Marianist Charism

and Educational Mission

Joseph Lackner, SM

Volume  1

Table of Contents

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION

1.      CHAMINADE’S APOSTOLIC INTENT IN FOUNDING SCHOOLS

AN HISTORICAL ACCOUNT

INTRODUCTION

RELIGIOUS CLIMATE OF FRANCE

SODALITIES, CHAMINADE’S FIRST APOSTOLIC EFFORT

BATTLEGROUND OF THE SCHOOLS

Foundation of the Daughters of Mary and the Society of Mary

School Laws and the Society of Mary

Normal Schools, a Work Especially Inspired by God

CHAMINADE'S VISION OF SCHOOLS, TEACHERS, AND EDUCATION

Crucial Distinction between Instruction and Education

Not simply Another Congregation of Teachers

To reach the Masses

The Vocation of the Educator

Behaviors and Dispositions of the Educator

Importance of Instruction

Family Spirit and Collaboration

A Balance between Innovation and Conservation

Development of a Marianist Pedagogy

Beliefs about the Nature of Students

Chaminade’s Vision of the Teacher and the French School

2.      SCHOOLS AND THE MARIANIST CHARISM

CHARISM

MARIANIST CHARISM UNDERSTOOD AS CULTURE

Elements of Culture

Elements of the Marianist Culture or Charism

Ecological Context

Collectivity, Community

Contents of Culture

Affirmation, Expression, and Communication

Characteristic Behaviors and Practices

Recruitment and Initiation

SUMMARY

MARIANIST SCHOOLS AS A MANIFESTATION AND PERPETUATION OF THE MARIANIST CULTURE/CHARISM

Introduction

The Culture of Marianist Schools as Enactment of the Marianist Charism

Ecological Context

Founder(s)

Collectivity, Community

Contents of Culture and Some of the Ways It Is Affirmed, Expressed and

Communicated

Affirmation, Expression, and Communication

Recruitment, Initiation, and Continuing Formation of New Members

SUMMARY

CONCLUSION

APPENDIX A CONVICTIONS AND ACTIONS OF MARIANIST TEACHERS AS DELINEATED IN CHARACTERISTICS OF MARIANIST EDUCATION (1996)

APPENDIX B QUESTIONS FOR PERSONAL REFLECTION, INDIVIDUALLY OR IN A GROUP

QUESTIONS ORIENTED TO ACTIONS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

PREFACE

The book you now have in your hands carries the title: Marianist Charism and Educational Mission. It is the first publication of the collection MARIANIST EDUCATION:  HERITAGE AND FUTURE, a series of essays on Marianist education that came out of a project which began to take shape, four years ago, under the leadership of the Assistant general for education of that time.

We Marianist religious have been creating educational works since our very origins, almost two centuries ago. Today we continue all over the world to dedicate the best of our human and material resources to education. The practical implementations are accompanied, as has always been the case , by reflection about the task accomplished, the ways of responding creatively to novel and unforeseen situations and the means for transmission of our experience and wisdom to new generations of educators.

In this way, the Marianist educational tradition has been enriched over the years, nourished by the reflection, competence and creativity of those who carry on the initial commitment. The Marianist educators – at the beginning all were Marianists and today almost all are laity – have known how to maintain an on-going dialogue with their environs so that their formational goals might be able to continue to be incarnated in each human situation.

Again today, current circumstances demand our attention. The internal conditions of the Society of Mary and of our own establishments need our renewed planning. The growing development of Marianist works in new countries and cultures, along with the consequent need to transmit to them an up-to-date Marianist pedagogy, as well as the presence of lay persons in the majority in almost all the positions of responsibility, are realities that mark the way forward in Marianist education.

Given these considerations, the idea arose to undertake the project of Marianist Education: Heritage and Future. The desire to deepen and to develop the content of the document on our educational characteristics impelled us to create something new. The growing interest in knowing our charism and the current contributions of the educational sciences have inspired and oriented our efforts. The new circumstances confronting the youth and families of the societies where we are present urge us along in this task.

The books which form the collection are intended to respond to these needs. They are the result of a process of study, reflection and dialogue, and are meant to offer guidelines for a Marianist education capable of inspiring individuals and of transforming society.

The purpose of this first book is to show how the Society of Mary’s dedication to education has a close relationship with its own identity. Thus it treats our Charism, our Mission and our Spirituality as the foundations of Marianist education.  The very characteristics of Marianist education are the consequence of a tradition seated in the aforesaid elements and in the historical origins of the Society of Mary. Thus the goal of Marianist education, as of our entire mission, is formation in faith; through the educational apostolate we strive to help persons grow holistically and to sow in them the Christian spirit.

In the book entitled Educational Principles, which will be the second publication of the collection, we intend to plumb the depths of the foundations of Marianist education with the contributions of anthropology, theology, and the social and institutional principles. The third topic addressed is the Context, given that the Marianist institutions must take account of, along with general principles, the needs, expectations and conditions proper to each locale, as well as of the advances of the pedagogical sciences and new technologies. The fourth section treats the Identity of Marianist education, the heir of a rich tradition with distinctive traits that respond to the principles studied in the preceding chapters. The fifth book deals with the Educational Activity which is developed in diverse institutions and considers some agents and specific addressees. The sixth theme refers to Animation and Leadership of the Marianist educational works, since the accomplishment of its objectives depends in great part upon those who bear the burdens of leadership responsibility.

Under the title of New Education in New Scenarios, we intend to bring together in the seventh section the contributions of countries or continents more culturally distant from the Western environment in which Marianist education was born, or where there is as yet less of a tradition.

The target readerships of these publications are the many diverse groups of men and women interested in Marianist education: the Marianist religious currently dedicated to education, both those who are now preparing themselves for it and those who have consecrated their entire lives to it; the lay persons who direct, animate and teach in a Marianist institution, helping them take on an educational project able to give meaning to their efforts and fill them with enthusiasm; pastoral workers and other educators, so that they might accomplish their task with awareness of the principles and motivations which inspire the works of the Marianists; those who animate and govern Marianist life according to diverse levels of responsibility; the parents of the students, who also begin a process of formation when their children enter an educational institution. The project is also directed to alumni, to the society in which we are present and to all those interested in education. And, of course, the project addresses local churches, so that they might understand more deeply what the Marianist educational works intend to do. The ultimate goal, of course, is to better serve the children and young people who come to our educational institutions, and who are the principal addressees of all our efforts.

The purpose of this whole project is to offer a sound instrument for promoting formation, reflection and dialogue in different Marianist surroundings. It can serve, at the same time, as a point of reference and of inspiration for local educational projects. For that reason it includes theoretical reflections and offers more concrete proposals. The characteristics of Marianist education are thus framed in a comprehensive study that is intended to be thorough and rigorous, but yet accessible.

In carrying this whole project forward we have benefited from the collaboration of a very valuable team. Among the authors are religious and lay persons, men and women, immediately engaged in the Marianist educational mission or fulfilling diverse responsibilities in this field. All of them know well the Marianist educational praxis and its history. The majority have been teachers, directors, department heads, researchers in pedagogical sciences or coordinators of the Marianist mission in their respective countries.

The author of the volume which we now present is the late Joseph Lackner, an American Marianist religious.  (Father Lackner died in the service of the Blessed Virgin Mary in April, 2013.) A specialist in education and Sacred Scripture, he held a doctorate in History of Theology and another in Education. He taught in several Marianist schools and universities in the United States. Father Lackner proved most knowledgeable about Marianist education, a topic on which he did several studies. He also held several positions of responsibility for animation and governance in the Society of Mary in his country.  He most recently served as professor at the Marianists’ Chaminade University in Honolulu and at the Deepahalli Educational Centre, a branch of the University of Dayton, in Bangalore (India).  We sincerely appreciate the work he accomplished, its quality and its clarity, and the time that he dedicated to it.  We are also grateful to those who have collaborated with him in the composition of the text by contributing their suggestions and comments.

Marianist education will have a future if we are capable of responding to the changes of time and place, while remaining faithful to the original insights. New adaptations will be needed, new pathways explored, but in this way the tradition will be enriched even more, and our educational project will continue to fulfill, now and in the future, a qualitative and relevant role. Thus it will be able to continue to give life and life in abundance.

Essodomna Maximin Magnan, SM

Assistant General for Education

Avril 2014

INTRODUCTION

Blessed Chaminade came to believe that the best way to re-Christianize the France of his times (1800 to 1850) was through schools that embodied his understanding of education. Today, the Church and Marianists continue to believe that schools characterized by the Marianist charism are a principal way to form faith-filled apostles, who work at the transformation of society, and thereby participate in Mary’s mission. This volume of Heritage and Future details both the history of Chaminade’s effort in schools, as well as today’s manifestation of the Marianist charism in schools and other educational institutions.

The work is divided into two major sections entitled “Chaminade’s Apostolic Intent in Founding Schools, An Historical Account” and “Schooling and the Marianist Charism.” A distinction between schooling and education is consistently made throughout this presentation. Though it may sometimes be awkward to make this distinction, the reason for doing so is that in many situations schools exist in which education does not take place. As Chaminade once pointed out, many schools are but factories in which instruction may be given but not education. Further, it is the conviction of this volume that education in Chaminade’s sense is synonymous with Mary’s mission of forming/nurturing other Christs and Christian communities throughout time. As Emile Neubert, SM, an eminent mariologist and interpreter of the Marianist spirit, wrote: “Education is a participation in the work of Mary. She is the great teacher of mankind. Her mission has been, and still is, to give birth to Jesus Christ and to rear Him.” Therefore, no matter in what ministry members of the Marianist Family engage, if their “unalterable intention” is to participate in Mary’s mission, they must strive to educate.

In the first section Blessed Chaminade’s ever increasing involvement in founding and supervising schools, developing pedagogy, and defining the true nature of education is traced. A long citation from Chaminade’s letter of 1838 to Pope Gregory XVI begins the section.  In the quotation he clearly states his purpose for founding his religious orders and for turning to schools as a principal means for effecting a change in France. The point he makes is that, though the creation of sodalities did much good, they were not sufficient. Something more embracing or more effective was needed. In these lines he clearly emphasizes that the two religious orders and the schools were essential to achieving what he believed was his mission.

A brief introduction to this section describes the religious climate in which Chaminade ministered. Then, through his correspondence and other writings, his apostolic intent and strategy, his definition of education, his portrait of the apostolic teacher, both lay and religious, and the spirituality that was to motivate him are examined. Naturally, his language reflects the religious parlance of nineteenth-century France, but the attitudes, sentiments, behaviors, convictions, and spiritual orientations it reveals are as valid today as in his time.

In the second section, an ecclesial definition of charism is presented. It is suggested that one way to look at charism is to see it as a type of culture. The elements of culture in general are then briefly described and then applied to the Marianist charism. Finally, it is argued that Marianist Schools are a manifestation or enactment of the Marianist charism and culture and a means to perpetuate it.

The work is then brought to an end with a short conclusion, questions for reflection and action, and bibliography.

1. CHAMINADE’S APOSTOLIC INTENT IN FOUNDING SCHOOLS -AN HISTORICAL ACCOUNT

INTRODUCTION

“To erect a powerful dam to withhold the torrent of evil, Heaven has inspired me to solicit from the Holy See at the beginning of this century the letters patent, giving me the title of Missionary Apostolic so as to revive or to re-enkindle everywhere the divine torch of faith, while presenting to the astonished world on all sides, imposing masses of Catholic Christians of every age, sex, and condition, who, reunited in special associations, practice our holy religion with neither vanity nor human respect, in all the purity of its dogmas and morals. Filled with this thought and furthermore, urged by worthy prelates, I poured out my entire soul in a humble supplication at the feet of our Holy Father Pius VII, who deigning to listen favorably to my prayer, accorded me most ample powers by a Decree of March 28, 1801. From that time, Most Holy Father, fervent Sodalities – some men and others of women – were organized in several cities of France. Religion had the happiness of counting a large number of adherents in a relatively short time, and much good was accomplished.

But, Most Holy Father, this means, however excellent it may be when it is wisely used, is not sufficient. Philosophy and Protestantism, favored in France by the ruling power, have taken hold of public opinion and of the schools, attempting to spread in all minds, especially during childhood and youth, this libertinism of thought, still more baneful than that of the heart from which it is inseparable. However, who could even conceive of all the resulting evils?

