can use that term – Formation, Ministries, Edmund Rice Network Development, and Admin and Financial services. Only one of the Directors of those four agencies is a Professed member of the Congregation. The final point of significance is that it is set up in a way that prevents Bishops from having authority within the Congregation or the schools of the Edmund Rice Network. This has actually been the case almost since the Congregation’s earliest days. There is nothing particularly startling about this. Many of the Orders and Congregations that operate within the Catholic Church are not supervised by Bishops. The significance of this is that it contributes to the opportunity for the laity to exercise “their own proper competence in the building up of the Church”. (Decree on the apostolate of the lay people, 1965, par.25).

Recovering the Founder
One of the most breath taking developments in the life of the Congregation is what I am calling Recovering the Founder1. Edmund Rice, a wealthy merchant in the late eighteenth century, devoted his entire wealth to the education of the poor in Ireland. A significant number of people, some of them also men of means, joined his enterprise which became one of the major players in education in the English speaking world. In his own lifetime, however, his vision for education was subverted – indeed, he was deposed as the leader of the organisation he founded and wilfully misrepresented in the histories that were written until very recently. So vicious was the misrepresentation, that for decades Edmund Rice was not even acknowledged as the founder; that honour being falsely given to John Baptist de la Salle. The stumbling block which generations of his followers could not mentally negotiate was the fact that he was a widower with a daughter when he founded the Congregation. It is now being suggested that his campaign to educate the poor, especially, but not exclusively, the children, was motivated by his parental instincts. Yet this is the very point that was not just underplayed but killed off and shrouded in embarrassed equivocation in all but recent accounts of his life.

When he was replaced as the leader of his organisation a seismic shift in educational practice overtook the schools; and the organisation took a confrontational stance, based on sectarian self-interest, towards the emerging government policy on public education. The triumph of sectarianism over Edmund Rice’s humanism distorted relationships within the Congregation for almost the whole of its existence. It was authoritarian and secretive and utterly inhumane towards those it judged as “letting down the side”. In this respect it reflected the larger Church within which it operated. And like the larger church which, at the Second Vatican Council, metamorphosed into an institution of faith, as distinct from an institution of piety, the Congregation, too, underwent a renewal of outlook and practice. Like the Church, which had to have been undergoing the transformation for some time before it burst into new life in the early to mid sixties, the Congregation, too, was undertaking a significant psychological re-orientation, and by the mid-sixties its houses of formation were being led by men of profound humanity. Many of the emerging leaders of the congregation had taken post-graduate degrees, and there was a gathering critical mass of people informed by biblical scholarship and the theology of Karl Rahner, Yves Congar and others. Ironically, that deepening of prophetic faith in the Congregation coincided with a near collapse in terms of continuing professed membership. The reason for that is too big an issue to canvass here. It is the topic of a planned post that deals with the apparent collapse of the Catholic Church after the Second Vatican Council.

An aspect of the flowering of new life in the Congregation was the quiet determination and courage of a few members, quite independently of one another, to question and scrutinise the “received truths” of their history. Records of interview from the early decades of the congregation were subjected to forensic investigation to discover the distortions that could be identified and the inferences that could be drawn about suppressed events. Ever so slowly, small but significant pieces of information emerged that would eventually culminate in a massive review of material held in archives all around the world, but especially in Ireland. This in turn uncovered the fact that there were one or two who were determined to “protect” the Congregation’s “interests”. Nevertheless, the fruit of all this digging around – turning the dirt, so to speak – was the publication of a major new work on Edmund Rice2 that is, at the same time, breath taking and a breath of fresh air3. It both reflects and contributes to the new life of the Congregation. Another manifestation of the recovery of the Founder is an Icon (for once, the correct use of the word) that explicitly acknowledges his fatherhood and depicts him as a man deeply embedded in Celtic Christianity. As Desmond Kyne put it in his notes on the icon …commanding, relaxed and intent… a person of strength and vision… [with large] eyes … taking everything in and revealing his compassion and understanding4.



1. I’m not sure there would be unanimous approval of that term among the members (more on that in another post), but it was certainly the view at the reunion.

2. Denis McLaughlin, The Price of Freedom, David Lovell Publishing, Melbourne, 2007

3. I have written a “review” of the book which can be accessed by this link
http://twogreytoes.blogspot.com/2009/04/uncovering-past-on-behalf-of-future.html

4. For a picture of the icon and a description of its components, see:
http://www.edmund-rice.wa.edu.au/edmundr/theicon/kidsdescription.html#edmund