Leaving Parade College
Communion
P. Mark O'Loughlin cfc
December 2005
I have been a privileged member of the Parade College community for thirty discontinuous years: as deputy principal for 1969; as chemistry teacher from 1970 to 1972, while principal of Edmund Rice College; as member of the governing council from 1978 to 1990, during my years with the Christian Brothers' Province Leadership Team; and as a counsellor since 1992. My formal association with the Parade community will conclude this year.
During these years I have continually found sources of satisfaction in the life of the College: the spirit of Edmund Rice nurtured and so evidently alive in extraordinary outreach to the aged and disadvantaged and refugees, and generous support of the peoples of eastern Africa and other community causes such as Edmund Rice Camps and the Blood Bank; excellence, at times, in academic achievements; building and refurbishment and landscape developments providing optimal educational facilities; growth of participatory governance and planning for the future; valuing of heritage and patrimony; development of student care through the Student Support Services department; the best of educational middle management through the house leader system and ministry team; pioneering the Rock and Water program to enhance personal development; flourishing of the fine arts, with excellent achievement in musical productions, band performances, Rock Eisteddfod participation, student art, drama, and Rhythm and Poetry events; continuing curriculum developments to meet the diverse needs of students; grounded boys' education with clarity of expectations and boundaries and sanctions; and continuing achievement in sporting participation. I applaud the visionary and gifted leadership of Denis Moore who has overseen this burgeoning of Parade College life.
In addition to these sources of pleasure I experience a deeper satisfaction. During my decades of association with Parade, the College has experienced the grave challenge facing all Catholic schools in a post Vatican Council and post Scholastic Theology world. Catholic schools no longer have the comfort of measurable results of religious education through an evaluation of learned catechetical formulae and fidelity to moral codes and Catholic sacramental practice. Pre-Vatican doctrinaire approaches and religious practices are no longer meaningful and attractive. Nor should they be. In 1962, at the opening of the Second Vatican Council, Pope John XXIII declared: Divine Providence is leading us to a new order of human relations. After four decades we might reasonably ask what evidence do we see of a new order of human relations. Has Parade adapted to the challenge of the post Vatican world? What is Parade rediscovering that is faithful to the precious religious patrimony of the Christian tradition?
In seeking to answer these questions I find myself identifying with the reflections of two contemporary theologians. In July of this year, David Ranson, a priest who teaches at the Catholic Institute of Sydney, delivered a paper to the Australian Congregational Leadership of Religious Institutes. His theme was a call to relationship and communion. He wrote: To believe in the divine mystery is to affirm that at the heart of all creation beats the impulse and the drive towards relationship. To be a church sacramental of this Mystery means that we both share in and co-operate with God's own dream that the whole of creation be gathered up in this same experience of communion. At a previous presentation David had commented that the nature of God is communion. His theme is insistent.
More recently, Michael Whelan, a priest working at the Aquinas Academy in Sydney, facilitated the annual Paul Noonan conversation on spirituality. He spoke of a necessary shift in Catholicism from a culture of telling to a culture of conversation. In support of his thesis that we are called to communion through authentic dialogue, Michael invited us to reflect with Thomas Merton: The deepest level of communication is not communication, but communion. My dear companions, we are already one. But we imagine that we are not. What we have to be is what we are.
The common theme of David and Michael must and does reflect a core gospel value. We see it captured in John's words coming from Jesus: May they all be one.
I believe that here we have yardsticks for evaluating the Catholicity of life and education in the contemporary world … goals of inclusivity, relationality, conversation, sharing of story, and communion. I find deep satisfaction in recognizing that Parade is measuring up increasingly well against these goals through developments such as: the introduction of the house tutor system; staff development days when the principal focus has been the sharing of personal story; the inauguration of mother and son evenings and a father and son program; and current staff development aimed at enhanced relational skills in classroom practice.
These significant developments in Parade life have as their principal goals inclusivity and relationality and ultimately a communion where, in an older language, God is in us and we are in God. Seeking a "god" outside this truth appears to me to be a distraction. Parade is seeking and beginning to exemplify a new order of human relations. I rejoice, and I am grateful.
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