I have believed before God, Most Holy Father, that it was necessary to found two new orders, the one of virgins and the other of young men, who would [prove] to the world by the fact of their good example that Christianity is not an out-moded institution. They would show that the Gospel is as practicable today as it was 1800 years ago; they would challenge the propaganda hidden under a thousand and one disguises; and, they would take over the battleground of the schools by opening classes of all levels and subjects, especially for those classes of people most numerous and most abandoned.”  (Chaminade to Gregory XVI, September 16, 1838)

These are the words of a seventy-seven year old man, looking back on the significance of his life’s work. As he recounted the story of his apostolic vision to the pope, he indicated that he had come to realize that, despite how successful sodalities were, for Christianity to be renewed in post-revolutionary France something more was needed. For this reason and because he was convinced it was the design of God, he founded two religious orders “who would take over the battleground of the schools,” the arena that offered the best opportunity for forming apostolic minds and hearts imbued with the Christian spirit. Not unlike others before and after him, including Napoleon, he believed the school was a crucible in which a person’s character could be formed. His words to Gregory represent his mature reflections. The story on which they are based is, of course, more tangled than they suggest.

RELIGIOUS CLIMATE OF FRANCE

Through the second half of the eighteenth century, and perhaps before, a pervasive    alienation from the Church was growing. The Encyclopédie, published from 1751 to 1772, fueled an anti-Catholicism “that had no equivalent in European thought,” and its popularity eventually reached down to the peasants. This thirty-five volume work edited by Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond D’Alembert contained articles from leaders of the French Enlightenment such as Voltaire. Often called philosophes, these skeptical thinkers were convinced of the inevitability of human progress through recourse to reason alone, something questioned now in postmodernism and throughout the twentieth century. Trumpeted by Voltaire in his famous slogan, “écrasez l’infâme” (“crush the infamous” [State and Church]), the philosophes’ or Encyclopédistes’ aim was to sweep away what they considered the superstitions of the State and Church. Symbolically, the spirit of the philosophes reached its apogee on November 10, 1793, when Reason, represented by a naked woman, was led down the aisle of the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris and mounted on the high altar. It was during this same period that churches throughout the nation were turned into “temples of reason.”

The leadership of the church also contributed to the populace’s growing estrangement from Catholicism. Most bishops resided outside their dioceses and were, at best, administrators, focused on the pleasures of this world. Perhaps an example of the nadir to which some among the higher clergy fell was Cardinal Étienne Charles de Loménie de Brienne. When he was suggested for the See of Paris, Louis XVI is reported to have said, “‘At the very least … the Archbishop of Paris must believe in God.’” The same spirit infected many among the secular and religious clergy. While a seminarian in Bordeaux, Chaminade was disheartened by the laxity of the monasteries he visited.

What was true of some of the religious and clergy was also true of the laity. It has been estimated that right before the Revolution two thirds of the population of Bordeaux abstained from fulfilling its Easter duties. For example, in the parish of Sainte Eulalie, a place important to Chaminade, there were only five thousand annual Communions, though the congregation numbered forty thousand members. Looking back on this time, Chaminade wrote, “Before the Revolution the frequentation of the Sacraments, even at Easter, was almost lost among men.” But despite this bleak picture of the spiritual life of the Church, no one who celebrated the storming of the Bastille (July 14, 1789) would have imagined that the privileged and dominating ancienne église would be brought to its knees in the ensuing years.

It was to this Church in France that William Joseph Chaminade returned in 1800 after his exile in Spain, a church remarkably altered from the one that had existed before 1789, a church not only cautious but also devastated, dispossessed of possessions, authority, and power. What Chaminade found was that the alienation from religious faith and practice already apparent in the second half of the eighteenth century had only worsened with the Revolution and its aftermath. “The mass of the people… for more than a decade… grew up largely uncatechized, unaccustomed to Catholic rites, their lives not governed by the Church calendar in the way their parents’ had been….”. These people had nothing to pass on to their children. As one priest reported to his bishop in 1821, “‘most parents brought up in the unhappy days of the Revolution know no prayers and consequently cannot teach them to their children.’”

SODALITIES, CHAMINADE’S FIRST APOSTOLIC EFFORT

In face of this situation and with the aim of re-Christianizing France, Chaminade’s first apostolic effort was the formation of sodalities. Attentive to the tenor of the times and inspired by the first community of Jerusalem, the sodality was composed of persons of various social classes (artisans, merchants, businessmen, aristocrats), sexes, ages, and different stations in life. These individuals met in groups with those of like condition — such as the Young Men, the Young Women, the Fathers of Families, the Ladies of the Retreat, and the Seminarians and Priests — but they also met together in public assemblies for mutual encouragement, recreation, education, and discussion of pastoral action.

Chaminade believed that this replication of primitive Christianity responded precisely to the new situation in which the Church found itself. The sodality represented, in the words of Benedict XVI, a “creative minority” in the midst of an irreligious France. Just as it had been through the circuits of clubs and other associations that the Enlightenment and an egalitarian spirit of the age had spread, so Chaminade employed a similar means to revitalize a spirit of Christianity and a genuine sense of fraternity, equality, and liberty.

One of the objections so often leveled against his sodality was that it seemed too much “of the times,” too egalitarian. Such a complaint echoed what has been called the “French mania for rank” that persisted beyond the Revolution. In this respect, Chaminade wrote:

There is no denying the fact that, in human nature there is an innate attraction for rank and distinction, and consequently, a latent fear on the part of certain ones to be counted less than they really are, or imagine themselves to be; besides, there are others, conscious of their worth, who are very sensitive on this point and take alarm at the least slight to their dignity. But we must admit too, that this extreme sensitiveness, this inflexible attitude to maintain one's rank, is scarcely in conformity with the spirit of humility and charity of Christianity. The Church, in the dispensation of its sacraments, never countenances the like rigidity.

May Christians not be made to understand this? May it not even be mentioned to them? And are the ministers of religion doing the right thing in cultivating these prejudices among the people of the world? It seems to me, that the Sodality by uniting special groups into one body, by drawing distinctions between conditions in life without separating them, is following a prudent middle course, and that it meets the requirements of the Church in this, without forfeiting its own nobility, or catering to the exactions of society, or to human weakness. (Chaminade Legacy I-154).

For Chaminade, the spirit of the sodality was modeled on the “one heart and soul” of the Acts of the Apostles, a common union and a fundamental equality in Christ, while at the same time respecting differences.

Chaminade built upon the shared personal characteristics of the sodalists, thereby contributing to the emergence of collective meanings and group cohesion. However, at the same time he sought to enlarge these natural ties by an extensive program of formation in faith. This program involved participation in general public meetings in which sodalists presented instruction in both religious and human development, sharing in common religious devotions, engaging in joint recreations, in spiritual support of one another and spiritual direction. Chaminade also delegated many roles and offices to the sodalists in order to enhance their sense of responsibility for the operation of the sodality.

In effect, what he sought to provide among these sodalists was what cultural analysts characterize as a process of "differential interaction," whereby associations among a set of persons begin significantly to out-number associations with other persons and groups in the environment. Through this process Chaminade intended to develop among the sodalists "a common frame of reference,” a common understanding of the Christian life and mission in face of the alienation from religious faith that had arisen during the second half of the eighteenth century and continued into the present. Through this interaction similar feelings and understandings were fostered among the sodalists, and their dependence upon one another for emotional support engendered commitment to the sodality.

Unlike those who belonged to the sodalities formed before the Revolution, who were already fervent Christians when they became sodalists, the Bordeaux Sodality invited persons of all degrees of commitment to join its ranks. By accepting such persons Chaminade intended to create an organization for the masses, believing that their assimilation in the community would be the means of regenerating the Christian spirit within them. Thus, Chaminade encouraged a more communal approach to holiness than that found in the older sodalities which focused more specifically on each person's own efforts at growth in holiness in a somewhat elitist manner.

By incorporation with others into an active community, individuals would benefit from mutual encouragement in their growth in holiness, a reciprocal formation supported by frequent community gatherings.  In effect, he sought to multiply Christians by multiplying Christian milieus. As indicated above, he believed that the creation of these supportive Christian subcultures was essential because the spirit of the age, in so many ways contrary to Christian values, rendered the pursuit of a dedicated Christian life more difficult than in ages past.

Another difference that separated his sodality from those founded before the Revolution was a new focus on apostolic action. The sodality's mission was achieved first and foremost by attracting new members and incorporating them into its community. In the language of cultural analysts, the sodality represented a missionary organization that could be labeled "converter." It hoped "to change the world indirectly, by attracting members and changing them." But the members also engaged in a variety of other works directed toward re-christianizing the country.

BATTLEGROUND OF THE SCHOOLS

Foundation of the Daughters of Mary Immaculate and the Society of Mary

Looking back on his missionary effort in the first decades of the nineteenth century, Chaminade told Gregory XVI that he realized that no matter how excellent the formation of sodalities is, it was not sufficient. The “new wars” had to be fought on another battleground. Undoubtedly, various factors, political and religious, eventually led him to this conclusion. To begin with, two of the sodalists urged Chaminade to form religious orders, Adèle de Batz de Trenquelléon and Jean Baptiste Lalanne.

In 1804 Adèle was fifteen years of age and resided in Trenquelléon, more than 70 miles from Bordeaux.  In that year she formed the Little Association. This group of fervent Christians gradually grew. Through Jean Baptiste Hyacinthe Lafon, a sodalist from Bordeaux, Adèle became acquainted with Chaminade. Their relationship developed and the members of the Little Association were received as members of the Bordeaux sodality. By 1813 Adèle and some of her associates were considering forming a religious community. At the same time Father Chaminade had been contemplating the creation a religious community living in the world. After much correspondence between the two, the Daughters of Mary Immaculate were formed in 1816. Though there was some initial objection by Chaminade, the first ministry undertaken by the sisters was teaching poor children in Agen.

In the following year (May 1, 1817) Jean Baptiste Lalanne, a sodalist and a seminarian, approached Chaminade to found a religious order of men. According to Lalanne, Chaminade told him that he had been awaiting this moment for thirty years. Six others joined with Lalanne to constitute the initial nucleus of the Society of Mary. The original members were representative of the mixture of the social classes of the sodality and of the mixed composition (lettered laymen, workers, and priests) of the future Society of Mary. During the next two years, these men had weekly meetings to discuss what principles would characterize this new foundation. A summary of these meetings is found in a report made by Lalanne on September 2, 1819. Listed as its main works were “the education of middle-class young men, missions, retreats, and the establishment and direction of sodalities.” Three of the founding member (Auguste Brougnon-Pierrière, Lalanne, and Jean Baptiste Collineau) already were teachers and they continued in their occupation.

In 1818, the Institute of Mary, which Chaminade presented for approval to the Archbishop of Bordeaux and later called "a little outline of the prospective Constitutions," recorded that instruction in the humanities, to the extent authorized by civil and ecclesiastical officials, "while not the immediate object of the Institute, has been undertaken as a good work…" The next year (1819) some members were directing a boarding school in Bordeaux and in 1820, at the request of some sodalists in Agen, a primary school was accepted in that city.

As noted above, eighteen years later (1838), when Chaminade presented the Constitutions of the Society of Mary to Pope Gregory XVI, Chaminade stated that he had founded the two religious orders to “take over the battleground of the schools by opening classes of all levels and subjects, especially for those classes of people most numerous and most abandoned.”

School laws and the Society of Mary

Once Napoleon came into power, he undertook a reorganization of education, making France "the first European state to set up a highly integrated, strictly hierarchical organization that incorporated the teaching profession into the state service." What he established by law in 1808 was the Imperial University, "a national teaching corporation that would bring about uniformity of teaching throughout the Empire and have exclusive supervision of public instruction." It was headed by a Grand Master, who was assisted by a council.  He appointed Rectors over each of the twenty-eight academies, geographical divisions into which the country was divided. "No school could be operated except with its [the University's] authorization or employ teachers who had not received its diplomas. It was to be centralized, with the direction tightly controlled by the administration in Paris." This centralization resulted from Napoleon's conviction "that only state monopoly over education could lead to the integration [of the Empire] he sought." In his view education had the "responsibility of molding the moral and political opinions of citizens along the lines laid down by the head of state." In actual practice, primary education received the least attention.

By the time members of the Society of Mary began teaching in schools, Napoleon had fallen and the Bourbons, seen as counter-revolutionary and favorable to the Church, had been restored. However, the royalist government left the university structure in place but sought to infuse it with a spirit that would further the ends of the Church. Various ordinances simplified the process by which members of religious orders were empowered to teach in primary schools. For example, in 1819 the Brothers of the Christian Schools were incorporated into the university and exempted from the brevet (teaching certificate) as long as they had a letter appointing them by their Superior General. Soon similar provisions were made for other religious congregations that were authorized by the government.

