Thank God for Church schools

Holidays are almost over. Time to go back to school and a good time to reflect about Church schools.

Church schools are first and foremost a means of evangelisation- Fr Paul Chetcuti

There are 63 Church schools, run by 16 religious orders or entities, involving more than 2,000 full-time teaching and non-teaching staff, as well as many part-timers, educating close to 17,000 students. (48 per cent of the student population in Malta.)

Lately, I have had the privilege of getting acquainted with a number of these schools. My feeling is one of deep gratitude. Caring for them are so many dedicated educators.

One can sense the presence of a Spirit – with a capital S – that animates so many Church schools and manifests itself in the radiant faces of children. They feel safe, loved and personally guided in their growing-up process. One can see collaboration, mutual support, generous self-giving that goes beyond petty interests of self-advancement; a willingness to go much further than the letter of employment contracts, always with the aim of serving each child as a cherished and priceless gift.

This might indeed sound rosy or airy-fairy for some. I insist that it is genuine, even if the context includes limitations and weaknesses, stresses and conflicts, incompetence and mismanagement. Church schools, like all others, remain human.

Church schools were founded with an essentially holistic view of the human person – each child is divine and human at the same time – a child of God born to human parents. The ultimate aim of Catholic education is to help each child become fully human by nurturing his or her spiritual and divine identity.

Church schools are first and foremost a means of evangelisation. They are the Church’s prime way of exercising its mission of bringing Christ to men and women while accompanying them on their journey towards Him. This has nothing to do with crass and shallow proselytism. This is the Church’s vocation.

Yet, like the seed that falls into the ground, Church schools need to face many challenges that might prevent them from bearing abundant fruit. Let me refer to just a few.

Like every human institution Church schools risk losing their vision in the day to day struggle to make the workings tick. Efficiency risks sidelining effectiveness. Measurable results may remove the focus away from an immeasurable but deeper transformation in the soul of the child.

The autonomy and identity of Church schools may be short-circuited and blunted by bureaucratic and financial pressures coming from all sides.

The very popularity of Church schools may backfire and take the edge off their faithfulness to their primary mission, pushing them to cave in to pressures from a well-meaning but not so enlightened society or even from parents themselves.

The very Church-State agreement which underpins the existence of Church schools may fail to withstand the test of time and lead to an alienation from the core evangelisation mission it was meant to protect.

The increasing pressures from State bureaucracy may have already become a subtle (or not so subtle) encroachment on the fundamental autonomy of Church schools that is so much part of a truly democratic society. I hope I’m mistaken in my gut feeling that what is today just bureaucratic pressure may very easily turn again into an ideological one.

Increasing secularisation and pluralism in our society, coupled with the gradual but seemingly inevitable disappearance of priests and consecrated people from Church schools, makes it urgent more than ever to confide our students to convinced and well-prepared lay people.

Church schools are not immune to the danger of resting on their own laurels of past success. The dynamics of modern Maltese society require a serious and courageous spurt of creative fidelity to the Gospel which, I am convinced, is the best and only foundation for a truly human and humane society which the Church is called to serve and sustain.

pchetcuti@gmail.com

Fr Chetcuti is a member of the Society of Jesus.