For this reason and to take advantage of the law that exempted from military service (March 10, 1818) those who promised to teach for ten years in primary schools, Chaminade entered into nine months of tedious negotiations to obtain legal recognition of the Society of Mary. In the course of this process the civil Statutes of the Society of Mary, which were submitted in Paris, had to be revised several times. The original draft of forty-nine articles was reduced to eighteen in the final edition. Among the works listed in the first draft were schools, sodalities, municipal colleges, and schools of arts and crafts. But in the document finally approved by Charles X on November 16, 1825, only primary education and the possibility of normal schools were mentioned.

However, it was not Chaminade's intention that the means of carrying out the mission of the Society of Mary be so narrowed. Perhaps an inkling of the tension between what was stated in the statutes and what was Chaminade's genuine design can be sensed in the juxtaposition of the following sentences in the Constitutions of the Society of Mary (1839):

It is an effect of this predilection for early childhood and those little children upon whom Jesus showered His divine caresses that the Society of Mary has declared in its civil Constitutions that it devotes itself to primary education. In fact, its principal works relate to teaching. It takes charge of Free Primary Schools, Preparatory Primary Schools, Special Schools, Normal Schools and Arts and Crafts Schools. (Article 254)

The last two sentences make it clear that the intention of the Marianist apostolic endeavor in schools far surpassed the confines of primary schools, even though its civil statutes seemed to specify that as its major objective. In Article 362 of the Constitutions, Chaminade broadened the scope of schools even further, stating, “The Society opens also schools of higher education, of literature and of the sciences….”

Besides those works mentioned specifically in the Constitutions, the Society of Mary also sponsored others, such as orphanages and night schools. All this variety, Chaminade contended, was necessary because of the situation in which he lived. "The philosophic spirit," he wrote to the seminary director in Besançon, "is being introduced even into tiny villages, corrupting young and old of all conditions and of both sexes and this by the clever use of every kind of means. This is why we undertake different kinds of works and train or help to train subjects fully capable of sustaining and developing them." (Letter  296, June 11, 1824). However, he did focus his energy on primary and normal schools.

His efforts at these two forms of education must be situated within the general context of French elementary schools during the first half of the nineteenth century. At the same time, it must be remembered that in terms of the vast needs of France the material contribution of the Society of Mary as well as that of other religious orders was miniscule. For example, in 1835 the largest of the male teaching orders, the Christian Brothers, employed 1,660 members in elementary schools. However, primary schools in France then numbered approximately 45,000, increasing within fifteen years (1850) to 60,600. By contrast, in 1835 the Society of Mary staffed but twelve elementary schools, the number growing to thirty-two by 1850, the year of Chaminade's death.

Normal schools, a work especially inspired by God

Chaminade's actual results in the area of normal schools were even more meager. These were begun with the purchase of a large estate known as St. Rémy (1823) from Jean-Etienne Bardenet, a diocesan missionary priest from Besançon. At its foundation only three state-supported normal schools existed, those of Strasbourg, Île-de-France, and Bar-le-Duc, though France had seen various attempts at teacher training, beginning with the short lived establishment of St. Jean Baptiste de la Salle (1684).

Chaminade believed that his effort to establish normal schools was directly inspired by God. In this regard, he wrote to Count Alexis Noailles:

The first means to accomplish my mission [as Missionary Apostolic] was the institution or establishment of sodalities. One of the second means with which God deigned to inspire me, is the establishment of normal schools. If there were one in each Department or one in each province of the Academies of the University, maintained according to the plan I have drawn up, we could renovate the whole rising generation which will soon replace the present one(Letter 523, May 14, 1830).

Chaminade was intent on founding them in as many departments of France as he had personnel to staff them. He followed St. Rémy with a normal school at Courtefontaine (1829) and an agreement was reached with Count Alexis de Noailles to open one in his region of France.  At the same time, "… negotiations were in progress for the establishment of other Normal Schools in several dioceses, and an appeal [regarding the sponsorship of normal schools by the Society of Mary] was… to be issued to Bishops and Archbishops on the one hand, and to the Prefects and Rectors [of the University] on the other…" All told, for eight years Chaminade immersed himself in tedious dealings with government and ecclesiastical officials to make his goal a reality.

But all his immediate plans for normal schools came to a sudden end with the July Revolution of 1830 and its establishment of the revolution-oriented Louis-Philippe, Duc d'Orléans, cousin of Charles X, as monarch. The anti-clerical sentiment of the new regime would not countenance an alliance with the church in the education of the nation's teachers. This great disappointment notwithstanding, Chaminade continued to view normal schools as an extraordinary means for the regeneration of the Christian spirit in France. Even in the last years of his administrative duties, when no normal schools were staffed by Marianists, he continued to call them "the most cherished work" of the Society of Mary. For example, in an effort to interest Ferdinand Donnet, Archbishop of Bordeaux, in establishing a normal school in his diocese, he wrote (1843):

Since the foundation of the Society of Mary, it was arranged that, if for the perseverance of the subjects it was not possible to isolate the Brothers and send them in groups of less than three, help would nevertheless come to the Communes, either too poor or too small, by the organization of normal schools alongside our Novitiates, where we would train for the work of teaching, the subjects who, not having a religious vocation but wanting to live in a Christian manner and to devote themselves to the education of youth, would be sent to us by Providence.

The normal schools were and still are our most cherished work. At the time of the Revolution of July, we had treated with a certain number of Departments, but then there came a reaction, and the matter had to be provisionally set aside.

Today, Your Excellency, might perhaps be time to think seriously of a normal school of the kind I have just spoken for the diocese (Letter 1274, September 4, 1843).

Though nothing came of this proposal, nonetheless Chaminade's last administrative act (1845) as superior general of the Society of Mary was to accept direction of a normal school in Sion, Switzerland.

CHAMINADE'S VISION OF SCHOOLS, TEACHERS, AND EDUCATION

Crucial distinction between Instruction and Education

Though not making a significant material contribution to schools, what Chaminade did offer was the vision of an educational culture different from that which was generally prevalent in the France of his day. Like many of his contemporaries, he held that the kind of school one created determined the kind of education that resulted and that the purpose of founding schools was not simply for the sake of instruction but for education.

This fundamental distinction between instruction and education was not original with Chaminade. For example, it was at the center of debates on schools at the National Convention.  Throughout the nineteenth century most spokespersons claimed that the aim of schools should be education. For some, this meant fostering a republican character in students. For others, like François-Pierre-Guillaume Guizot, the Orléanist Minister of Public Education, it meant providing a general religious atmosphere in schools so that through them respect for order and stability would be instilled in pupils. For still others it meant turning out "producers capable of developing the prosperity of the country."

But for Chaminade it meant that schools existed to impart an education that resulted in the multiplication of Christians, who were imbued with an apostolic spirit. To one pastor, he wrote:

Christian schools directed according to the method adopted by the Institute of Mary and conducted by its religious destined for this good work are a powerful means of reforming people. The children there generally make such rapid progress and become so docile and Christian that they carry the good odor of virtue and religion into their respective families.

The children become, as it were, apostles to their parents, and their apostolate always produces some happy fruit. That is what makes me call the schools a means of reforming the people (Letter 203, June18, 1822).

In letter after letter, Chaminade never tired in making the point that the apostolic intent of the schools he founded was for the sake of re-christianizing France, the transformation of society.

Schools, then, were to make up for what was lacking in the family, providing a milieu in which these children could be formed into practical Christians, who would in turn reform their homes. Upon completion of school, these children would be directed to various Christian associations, like the sodality, so that they would be provided with supportive, apostolic Christian environments from “cradle to grave.”

The distinction between instruction and education and the dedication to teaching for the sake of Christian formation were consecrated in the Constitutions of the Society of Mary (1839). "Under this title [Christian education]," he wrote, "are included all the means by which religion can be insinuated into the mind and heart of men, and thus raise them, from tender infancy even to the most advanced age, to the fervent and faithful profession of a true Christianity…" (Article 251) "The Society of Mary teaches only in order to raise [people] in a Christian manner; that is why we have placed all works of teaching under the title of Christian education; care should be taken never to change this." (Article 256)

In the same year that the Constitutions was published, Chaminade addressed similar sentiments to those who were to conduct retreats, which he hoped would be particularly effective in revitalizing fervor among the Marianist religious:

Yours [retreat masters] [is] to impress upon the teachers what a great mistake they would make if they were to limit their endeavors to instruction in human learning, if they were to put all their care and glory into the making of scholars and not of Christians, or into the gaining of a worldly reputation. Then they would be forgetting that they are missionaries of Mary and would descend from the high estate of apostles, in order to degrade themselves to the base level of those who work in the educational factories of our century (Letter 1163, August 24, 1839).

Not simply another congregation of teachers

The implication of statements such as these is that Chaminade's intention in founding the Society of Mary was not simply to create another teaching order such as that of Jean-Marie Lamennais' Brothers of Christian of Instruction of Ploermelm. In fact, since Chaminade had such a high regard for the Christian Brothers of St. Jean Baptiste de LaSalle, having initiated their re-establishment in Bordeaux (1806) and having directed some of his most devoted sodalists into their ranks, there would have been no need for him to institute a new religious order had his purpose been to found a community of teachers. Rather, Chaminade founded the Society of Mary along with the Daughters of Mary because he believed that they were to wield a "different sickle" in the Lord's harvest than that of other religious orders.

That difference can be somewhat grasped through a brief comparison of the Christian Brothers and the Society of Mary. The Christian Brothers were founded to provide "the gratuitous instruction of the children of the poor," to procure "needed instruction" and a "suitable Christian education… for the children of the working class and of the poor…" They were to form "a society of school masters," and they were not to "depart from the specific work he [LaSalle] had inaugurated or be led by outside influences to engage in other fields that would be inimical to the main purpose of the society." In part, it was for this reason that Christian Brothers were prohibited from studying or teaching Latin, lest they be tempted to abandon elementary education for teaching in classical secondary schools or their vocation as lay religious for that of the priesthood. The spirit of their institute, declared the Christian Brother Rule, consisted "in an ardent Zeal for the instruction of children, and for bringing them up in the fear of God, inducing them to preserve their innocence if they have not lost it, and inspiring them with a great aversion and horror for sin and whatever might cause them to lose purity."

In contrast, according to the Constitutions of the Society of Mary (1839) it was "Zeal for the salvation of souls" that was "the motive for the second object of the Society" (Article 5), which was "by means adapted to the needs and spirit of the age, to labor in the world at the salvation of souls by sustaining and propagating the teachings of the Gospel, the virtues of Christianity and the practices of the Catholic Church" (Article 1). According to Chaminade, this zeal resulted from the desire inspired by God in the members of "conforming ourselves with His grace to the resemblance of Jesus Christ and for giving ourselves to Mary for her most humble servants and ministers" (Article 252). As servants and ministers they might often find themselves as teachers in primary schools, but in principle they were always to be ready to follow Mary's instruction to the stewards at Cana, "'Do all that He will tell you'" (Article 6).  Therefore, unlike the Christian Brothers, no kind of work was excluded from the mission of the Society of Mary (Article 2). Thus, for example, some Brothers taught Latin in secondary schools that offered the classical course, priests preached retreats and missions, and sodalities were sponsored.

Partly because this mission was conceived in a universal or totally inclusive manner, the composition of the Society of Mary differed from that of the Christian Brothers. It was not a community of lay religious schoolmasters. It was made up of both lettered and unlettered laymen of all social classes and priests, all enjoying a relatively equal status and membership in the Society, engaging in a variety of works all focused by participation in Mary's eternal role of doing for people in every age what she had done in the fullness of times, nurturing Christ. According to Chaminade, this role of Mary was Christian education conceived in a broad perspective. Further, unlike the Christian Brothers, the Society of Mary was complemented by a female religious congregation and lay organizations (sodalities), all joined together by the common mission that they shared.

This difference between these two religious congregations can be partially ascribed to the different sociological contexts out of which they arose. Jean Baptiste LaSalle was laboring in the highly stratified, aristocratic society of late seventeenth century France, which generally neglected the education of poor children, whose working class or poor parents, "'being usually little instructed, and being occupied all day in gaining a livelihood for themselves and their families, cannot give their children the needed instruction, or a suitable Christian education.'"

Further, the primary school teachers that existed were generally very deficient in training and character. What the situation demanded, LaSalle believed, was a body of competent, dedicated, and virtuous individuals who embraced teaching in mainly poor primary schools both as a profession and a religious vocation. Chaminade, on the other hand, while recognizing the tremendous contribution these men continued to offer the Church and society in post-revolutionary France, was convinced that the new world that had been ushered in also required a new organization born out of the new times.

To reach the masses

As Chaminade had sought to reach the masses of this new world through the sodality, not simply an elite core, so he resolved to do the same through primary schools. Though most of the rising generation would attend elementary schools, only a select number among them would continue their education in intermediate or secondary schools. Therefore, rather than concentrating efforts on these latter kinds of schools that would reach only a small number, Chaminade determined to focus most of his resources on enterprises that would touch the majority of the population. He expressed this intention in his delineation of the role of teaching Brothers within the Society of Mary:

Since the Society is devoted to primary teaching, the class of lettered laymen is generally very numerous; it is as it were its principal body. It is this class that is charged with bringing to more than three-fourths of the population the principles of faith along with human knowledge. Oh, what good a religious teacher, truly animated with the zeal of his state, is able to do! (Article 361)

He also believed that by dealing with children at this early age he would not be faced with a task of reformation: post-revolutionary society would not have yet made a significant negative impact upon these children, which would then have had to be undone in the educational process. Upon completion of schooling, these children were to be directed to various Christian associations, like the sodality, so that they would be provided with supportive, apostolic Christian milieus throughout their lives.

The vocation of the educator

Crucial to creating this educational culture that Chaminade envisioned was a distinctive formation of both lay and religious teachers, which can only be appreciated when placed within the context of the common situation of teachers and schools at the time. Generally speaking, teaching was in disarray. It was seen not only "as a stand-by job, but also as a last resort."

There were two reasons for this.  First, because in the countryside the profession attracted those that were too weak or too sickly to be able to exercise a manual trade... Second, after the passage of the Gouvion-Saint-Cyr Act (1818), opting for the teaching profession qualified one for exemption from military service, provided one undertook a ten-year engagement; it meant doing away with the nagging fear of turning up the `unlucky number' on recruiting day.

Drawn to this low paying occupation were “… untrained military veterans, artisans, farm laborers, and tavern keepers… Few village communities had school buildings but were satisfied with the use of the mairie (city hall), a tavern, or a portion of the church.”

Many who styled themselves schoolmasters moved readily from place to place, so that schools would often appear and disappear at the "whims of their [teachers'] personal fate." "There were schools that shifted around on the heels of the teachers that ran them, makeshift schools…, private schools, clandestine ones, and so on." In addition, even capable teachers were generally so poorly paid that they had to seek additional sources of income. Some of these employments were traditionally linked with being a schoolmaster, for example, that of sacristan or town clerk. However, very often these other jobs consisted of such trades as that of weaver, farmer, or barrel maker.

The ordinance of February 14, 1830, and then that of June 23, 1833, popularly known as the Guizot Law, sought to remedy the situation. Among other provisions, this latter act required the following:

…for all schoolmasters — congregationalists included — to obtain a certificate of competence delivered by a departmental commission; for every commune with a population over 500 to maintain a primary school, to provide the master with a living — a fixed wage of F 200 at least — and a roof — somewhere to live; for each department, to maintain a primary-teacher training college for men.

Writing to Lalanne about this ordinance, Chaminade maintained:

“This Ordinance is being issued in a very fine spirit, and it is this same fine spirit which seemed to me to prevail in a Circular of the Reverend Rectors of the Academies on the same subject, and which obliged me to write immediately so as to have the offer of the services of the Society of Mary present to His Excellency. If you are not acquainted with this Ordinance, it must be procured for you, which is easy enough to do.

In spite of the goodness of the Ordinance, I presume that its effect will not take place and that it will come to nothing, as so many others: 1. Because great agitations are to be feared; 2. Because in interesting everybody, the Prefects and Rectors, lacking unity, will make little progress; 3. Many means are being taken so that there may be no lack of money, which is already great, but who will choose the teachers to be placed in the country? What precautions are being taken for the reformation of the old or former school teachers? Who will direct the [model / normal] schools?" (Letter 503, February 22, 1830).

Chaminade’s observations proved true. The results of the Guizot Law only gradually appeared throughout the rest of the nineteenth century.

It was in these circumstances, then, that Chaminade focused his energy on teacher education for laymen, since he realized that the regeneration he intended for France through schools could never be achieved simply through the agency of members of the Society of Mary. Through these teachers, he informed his representative in Paris (Georges Caillet), he would counteract the philosophes by their very own method: "If he [Mr. d'Amecort] wants to take notice of it, he will see that this work of the normal schools is directly in opposition to the road traced out by d'Alembert, to introduce by means of school teachers, philosophism into places even the farthest away from the cities." (Letter 353, June28, 1825)

Writing to John Baptist Lalanne, he confided similar hopes about the reformation of France through teacher education:

I am going to make a few more reflections to emphasize the importance of the institution of normal schools of the kind we propose to ourselves. It is certain that France is going to ruin if she does not come victoriously out of the revolution that is threatening her on all sides, if the rising generation is not saved. Now, what means is there to save the present generation that is almost all corrupted? The children will resemble their parents and will adopt their principles and their morals: like father, like son. Whom will we have to make up for the neglect of the fathers? The priests, pastors, assistants? They see the children far too rarely, have too little authority over them, etc…These children are lost, if they don't have good school teachers close at hand. From there, the indispensable necessity of forming a sufficiently great number of school teachers, so as to be able to employ them in all the Communes.  From there, the need for multiplying the normal schools in all the Departments. But by far the greater number of the school teachers actually at work are either ignorant, don't know how to handle children or put no interest at all in their work. I take it for granted that they are not scandalous, but even this is not rare. From there, the need for our long and frequent retreats to render them good or at least passable or to replace them by candidates fully trained (Letter 506, March 4, 1830).

At the end of the month Chaminade again wrote to Lalanne about what kind of teachers he desired to educate:

In a word, I want to train in these schools, men and Christians who would be able to regenerate their communes, and for that, they would have to be enjoying a certain influence and consideration by the knowledge they have to pass on to their pupils, and by the zeal which could make them really useful to the families composing these communes (Letter 514, March 31, 1830).

In these letters he hints at a conviction he held when he first returned to Bordeaux: parishes were not a sufficient means to reinvigorate faith. Since children would only rarely come in contact with pastors and priests in the parishes and since their home life was not conducive to religious formation, there needed to be another social or institutional setting in which faith formation would take place through regular contact with attractive adult models of apostolic faith. Schools and teachers educated in the normal schools Chaminade envisioned answered this need. By graduating class after class of students formed in this way, the communes would gradually be re-Christianized, transformed.

Five general concerns are evident in his words. First of all, aware that so many individuals conducting schools possessed little knowledge, he stressed that teachers needed to be adequately prepared in the subjects which they were to teach. Second, he realized that knowing the subject matter was not the same thing as being able to teach it. Therefore, he emphasized the importance of pedagogy.

Third, he contended that unless these individuals were thoroughly imbued with Christian faith, the final purpose for which the Society of Mary engaged in schools would not be achieved. "What would the end of all our labors [in the normal schools be]," he declared, "if really the school teachers are not sufficiently instructed in religion and if, well instructed, they neither like nor practice it? I am saying if they do not practice it from their hearts."

Fourth, he maintained that to be successful, the teachers had in some way to appear attractive to the people whom they served. To that end he once recommended that they learn about herbs, plants, tools, machinery, etc. found in the communes wherein they were to teach and thereby demonstrate their practical value to the inhabitants. In regard to the student, he claimed, "No teacher can succeed with a pupil whose esteem and friendship he has not gained in a general way."

Finally, he sought to multiply his efforts by educating a corps of teachers who would in turn educate thousands of children throughout France. A principle of action, explicit here, but one that permeated all of his endeavors was that of multiplication: one should engage in those activities that would by their very nature multiply the initial efforts.

Chaminade, therefore, felt that the regeneration of Christianity depended, not simply on members of the Society of Mary or religious orders in general, but on the creation of a vast corps of lay teachers who would be both mature as men and Christian. For him teaching was not "a stand-by job,… a last resort.” Most basically he offered teachers a sense that theirs was a calling, a destiny, requiring dedication, serving the Church where vowed religious could not go.

He expressed such sentiments to the Archbishop of Bordeaux. As he envisioned it, the teachers he sought to educate were men "wanting to live in a Christian manner and to devote themselves to the education of youth", "virtuous young men who would commit themselves as laymen for teaching," to be sent to the communes "where it would be hardly be possible to have and equip establishments for Brothers. These teachers, trained by us and animated by our spirit, would suitably replace the Brothers, and happily second the efforts of the Reverend Pastors in their respective parishes" ("Note …" of the Letter 1274, September 4, 1843). These words are reminiscent of how he described his sodalists almost twenty years before (1824): "But in this age, an age of revival, Holy Mother the Church demands something more from her children. She wishes the concerted action of all to second the zeal of her ministers and to labor at her restoration." (Chaminade Heritage I.154-[9-10]).

Behaviors and dispositions of the educator

Though Chaminade never described the behaviors and dispositions of these teachers in more than general terms such as "virtuous," "Christian," and "dedicated," he did indicate that they were to be "animated" with the spirit of the Society of Mary. He detailed that spirit and its expression in the Constitutions of 1839, which was directed toward the members of the Society of Mary and by extension to those who would share in its mission and be animated by its spirit. Teachers imbued with the spirit of the Society of Mary were to cultivate certain fundamental assumptions and attitudes from which flowed specific behaviors.

First and foremost was the conviction that the purpose for which they taught was education, which meant the cultivation of a Christian character within pupils (Articles 251, 256). No matter what they were teaching, they were to keep habitually in mind (Article 257) that they engaged in the activity for the sake of multiplying Christians (Article 22), that they had "children to instruct, in order to inspire awe and love of God in them, in order to preserve them and to divert them from vice, in order to attract them to virtue and to make of them good and faithful Christians" (Article 257).

This conviction was to serve as the fundamental optic or template, an "unalterable intention" ("une intention fixe") (Article 258) that structured their entire endeavor. For that reason, then, it was not necessary that the "greatest part of the time be devoted to the teaching or to practices of religion," because into whatever they taught or did was integrated with the Christian spirit. They were to teach "a Christian lesson by every word, gesture, and look" (Article 258). Thus, the kind of education Chaminade envisioned was to be realized through the kind of presence the teachers created in the classroom. As one of the Chaminade’s pedagogical manuals put it, teachers were the “soul of the classroom.”

Importance of instruction

This emphasis on education was not to be achieved at the expense of instruction, since another conviction that Chaminade would have teachers embrace was that "education can be given only at the time of instruction…" (Article 266). The chief purpose for which parents sent their children to schools was to have them instructed in knowledge and skills that would prepare them to make a living. Without such instruction, children would not attend schools and without the presence of children in schools the opportunity for their Christian formation would be lost.

Chaminade argued this point in a letter to Ignace Mertian because he thought that this priest, the founder of a lay community of teaching religious in Alsace, was willing to place poorly trained brothers in classrooms just for the sake of opening schools:

We shall never succeed in attracting the country children with imperfect schools which are the main cause of the decline of morals among the people, and the Institute of Mary would never attain the object of its existence by such a use of one of its principal means [primary teaching]. What harmful consequences would not result! Above all I am determined to form really good establishments, before being solicitous about their number (Letter 202, June 18, 1822).

Therefore, it was essential that all involved in schools be suitably prepared and concerned about good management and the perfection of teaching methods (Article 266). Consequently, teachers had to be skilled in exacting "study, order, silence and the accomplishment of all rules…" (Article 261). To that end, he strove to have his personnel obtain appropriate certificates, degrees, and civil authorization for teaching and school administration. On several occasions he encouraged individuals to continue their studies and pursue higher certificates and degrees.

The general curriculum of Marianist schools had to conform to the requirements of the University in order to be acceptable to the communes. At the same time some innovation was evident in teaching techniques, bilingual education in Alsace, and the introduction of history as a subject area as well as linear drawing.

Lalanne has been described by one Marianist historian as the person who “incarnates the Marianist spirit in education” and “the first to catch the innovative spirit of Father Chaminade.”  At the first Marianist educational institution, a boarding school in Bordeaux (1819), this early Marianist revised the secondary curriculum in order to prepare students to take part in the commercial and technical growth of France. More focus was given to mathematics, modern languages, history, accounting, and geography. He also arranged for the students to have on site visits to factories and workshops to provide them with an opportunity to see the practical application of the theory they had been taught. Marianist teachers followed his lead, including practical projects, field trips, and literary entertainments as part of the pedagogical process in primary education as well. Some years later, at another boarding school located at St. Rémy, Lalanne introduced physical education, swimming, horseback riding, botany, geology, and astronomy into the program of studies.

What Lalanne proposed was a unified plan of instruction that encompassed literature, science, and art, as well as what was useful and possible for producing a well-rounded human being. He contrasted the specialist, thought superior in a restricted field but in other areas mediocre or sterile, to one who profited from a “common, extended and varied instruction.” Because of his broader education, claimed Lalanne, he would be able to fulfill whatever responsibilities that arose from family, friendship, or civic relations. In a later parlance, what Lalanne advocated was the education of the whole person.

Even though Lalanne was clearly committed to excellent teaching and student proficiency in the various domains of knowledge, for him these were not the final goal of Marianist ministry in schools. His efforts were guided by the important Marianist distinction between instruction and education. For example, in an address to parents several years after Chaminade’s death, he explained that the goal of the college was not to produce bachelors of science or of arts, but men. And men, he claimed, were characterized by three qualities: reason, liberty, and love. Education, he continued, aimed at the development of all three qualities, but it was only the development of love of God that rendered the human being the masterpiece of creation and gave direction to and fulfilled reason and liberty.

Family Spirit and collaboration

Lalanne also envisioned the school as a family, where discipline was based on love and a close relationship between the students and teachers, not on corporal punishment. The experience of family spirit among the religious was to serve as a model for what was desired among the student body and other teachers. In this context, Chaminade and his early reformers of pedagogy thought that education should be aimed at the culture of the heart. They were convinced that though a person may often resist the light of reason, he will seldom resist the impulse of the heart. Thus, education of the heart was central to their teaching method. They sought to understand how the emotions and feelings worked in the human person and by appeal to this affective dimension of the student lead him to embrace knowledge, values, and good behavior (Constitutions, Articles 262, 32).

Integral to family spirit was collaboration, which finds its deepest rationale and motivation in the scriptural image of the mystical body of Christ, a teaching very important to Chaminade. Collaboration marked both the internal and external constituencies of the school. Several of the schools founded by Chaminade owed their existence to the efforts of sodalists who sought the presence of the Society of Mary or the Daughters of Mary in their towns. All Marianist schools were established in collaboration with local and regional civil and ecclesiastical authorities, which generally involved Chaminade and his delegates in lengthy negotiations. Parents were invited to attend student exhibits and, when appropriate, teachers acknowledged that their efforts built upon and collaborated with those of the parents.

Internally, the administrative structure of the school was based on a council system characteristic of both religious orders, consisting of a director, a head of zeal, head of education, and a head of temporalities. In large institutions other persons, representing specific concerns, such as the one in charge of the boarding department, were also members of the council. It was the obligation of each of the council members to address concerns in terms of his particular expertise and responsibility, while at the same time keeping in mind that unified action and the common good were ultimately to guide decisions. On occasion, Chaminade also urged that a council of teachers, in addition to the general council of the establishment, be called to discuss important school matters.

Though Marianist schools were generally staffed by Marianist religious, religious collaborated with lay teachers in some of the arts and trade schools attached to the primary schools as well as in some of the secondary schools. Students were also taught to collaborate with one another. Those who had mastered school work better than others were often selected as monitors for their classmates.

Obviously, the operation of a school requires a number of persons cooperating together: for example, administrators, faculty, maintenance personnel, cooks, prefects, dormitory overseers, etc. The larger the school, the more the personnel, and the more essential and the more complex the task of ensuring cooperation among them. That was also true of Marianist schools. Chaminade wrote several letters to directors urging them to work for unity. Even more he impressed upon them that every person from cook to director was important to the mission and each was to be considered equally important. In a letter to Dominique Clouzet of St. Rémy, he expressed that sentiment, commenting on a brother upset about his occupation as a cook. “It seems,” Chaminade wrote, “he does not know that in the Society [of Mary] there is no such thing as a despicable or low condition, and that the subject vowed to the service of his Brothers is as much in my eyes, as in the eyes of faith, as the one who is employed in teaching.” (Letter 1179, October 18, 1839).

A balance between innovation and conservation

Chaminade would have his teachers adopt a somewhat middle course between innovation and conservation in the actual practice of teaching. He held that the principles of education, once well grasped, do not vary (Article 267), "but the practices whereby they are applied and the methods of teaching should necessarily follow the progress of human society and be adapted to its needs and to its wishes" (Article 267). In fact, according to him it was the need for adaptation that motivated his efforts in establishing the sodality and founding the two religious orders. "To adopt invariability of forms and of modes as a principle would be to limit to a very short time the services and existence [of the Society of Mary] …" (Article 267). Therefore, as Marianists and those animated by their spirit "labor in the world at the salvation of souls by sustaining and propagating the teachings of the Gospel, the virtues of Christianity and the practices of the Catholic Church," the means they use must be "adapted to the needs and the spirit of the age…" (Article 1).

On the other hand, no matter how good the intention of the teacher, Chaminade required that he always seek "the counsel of his head [principal, director, chef], before executing anything special [particulier] that his zeal inspired in him for the Christian education of the children of his class or even of a single child" (Article 265). And in general he maintained that though the basic method of teaching of the Society of Mary was to be periodically reviewed, changes in it were to be made with reserve (Article 268) and were to "be guaranteed by the experience of the most capable teachers" (Article 268).

Development of a Marianist Pedagogy

During Chaminade’s day three basic pedagogical methods were employed in teaching. The oldest was the individual method. The teacher dealt individually with the student, while the other students did nothing. Most teachers throughout the nineteenth century employed this method. The second was the simultaneous method. Students were grouped by age into various divisions and each group was instructed together. This method had been introduced into primary education by LaSalle. The third was the mutual method, a monitor system developed in England by Andrew Bell and Joseph Lancaster, and introduced into France around 1814. Advanced students were trained by a master teacher so that they in turn could teach groups of less advanced students.

It was in the context of these various approaches that Chaminade and those members of the Society of Mary recognized as master teachers gradually developed a Marianist Pedagogy or Methodology. Beginning in the early 1820s, there were meetings during vacation periods at which current pedagogical theories and the actual practice in the schools were discussed and position papers on method produced. These methods were then tried in the schools, discussed at subsequent vacation meetings, and a revision of the method, based on the discussion, issued. Among the various documents on pedagogy produced during Chaminade's lifetime were: Improved Method for Primary Teaching (1830), The New Method (1831), and The Mixed Method (1841). As the title of the 1841 document indicates, a blending of all three methods eventually characterized Marianist pedagogy. This periodic review of methodology, initiated by Chaminade, continued after his death.

By the development of a common methodology for use in Marianist schools Chaminade sought to maintain the original purposes of the Society of Mary in the work of schools. During the year, a mentoring system for lay teachers was proposed as a way to continue their education and assure that the Marianist methodology was followed. In schools staffed by religious, pedagogical conferences, supervision of teaching, and organized private study was overseen by the principal or the superior of the Marianist community.

Chaminade also held that the teaching of religion, though not absorbing most of the instructional hours, was nonetheless decisive to the goal of education. He believed it particularly important in post-Revolutionary France. "Especially must the instruction in religion be weighed and evaluated [in the normal schools]," he wrote Lalanne. "It must be adapted to the spirit of the century and to the position of the schoolteachers." In another letter a week later he indicated why such was so: "We are in a century in which everybody is called upon to reason ["raisonner"] or rather to rave ["déraisonner"], even the peasants in the country to the maid-servants in the cities." (Letter 503, February 22, 1830).

To meet this challenge, he would have prospective teachers "become little logicians, and even something of metaphysicians. They must know all the sources of human certitude." For that reason he instructed Lalanne: "You will, above all, have to work at a method of teaching religion to the candidates of the normal schools… What would be the end of all our labors, all our solicitude in establishing normal schools, if really the schoolteachers are not sufficiently instructed in religion…?” (Ibid.).

But he also recognized that speculative knowledge, though necessary, was not sufficient for communicating religion to children. The teachers must "love it" and "practice it… from their hearts." He made a similar point nine years later in the Constitutions:

“… the religious who follows exactly what has been established in this regard [the method and the prescribed devotions] is well convinced that it is neither a method more or less ingenious nor any exercise of piety which inspires religion in children; it is especially the heart of the teacher, when it is full of God and when it is in sympathy through charity with the heart of his pupils" (Article 260).

Beliefs about the nature of students

Chaminade would also have teachers appropriate certain beliefs about the students they were to educate: that it was not the will of the "'Father who is in Heaven that one of these little ones should perish'" (Article 259); that it suffices "for everyone to be such as God wills him to be"(Article 262); that "we do not all receive the same measure of graces and the same destination" (Article 259). From these convictions flowed certain behaviors. First and most fundamentally, the teacher was to penetrate himself with the "sentiments of the Savior and with the tenderness of Mary" (Article 259) on behalf of the children. No matter what the number before him, the teacher was to “expand his heart in order to have them enter and to carry them there unceasingly" (Article 259).

For the sake of the children's education and in consideration of how God sees them, the teacher was to exercise "indefatigable zeal, tender charity" (Article 258), and “preserve in the depth of his heart an unalterable calm [in the classroom] and a wise propensity toward leniency" (Article 261). Like God who is patient even when rejected, never "wearied by refusals," preserving "with the same goodness those who offend Him and those who serve Him" (Article 261), the teacher was to demonstrate the same patience.  He was not to expect evangelical perfection in the children from the beginning, and he was always to keep in mind that it was his role to sow and not to reap (Article 261). "He is careful above all not to reject as bad what is not absolutely good…" (Article 262). And "in his meditations, in his Communions, in all his good works, he makes up for whatever their [children's] weakness and ignorance might not be able to do…" (Article 259).

That these directives had a practical impact in the life of Marianist teachers is indicated in following selection from the New Method (1831):

The Society believes that it would fail in its duty if it closed its doors to children from the rural districts, whose homes are so distant that they could not attend regularly every morning and afternoon, and still less to those who could not attend every day. It does not refuse admission to the children of working men living in the city, if family needs oblige them sometimes to remain at home. It does not wish to forsake such as have been endowed with less intelligence, or have not been able to keep pace with their more fortunate companions, and whose advancement might be arrested or at least retarded, by their presence in the same class with others more talented. It does not even abandon intractable characters before it has exhausted all means of reformation. It also reserves to itself the right of cooperating with parents who are satisfied with a very limited education for their children. Finally, it wishes to provide for excluded pupils, unless the dismissal was deemed absolutely necessary, without, however, obliging itself to leave unruly pupils to remain in class from which they should be temporarily suspended, and whose retention would encourage constant misbehavior. (Chaminade Heritage VII, Doc. 8).

The spirit of Marianist education was to reach as many students as possible, making accommodations for differences as God does. This even meant opening the schools to Protestant children. Though Chaminade thought Protestantism was partly responsible for the sad state of France and though he suspected that opposition he experienced from civil officials was partly because they were Protestant, still he wrote the following to a pastor:

Should it be asked whether the children of Protestants may be admitted to this school, we answer: Yes. The teachers do for them what they do for the Catholic children, for there is no distinction…

In all the classes, the teachers are never to make any distinction between the Catholics and the Protestants…. Never, outside of classes, are the Catholic children to say anything against the Protestant children and vice versa. They are not even to notice or understand that there is such a distinction.

If the School is conducted in this way, there will most certainly be no inconveniences, but there will be many advantages. Avoiding all that would indicate only what is called partisan spirit, let us be Catholic with firmness, but let us always be modest and moderate, that is to say, truly charitable towards all and with a mildness without any trace of bitterness, according to the expression of St. Paul. (Letter 1014, November 29, 1837)

One way these dispositions, feelings, and behaviors recommended in the Constitutions were to be fostered and maintained in the teacher was through imaginative prayer. He was counseled to picture Jesus and Mary speaking to him, telling him that these are their children whom they are entrusting into his care. And as a model, he was to look to the Good Shepherd and consider himself as fulfilling that role in regard to his students (Article 259).

At the same time, Chaminade instructed teachers to be attentive to "privileged souls [among their students] who have early in life felt the impression of grace and who are faithful to them…" (Article 263). He reminded them that these children were often capable of being schooled in meditation and that it was important to cultivate the graces that they had received. Teachers were to encourage these students to frequent reception of the sacraments and to gather them together into little societies that, like the Bordeaux sodality, served as a communal support for the practice of the Christian life (Article 263). Some of these children might indicate dispositions for religious life. If these were discovered and "if he [the child] discloses a willingness to follow it, he must be well received, be made to foresee to the best of his ability the obligations of the life that he wishes to embrace and to be shown its advantages and consolations." (Article 264).

Chaminade’s vision of the teacher and the French School

As the foregoing indicates, Chaminade set the whole calling and practice of education and teaching within a religious context. Though inspired by a variety of spiritual masters, the dominant influence upon Chaminade, one manifested in the Constitutions of 1839, was that of the so-called French School. At least three of its characteristics mark Chaminade's portrait of the teacher. The first centers on the emphasis placed on the affective dimension of Christian education. For the French School one drew near to God not simply through intellectual assent but through the movements and affections of the soul, of the heart. It called its followers to an affective, total, absorbing experience of God in Christ, which stood in stark contrast to an extrinsic conception of the Christian life that considered faithfulness synonymous with the fulfillment of a certain number of specific duties and behaviors.

In this regard, it will be recalled that Chaminade claimed that it was the heart of the teacher filled with God, one like that described by the French School, that would inspire religion in children. Further, he stated that that heart had to be in sympathy with the heart of the children and be filled with the sentiments of Jesus and the tenderness of Mary for them. These latter observations about the teacher's relationship to Jesus and Mary reflect two other characteristics of the French School: its focus upon Jesus, the Incarnation of God, and as a consequence of its contemplation of the Incarnation, its special devotion to Mary.

Because the Word became incarnate for the sake of mission, the original disciples of the French School felt impelled by the apostolic grace in the Spirit of Christ to be missionaries to France and all the world.  In the words of Jean-Jacques Olier, missionaries were “like sacraments which bear Christ, so that in them and through them he might proclaim the glory of the Father.” They strove "for communion with the inner attitudes of Jesus [the sentiments of Jesus]… [in order] to be one with his looking at others in love and service…"

This urgency about mission is echoed in Chaminade's constant declaration to sodalists, teachers, and members of his two religious orders that they were "all missionaries," and that they existed in "a state of perpetual mission." His description of the teacher communicating a Christian (Christ-like) lesson in every gesture, word, and look mirrored Olier's conviction that missionaries were sacraments of Christ.  Chaminade’s claim that ultimately the Society of Mary "has essentially but one end, which is the most faithful imitation of Jesus Christ" (Article 5) reflected the very essence of the French School's teaching.

For Chaminade as well as others in the French School the most "salient point of the imitation of Jesus Christ" (Article 5) was devotion to Mary. He claimed that "in devoting itself to the imitation of this Divine Model under the well-beloved name of Mary, the Society intends having each of its members reared by her, as Jesus was reared by her care after having been formed in her virginal womb" (Article 5). It was to her, Chaminade wrote, that Jesus "especially confided… the care of directing our Christian education as she directed him in the days of his childhood, and of raising us to the height of our holy calling." What Christian educators did, then, was to imitate the vocation of Mary on behalf of Jesus and of all humanity. For that, they needed to be filled with her tenderness.

By the time Father Chaminade relinquished his administration of the Society of Mary (1845), four secondary schools, thirty-two primary schools, two trade schools, and one normal school existed. Besides these, there were six novitiates. Other schools had been founded but had gone out of existence, often because of government interference. Ultimately, all of these depended on Chaminade’s leadership. As his letters indicate, for twenty-eight years issues of schools, pedagogy, teacher preparation, and a correct understanding of education were for him a major concern. He devoted so much energy to them because he believed that, given the present time, they constituted the principal way he could cooperate in Mary’s mission which would result in the re-Christianization of France.

2. SCHOOLS AND THE MARIANIST CHARISM

CHARISM

Though derived from scripture, the word charism has only enjoyed wide popular usage since Vatican Council II. Even in the council documents it appeared only fourteen times, never in particular reference to religious life, not even in Perfectae Caritatis, the council document that specifically addressed religious life. In general, charism was used as a term for a specific grace or gift given to an individual or a group for the building up of the Church.

In the years following the council, Vatican statements began to employ charism in reference to the inspiration a person(s) received from the Holy Spirit for the sake of founding a religious institute. According to Directives for the Mutual Relations between Bishops and Religious in the Church, a document issued by the Sacred Congregation for Religious and for Secular Institutes in 1978,

The very charism of the Founders (Evang. nunt. 11) appears as an "experience of the Spirit," transmitted to their disciples to be lived, safeguarded, deepened and constantly developed by them, in harmony with the Body of Christ continually in the process of growth. "It is for this reason that the distinctive character of various religious institutes is preserved and fostered by the Church" (LG 44; cf. CD 33; 35, 1; 35, 2; etc.). This distinctive character also involves a particular style of sanctification and of apostolate, which creates its particular tradition, with the result that one can readily perceive its objective elements. #11

MARIANIST CHARISM UNDERSTOOD AS CULTURE

The sentences above suggest that the charism of a religious order is complex, consisting of various elements. One might imagine it as a precious stone whose facets reflect various dimensions of its reality. Thomas Giardino, SM, has recently suggested that the Marianist Charism be understood as symbol. The approach to the Marianist charism in this document is through the lens of culture. What Blessed Chaminade was inspired to do was to create a specific kind of culture within the larger culture of the Catholic Church, which in turn existed within the larger culture of the civil society of France and the rest of the world.

The following paragraphs present a systematic description of the elements of culture in general, followed by an application of these elements to Marianist culture.

Elements of Culture

Culture has been described in many ways, though there is no unified theory of culture which commands the assent of all theorists at present. However, there are certain characteristics or elements of culture upon which there is general scholarly agreement. Among these elements are the following.

1. Cultures, whether they are ethnic, national, corporate, or school cultures, arise at a specific time and place and endure throughout history as long as new generations continue to join or belong to them. This element is often called the ecological context of the culture.

2. The founder(s) of a culture is pivotal to the development of a culture and even after the founder has died, his or her assumptions, insights, and convictions continue to have the most significant impact upon the culture.

3. Cultures are constituted by a collective (a community); they are not simply an aggregate or an assembly of individuals.

4. Interaction among the members fosters similar feelings and understandings as well as dependence upon one another for emotional support.

5. Through the inspiration of the culture’s founder(s) and through the interaction of the members, a certain “web of meaning” or “world of significance is created.” This represents the content of culture or the collective understandings that form the basis of the members’ assumptions. This content shapes how the members understand reality, interpret new experiences, behave, and feel.

6.  This content of culture is regularly affirmed, expressed, and communicated. For example, it may be affirmed by honoring those who exemplify the spirit and ideals of the culture. It may be expressed in formal documents, such as a constitution or a sacred text or a mission statement. In addition, it may be communicated to members through favorite stories told repeatedly about important deceased members or logos or regular newsletters.

7. Characteristic behaviors or practices mark every culture. They represent the way things are done in the culture. Such a practice may be the way courtship is carried out, the way disagreements are adjudicated, or the way meditation is practiced.

8. Every culture survives only to the degree that it is communicated to new members. Therefore, every culture has some initiation process such as a new employee workshop or novitiate or rite of passage.

Elements of the Marianist Culture or Charism

Drawing on the above generalizations about culture, this section will apply them to the Marianist charism or culture.

Ecological Context

As seen above, the Marianist charism or culture arose at the beginning of nineteenth-century France in the midst of the decline and eventual capitulation of the French Catholic Church. Faced with both ecclesiastical and political challenges, it gradually grew in France and spread through Europe, North America, Africa, Asia, South America, and Australia. Today, situated in many countries, among many nationalities and ethnic groups, it has become a worldwide religious culture within the Catholic Church.  As religious cultures, both the Catholic and Marianist cultures have as a fundamental intent the proclamation of the gospel of Jesus and participation in restoring all things in Christ.

Founder(s).

The founder of the Marianist charism or culture was William Joseph Chaminade, a French diocesan priest.  Chaminade was influenced by the French School of spirituality, especially through his seminary education under the auspices of the Sulpicians, as well as by Ignatian spirituality, transmitted to him by his older brother. Various significant experiences  marked his life. Among these was his twenty years at the Royal Collège of St. Charles in Mussidan (1771-1791), first as a student and then as a teacher. The school was characterized by a familial spirit; perhaps even then he considered the formation of a Society of Mary.

Another experience of significance was his clandestine ministry in Bordeaux during the French Revolution. He had had some contact with laity in Mussidan, serving at times as a hospital chaplain and presiding at Mass in the parish.  In Bordeaux during the Revolution the laity was the church; that laity, particularly women, constituted his ministry.

Finally came his exile at Saragossa in Spain. At the Shrine of Our Lady of the Pillar, where he prayed regularly, he believed he was given a divine mission to return to France after the revolution and participate in its re-Christianization.

Partnering with Chaminade in founding the Marianist culture were Marie Thérèse Charlotte de Lamourous, a laywoman of  Bordeaux, and Adèle de Batz de Trenquelléon, a young woman of aristocratic background who lived near the city of Agen. With Chaminade she founded the Daughters of Mary Immaculate.

During the more than two hundred years of its existence, others have played a significant role in shaping or interpreting the Marianist charism or culture, for example, Joseph Simler, often called the Second Founder. However, Blessed Chaminade has remained the pivotal figure of the Marianist charism. His writings remain the foundational documents of the culture. His spirit is invoked when important plans, projects, or decisions are made on local, national, and global levels.  A question that is consistently asked by individuals and groups that constitute the Marianist culture is: How am I, how are we, in what we are and what we do, faithful to the inspiration of the founder, Father Chaminade?

Collectivity, Community.

The following points describe the nature of collectivity that forms the Marianist culture.

1. The Marianist culture is actually a Community of Communities, commonly referred to as the Marianist Family. The major collectives or branches of the Marianist Family are the Marianist Lay Communities, the Alliance Mariale [a female group aspiring to become a secular institute], the Daughters of Mary Immaculate [female religious], and the Society of Mary [male religious, lay and clerical].

2. What unites these communities is their allegiance to Blessed Chaminade and his partners, Marie Thérèse Charlotte de Lamourous and Adèle de Batz de Trenquelléon, as well as their adherence to the contents of the culture delineated above.

3. As already indicated, in their difference they witness to the Marianist charism’s appreciation of diversity.

4. Internationally, these branches are formally related to one another through the World Council of the Marianist Family on whose board delegates from each branch sit. This council fosters a global understanding of Marianist culture, as well as a formal expression of the unity that exists among the diverse branches and among the various manifestations of the charism throughout the world. Among the council’s goals are communication, mutual support in the Marianist mission, and the generation of and cooperation in joint projects to further the Marianist culture or charism. Similar councils exist on national levels and serve similar purposes.

5. Each of these branches in turn consists of smaller communities. The communities of each branch are united by the type of life they live (lay or religious [male or female]) and the kind of commitment the members of each branch make as a sign of their alliance with Mary in her mission. The communities of these branches are multi-national and have both international and national governing bodies.

6. The above points form a summary description of the formal structures that provide unity in the Marianist Family and in the branches of which it consists. However, more binding and more profound than the formal structures is the similar world view or faith (contents of culture) in which members of these communities have been nourished.

7. Meeting regularly, both locally and nationally; interacting with members of one’s branch and across branches; sharing responsibilities; developing bonds of friendship; conversing with one another and in groups about growth in the Marianist charism and about their experience of God, of Christ, of Mary; expressing one’s desires and hopes and failures; sharing prayer and praying for one another; working with one another on projects or in specific apostolic ministries; and celebrating important feasts in the Marianist culture, all foster similar feelings among members, despite their diversity. Fostered too is a dependence upon one another for emotional support. These activities provide a reciprocal formation through which the members themselves cultivate knowledge, appreciation, and commitment to the Marianist culture.

8.  Whatever a person’s background, abilities, ethnicity, or socio-economic status, provided one has a basic good will and a certain degree of perseverance, one is welcomed as a member of a Marianist community.  That community, in turn, fosters in the individual, like a salutary leaven, the dispositions, attitudes, behaviors, and beliefs necessary to participate in Mary’s mission.

Contents of Culture.

In response to his times, out of his experience of God, especially focused at Saragossa, in cooperation with others such as Adèle de Batz de Trenquelléon and Jean Baptiste Lalanne, and from his particular reading of the scriptures and Catholic tradition, Blessed Chaminade fashioned a vision.  That vision, that optic, that “web of meanings,” that worldview shapes how those who embrace the Marianist charism or are members of the Marianist culture (Marianists) understand reality and their purpose in life, interpret new experiences, how they act, how they feel.

The following are some of the convictions that constitute the beliefs of the Marianist culture or charism:

1. Most importantly, those who embrace the Marianist charism are rooted in the mystery of the Incarnation, that God became one like ourselves in Jesus of Nazareth, in order to pour himself out in love and, in an alienated, sinful world, to restore creation to its original purpose, to transform it or recapitulate it in Christ. For Chaminade the Incarnation is the “universal principle of grace,” that by which God’s gift of himself is made possible and present everywhere and always. This conviction forms the template through which Marianists apprehend reality.

2. Mary is crucial to the assumptions of Marianist culture because she is crucial to the Incarnation. As Chaminade wrote, “To serve, not only as a useful instrument but as a necessary means for the Incarnation of the Word, to provide Jesus Christ with a body and with everything that constitutes his humanity, this is the high privilege which is Mary’s destiny.” As mother of Jesus, she was the most significant human other in his life. Her mission in faith was to give birth to Jesus and nurture the humanity of him who shows us how to be human as only God can do. God chose to have her affections, attitudes, choices, thoughts, inclinations, passions, and actions imprint, impact, touch – like the skin of one hand on another – Jesus’ humanity, his humanity’s affections, attitudes, choices, thoughts, inclinations, passions, and actions. Thus, God chose that she be his teacher, as Neubert wrote, that she educate him.

3. According to a Marianist reading of John’s gospel, at the cross Jesus revealed that  Mary was to be for others what she was for him. Her eternal vocation was to make present and form others to be true disciples, other Christs, to enable them to say with St. Paul, “I live, now not I, but Christ lives in me.”

4. Marianists believe that they have been called to join in an alliance, a covenant, with Mary in her mission of making Christ present and nurturing him in this world. This is the ultimate reason for their existence and the reason for the existence of the Marianist charism or culture. They affirm this belief by making a public commitment to their participation in this mission, often in the form of a Consecration to Mary or in some type of vow(s).

5. Marianists hold that as the original presence of Christ in this world was transformative, so also is the presence of those formed by Mary to be transformative in the present time.  By the presence of the Marianist culture in which they participate, by the on-going incorporation of others into that culture, and by the various apostolic ministries in which the members of the culture are engaged, action for the transformation of all things in Christ is carried out.

6. In alliance with Mary’s mission, Marianists and Marianist communities consider themselves in perpetual mission. They are missionaries, not necessarily in the sense that they travel to other countries, but in that wherever they are and in whatever they do, they exist for the sake of forming Christ and Christian communities. Or in the nineteenth-century language of the Constitutions of 1839, in whatever they do they are always at the same time engaged in education, using “all the means by which religion can be inculcated into the mind and into the heart of men and by which they can thus be trained from tender infancy to the most advanced age in the fervent and faithful profession of a true Christian life.” This is the “habitual intention” that directs all their activity. Thus, like Mary, theirs is an apostolic faith – it is a faith for the sake of mission.

7. Fundamental to this missionary conviction is the appreciation by Marianists of their baptism in Christ. Influenced by the French School of spirituality, Chaminade taught that their call was rooted in Baptism, since that was the manner by which all Marianists had been initiated into the mystery of Jesus and empowered to live like him. Their commitment to the mission of Mary is seen as a profound renewal of the commitment to what was intended by and sacramentally experienced in Baptism.

8. In order to carry out their mission, Marianists believe they need to participate in the mysteries of Jesus and Mary (the attitudes, dispositions, and behaviors of Jesus and Mary) as revealed in Christian scripture and in Catholic tradition. In this regard, Chaminade counseled, “It is proper to a Christian [and that much more to a Marianist] to clothe himself, in his interior, with the inclinations, the habits and the virtues of Jesus Christ. ‘Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ.’ (Rom. XIII, 14).” In a similar vein, like St. Paul, he recommended putting off the old “in order to clothe one’s self with Jesus Christ, the New Man.”

In regard to participating in the mysteries of Mary, a rather recent Marianist document has described it as living the spirit of Mary, which is “characterized by evangelical freedom, by availability, by merciful love attentive to every need and every kind of person, by creativity and openness, by humility and simplicity, by the ability to be silent, pondering things in our hearts, by standing beside the cross of those who suffer and by discovering the new things God is bringing about in history.”

9. Marianists do not envision mission as individual activity or even as a group of persons who individually carry it out. If such were the case, one could not interpret the Marianist charism through the lens of culture.

Marianists are convinced that their alliance with Mary results in the formation of communities of apostolic action – it is an activity carried out in a communitarian manner. Further, Marianists believe that these communities are enriched by diversity in membership and are united by their mission and their union in Christ. This diversity is evidenced by the fact that the charism’s membership is composed of lay men and women, female religious, male religious (lay and clerical), all possessing a relative equality in the Marianist culture.

These convictions are rooted in the very approach of Blessed Chaminade when he returned to Bordeaux in 1800 (as detailed above in the history) and founded on the mystery of the Mystical Body of Christ, a teaching that permeates Chaminade’s thought. According to this doctrine, a diversity of persons of differing abilities and qualities makes up Christ’s Body, the Church. This Body is not simply an assemblage of persons but an integrated whole, where each needs the other in order to fulfill together the call of being Christ in this world. A genuine sympathy exists among the members, so much so, that when “one weeps, all weep” and when “one rejoices, all rejoice.” What brings integration to the diversity is union in Christ, first effected in Baptism.

Chaminade also proposed the description of the ideal Christian community in the Acts of the Apostles, where the members were of “one heart and soul” (4:32), as an image of the relationships that should exist among those imbued with the Marianist charism. Traditionally, Marianists have summed up the character of these collaborative communities of apostolic action as Family Spirit.

The nature of religion in today’s society is pluralistic.  Thus it may be worthwhile to complement the teaching of the Mystical Body of Christ, the Acts of the Apostles, and Baptism with reference to Genesis’ teaching on the dignity and worth of each individual as made in the image and likeness of God, and the conviction that all of humanity has been assumed in Christ, the New Adam, who died for all. For all our differences, as human beings we share a fundamental unity in creation which is re-affirmed in Christ.

10. Marianists recognize that to be true to their alliance with Mary they need to foster in themselves, in others, and in the communities to which they belong a rich faith. Contrary to an extrinsic conception of faith as a notional consent to a number of dogmas and doctrines, exhibited in a set of specific duties and behaviors, Marianists, following Chaminade and the French School, understand that faith needs to shape all one’s cognitive and affective capacities. Without neglecting the cognitive dimension of faith that involves thought, reflection, imagination, and understanding, Marianists often emphasize “a faith of the heart” that implies sentiment, felt appreciation of the mysteries of faith, and the full gift of oneself, represented by the heart, to God, to Christ, and to Mary in whom one believes.

11. Marianists hold that a primary way of carrying out the mission is recruitment of others to the Marianist culture and charism and to all other communities that are influenced by the Marianist spirit. Further, they have developed certain criteria for the choice of works, ministries, or apostolates beyond that of recruitment to the Marianist culture. These criteria are the following: a) that the ministry affords the opportunity of working together as an apostolic team, highlighting the diversity that exists in the Marianist culture; b) that the ministry meets the needs of the Church and society in their time and place and provides an opportunity for welcoming others to join the Marianist culture; c) that the ministry provides a setting for forming persons and communities in apostolic faith that helps foster solidarity and justice in the world.

12. Following Blessed Chaminade’s example, Marianists have recognized that schools, as well as other educational institutions, formal and non-formal, provide a ministry wherein all the criteria for accepting an apostolic work are met.

13. Those Marianist lay men and women, religious, and priests who minister in schools hold to all the assumptions of the culture aforementioned, as well as to others more specific to Marianist education in schools. Among these are the following:

a. The crucial distinction between instruction and education. As described above instruction involves the development of skills and the transference of the various domains of knowledge. Education, as Chaminade taught, means using all the means possible to develop a Christian spirit within students. Those in Maranist schools recognize that a principal context in which this education takes place is in the course of instruction.

b. Development of the whole person. The first Marianist teachers aimed at developing the whole person, his intellectual, physical, moral, emotional, and spiritual dimensions. For example, they introduced history, natural science, business, music and vocal performance into the curriculum years before they appeared in the official French syllabus. And at the same time they spoke of the education of the heart as well as the mind. That tradition continued through the centuries. For example, in the Manual of Christian Pedagogy for use of the Brothers of Mary (1899) it is stated: “Education, in a general sense, is the art of cultivating, developing, strengthening, and perfecting the physical, intellectual, and moral faculties, which, in the child, constitute human dignity.” Today, Marianists who serve in schools propose “an integral, quality education” which attends to the whole person. Mindful of Chaminade’s definition of education, Marianists assume that education consists in the cultivation of habits of mind and heart, the integrated maturation of the potential of body and soul – intellect, will, emotions, spirit – all informed and animated by the Christian spirit.

c. The ministry of presence. Those who minister in Marianist schools understand that it is especially through who they are, through the way that they present themselves, and the kind of atmosphere they create that teachers and all who serve in schools educate. As Chaminade wrote, they educate “in every word, look, and gesture.”  They are to be models of Christian maturity whom students wish to imitate, attractive examples of the Christian life. With St. Paul they could say, “Imitate me as I imitate Christ.”

d. The importance of education of the heart. Following the tradition of Chaminade, those Marianists who minister in schools believe that important to education is the development of a culture of the heart. They are convinced that though persons may often resist the light of reason, they will seldom resist the impulse of the heart. Therefore, they seek to understand how the emotions, feelings, and passions work in humans and by appeal to this affective dimension of the student to lead her or him to embrace faith, knowledge, and Christian values, to exercise virtue and to exhibit good behavior.

e. Convictions about who the student is and about what it means to be a teacher. These have been developed in the historical section of this document.

f. The characteristics of Marianist education. A recent articulation of the philosophy and pedagogy of Marianist education is found in Characteristics of Marianist Education and Characteristics of Marianist Universities. For those ministering in schools the five characteristics listed in the documents are a short-hand way of stating the Marianist mission in schools: a) to educate for formation in faith; b) to provide an integral, quality education; c) to educate for family spirit; d) to educate for service, justice, and peace; and e) to educate for adaptation and change.

These, then, represent some of the most important assumptions of those involved in the Marianist culture or charism. These assumptions form their “world of significance,” their understanding of their purpose in life.

Affirmation, Expression, and Communication.

The following points indicate some of the ways the Marianist culture is affirmed, expressed, and communicated.

Affirmation

1. Regularly, Marianists affirm Marianist culture by celebrating their founders in prayerful ceremonies and festive meals on special days, both as individual branches of the Marianist Family and as joint activities of some or all the branches.

2. Apostolic works, houses, small communities, and awards are often named for deceased Marianists who exemplified the culture.

3. Current members who live out the charism in a particularly striking manner or who are able to articulate it in a clear, convincing style are often formally or informally singled out for their contribution to the culture.

Expression

1. Mission statements, constitutions and rules of life, official documents produced internationally, nationally, and locally by each branch and by the Marianist Family as a whole are some of the ways by which the Marianist charism is expressed.

2. Distinctive artifacts, such as the Marianist commissioned sculpture of the scene of Mary and the Beloved Disciple at the foot of the cross, and statues, paintings and serigraphs of the founders, as well as prayers characteristic of Marianist culture, such as the Marianist doxology and the Three O’Clock Prayer, are other examples of the charism’s expression.

Communication

1. International and national newsletters and web pages of the Marianist Family as well as its branches are means of communication for members of the Marianist culture and for those beyond it.

2. Recounting favorite stories about the founders and their sayings also serve as examples of informal communication among the members.

Characteristic Behaviors and Practices.

The following items represent some of the characteristic behaviors and practices of Marianist culture:

1. In addition to the regular practices of prayer that mark Catholic culture, there are, as mentioned above, certain vocal prayers characteristic of the Marianist Family, for example, the doxology and the Three O’Clock Prayer. Meditation on the creed, as a way of enriching faith and fostering a love for the Christian mysteries, a faith of the heart, as well as making acts of faith throughout the day are practices that reach back to Blessed Chaminade.

2. To be faithful to their alliance with Mary, Marianists recognize a need to develop certain virtues that enable them to further the mission. Over time Chaminade identified these virtues and proposed that Marianists develop these in a progressive manner, consisting of three stages: Virtues of Preparation, Virtues of Purification, and Virtues of Consummation. This practice is called the System of Virtues. Used either by persons individually or in a group, its purpose is to foster Christ-like strengths that enable Marianists to act out of an apostolic faith, hope, and charity.

3. The gospel mandate “to read the signs of the time” was a byword for Chaminade. Following the founder’s example, Marianists remain ever alert to cultural transformations (for example, spiritual, economic, social, and intellectual changes). They seek to understand these in terms of what good God desires achieved in the present circumstances and what changes are necessary in order better to carry out the mission of making Christ present in these new situations and in the future. Therefore, a willingness to adapt and change methods, strategies, and practices characterizes the behavior of members of the Marianist culture.

4. Every issue or decision is considered from a threefold perspective, that of the religious, instructional, and temporal dimensions. The conviction that is the foundation of this practice is that no one perspective “views an endeavor in a completely comprehensive way.” Originated by Chaminade, this practice is formalized or implemented by the appointment of individuals to represent each of these concerns on every international, national, and local council that exists in the Marianist Family. The practice is known as the Three Offices and the councilors are called the Head of Religious Life, Head of Instruction or Education, and Head of Temporalities. The Three Offices is a specific instance of an overall Marianist conviction about the exercise of authority, leadership, and decision making, namely, that the best way to achieve the mission is through collaboration.

5. The Marianist Family only sponsors ministries that by their very nature multiply the efforts of those involved. For example, as seen above, Chaminade focused on Normal Schools because the effort invested in teachers would not only benefit the teachers but they would in turn impact hundreds of students who would in turn impact hundreds of people through their lives. The same is true of those who taught in Marianist schools. Through these students the teachers would extend their positive influence on the students’ families and on others.

Perhaps a counter example can help make the point. Marianists would not choose some hospital ministry, even though tending to the sick is a corporal work of mercy recommended by Jesus in word and deed. Generally, a minister to the sick, whether she is involved in providing medical attention, ministering Holy Communion, offering pastoral counseling or the like, impacts that individual alone. Also, usually the time spent with a sick person is not of sufficient length to foster or shape the person’s character. On the other hand, the amount time of spent by students in school provides an ample opportunity to do the work of education, as Chaminade defined it. As indicated above, Chaminade made a similar point in one of his letters, wherein he contrasted what happens in a parish with what happens in a school.

These, then, are some important examples of the characteristic behaviors or practices evident in Marianist culture.

Recruitment and Initiation.

The following points describe some of the means by which members of the Marianist culture are recruited and initiated.

1. Blessed Chaminade hoped that the communities that formed the Marianist Family would present to the world a spectacle of saints and as a result attract others to their membership. This method of attraction is still an important factor in gaining new members for the Marianist Family and for its apostolic works.

2. Additionally, each branch of the Marianist Family carries on an active recruitment program using various means to recruit new members.

3. An important source of new members is the pool of those individuals who work in or are served by its apostolic works but who have not made an explicit commitment to its culture or charism.

4. Each branch of the Marianist Family has some initiation process for new members. The kind and intensity of the program varies depending upon which branch the new member joins.

5. Workshops, novitiates, selected readings, classes, on-line courses, lectures, and seminars are some of the means that are used.

6. The goal of initiation is to introduce new members to the elements of the Marianist culture or charism described above and its practices. Some new members are already familiar with the culture, for example, those who are former students of a Marianist institution, or those who have been in association with an apostolic work, or have had an acquaintance with Marianists.

7. An important factor in initiation is the reciprocal formation that takes place within the communities, as mentioned above.

8. In addition to the initial formation or initiation, all members participate in some kind of on-going formation throughout their lives.

SUMMARY

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, in the midst of the capitulation of French Catholicism, William Joseph Chaminade, the founder, in partnership with Marie Thérèse Charlotte de Lamourous and Adèle de Batz de Trenquelléon, began to form missionary communities of apostolic action that eventually evolved into the Marianist culture. Throughout this culture’s two hundred years of existence, Chaminade’s thought, inspiration, and action have been the touchstones of the culture’s growth and development.

Influenced by the French School as well as the doctrinal and spiritual implications of the Incarnation, Baptism, and the Mystical Body, Chaminade invited people of all different walks of life to join together in these apostolic communities in order to make an alliance with Mary in her mission to give birth to Christ and nurture him in every age. It is this alliance that is the overriding assumption or driving force of the Marianist Family in general and of the various communities that compose it, as well as a source of the unity that exists in the midst of the diversity.

Chaminade held that a principal way of achieving this mission was through forming communities that nourished the presence of Christ among the members and that actively invited others to join with them. One of his insights was that the community itself was formative. The interaction of the members resulted in a reciprocal formation. Part of this formation consisted in the appropriation of the attitudes, dispositions, and behaviors evident in the mysteries of Jesus and Mary found in scripture and tradition. These communities also fostered growth in a faith that informed both cognitive and affective dimensions, a faith of both mind and heart. The System of Virtues, developed by Chaminade, also provided the members and communities with a way to develop the strengths necessary to carry out their mission. Finally, the climate that characterized these communities, internationally, nationally, and locally, was spoken of as Family Spirit.

Chaminade also proposed that certain apostolic orientations should characterize both the Marianist communities and the apostolic works they undertook. The first was to “read the signs of the time,” to be aware of transformations in the larger culture, in order to adapt practices, strategies, and methods so that the mission be better carried out in changed conditions. Second, he held that leadership and decision making were best done in a collaborative manner. A specific example of collaboration was what was eventually called the Three Offices. Finally, he proposed that an important factor in choosing an apostolic work was whether the effort invested simply benefited those served or whether those served would in turn serve others who in turn would serve others, so that the initial effort generated a ripple of apostolic activity.

Today, Marianist communities are found in Europe, North and South America, Africa, Asia, and Australia. Though the culture has developed over time and taken on some of the patina of the nations and ethnic groups in which it is situated, still wherever Marianists are found they look back to Chaminade for their inspiration and understand that their basic reason for being a part of the culture or living the charism is to join Mary in her mission.

MARIANIST SCHOOLS AS A MANIFESTATION AND PERPETUATION OF THE MARIANIST CULTURE/CHARISM

Introduction

1. As indicated above, the first thing that Chaminade did when he returned from exile to Bordeaux (1800) was to form communities composed of various groups of laity as a means of re-Christianizing France. However, after 1817 his efforts were more and more focused on school communities. He became convinced that a principal way through which the re-Christianization of France would take place was through schools – schools in which all members would be formed and nurtured as Christ. It seems self-evident that had there not been a clear congruence between what Chaminade intended in schools and his fundamental mission and religious understanding, initiated at Saragossa and matured throughout his life, i.e., the Marianist charism, he would not have invested so much energy in them.

2. Based, then, on the founder’s own example, Marianists believe that schools remain a major way in which the Marianist charism or culture is enacted throughout the world. As already stated above, Marianists have recognized that schools, as well as other educational institutions, provide a ministry wherein all the criteria determined by the Marianist culture for accepting an apostolic work are met. It is the intent of this section to demonstrate how the elements of the Marianist culture or charism delineated above are constitutive of a Marianist school. It is the contention of this section that Marianist schools are an enactment of the Marianist charism and because of the nature of schools, a perpetuation of it.

3. Just as some may never have imagined interpreting the Marianist charism through the lens of culture, so also, some may never have considered schools as constituting cultures. However, at least since the 1930s the term has been employed in relation to schools, and beginning in the 1970s this concept gained popularity among educational theorists and practitioners. Today it is commonplace to analyze school cultures and to argue that the kind of culture that is evident in a school contributes to the school’s distinctiveness as well as to its educational outcomes.  It is the supposition of this document that the distinctiveness of Marianist schools depends upon the elements of the Marianist charism or culture that constitute it. What makes Marianist schools different from neighboring government schools or schools sponsored by different religious congregations are the elements of the Marianist charism embodied in the Marianist schools’ culture.

4. In turn, because the Marianist school is an enactment or manifestation of the Marianist culture, one of the continuing apostolic possibilities of the Marianist school is to introduce the Marianist charism to large numbers of people beyond the Marianist Family. No other Marianist ministry consistently involves so many people of different socio-economic, ethnic, linguistic, and professional backgrounds: the students themselves, parents, boards of trustees, alumni and alumnae, non-governmental organizations, and various business and political organizations. What these thousands of people have in common is some type of association with a Marianist school and through it some awareness of the Marianist charism or culture.

The culture of Marianist Schools as enactment of the Marianist Charism

The purpose of the following section is to relate various aspects of Marianist schools to some of the elements of the Marianist culture or charism in order to indicate how the schools enact, make present, portray or manifest that culture.  It proposes as well to suggest how the schools are a means to perpetuate that culture or charism.

Ecological Context.

As detailed above, once the Daughters of Mary Immaculate and the Society of Mary were founded, the way their alliance with Mary was more and more lived out was through dedication to the “battleground of the schools.” In 1816 the Daughters of Mary accepted a school for poor children in Agen, and by 1819 some members of the Society of Mary were directing a boarding school in Bordeaux. From these cities, the Marianist ministry of schools fanned out through France, then beyond to the rest of Europe, North and South America, Africa, Asia, and Australia. Most often, the way the Marianist charism first entered a city, a nation, or a continent was through the ministry of schools. Today, as in the time of Chaminade, a variety of schools characterize this ministry: pre-school, kindergarten, primary, middle, and secondary schools, universities, trade schools, as well as other modes of education. Though Marianist schools have opened and closed throughout history, they are found even today on every continent mentioned above except for Australia.

Founder(s).

The following comments describe how Blessed Chaminade and those who partnered with him in developing the Marianist charism are related to the Marianist school culture.

1. Every Marianist school has a unique story about its origin, history, purpose, challenges, and successes that it reiterates periodically for its constituencies and especially for those new to its culture. But though each school’s saga is unique, ultimately at the beginning of each one stands Chaminade and his partners, Marie Thérèse Charlotte de Lamourous and Adèle de Batz de Trenquelléon. Had Chaminade not received his inspiration at Saragossa and then developed it with the collaboration of these women, there would have been no Marianist charism, no Marianist culture and, therefore, no Marianist schools. The only reason that any Marianist school exists is because Chaminade existed.

2. Mission statements, school histories, newsletters, self-study and accrediting documents in all Marianist schools state that they trace themselves back to the initial inspiration of Blessed Chaminade and the Marianist charism that animated his mission in schools. Despite differences that exist among themselves, all Marianist schools, like members of the Marianist Family, evaluate their outcomes and make institutional decisions in terms of their faithfulness to Chaminade’s educational tradition, especially in its most recent expression in the Characteristics of Marianist Education.

3. As ecclesial documents indicate, it is important that a founder’s charism “be lived, safeguarded, deepened and constantly developed….” Marianist schools of higher studies and universities afford opportunities for students and professors from a variety of perspectives and disciplines to participate in reflection and the development of knowledge of Chaminade, the Marianist charism/culture, and Marianist schools. This process enriches those involved in the study as well as the institutions in which they serve. It also has the potential to become a useful resource for the Marianist culture, including schools, and to ripple out to those beyond the Marianist Family.

Collectivity, Community.

The following points indicate how the characteristics of the collectivity or community of the Marianist culture are manifested in Marianist schools, especially unity in diversity.

1. Like the Marianist Family, Marianist schools represent a community of communities or an international network of institutions which exhibit the diversity of the Marianist culture. What unites them throughout the world is their sponsorship by branches of the Marianist Family as well as their appropriation of the contents of culture of the Marianist charism, especially those that relate to Marianist pedagogical assumptions. Designated persons, the Heads of Instruction or Education, on the international and national councils of the religious branches of the Marianist Family serve as a sign of unity among the schools and coordinate joint projects and facilitate communication among them. In some countries there are national consortiums of Marianist schools that advise and aid the Head of Instruction in her or his responsibilities. Unity in this international and national diversity is also fostered through meetings of administrators, teachers, pastoral or campus ministers as well as by exchange of personnel, official and unofficial communication among schools, administrators, faculty, and pastoral ministers; workshops for teachers in specific disciplines; retreats on the Marianist culture for teachers and other personnel; and the like.

2. In most Marianist schools there are groups of students organized into religious associations such as small Christian communities. These students interact nationally in meetings and retreats that manifest both their diversity and unity. Events such as World Youth Day provide opportunities for international gatherings of Marianist youth, which manifest the diversity of ethnicity and nationality, personality and experience, as well as their unity in Marianist culture.

3. The collaboration evident on the international and national levels is also found on the local level. One of most characteristic marks of a Marianist school, attested to by school personnel, students, alumni and alumnae, parents, board members, and others in some way acquainted with the school, is what Marianists call Family Spirit. The work of various school councils, the delegation of authority and responsibility, and the formation of policy and the administration of discipline aimed at creating community help foster this environment. Constant reference is made to this spirit in communications (for example, in newsletters, school memos, and addresses) across the school’s constituencies.

4. Through the informal interactions of the various members of the school community, such as relationships among the faculty and with students and parents, a sense of family is engendered. As the founder emphasized, it is especially important for teachers to win the admiration of students and cultivate an appropriate level of friendship with them. Unlike the factory atmosphere in schools censured by Chaminade or the barracks style, criticized by Father Simler, Marianist schools, like all cultures, create a sense of belonging and mutual relationships among the members, a setting that in and of itself is formative of a “culture of the heart.”

5. Year after year, new students, teachers, administrators, parents, and other school personnel enter into the Marianist school culture, where their older counterparts transmit through their formal and informal interaction with them the spirit that gives life to the community. In turn, the new members are invited to make their own contribution to the culture, so that a mutuality or reciprocity characterizes the interaction of all who make up the school community.

6. By their very nature schools require a diversity of persons to carry out their ministry, from cooks to presidents, from janitors to principals. As noted above, the very spirit of the Marianist school promotes a sense of cooperation among these members. But even more stands the conviction, frequently emphasized in letters of Fr. Chaminade to directors of schools, that everyone is essential to the success of the school and shares a basic equality within the community. All share in different ways the mission of the school to educate, to cultivate within students habits of mind and heart permeated with the Christian spirit.

7. When anyone becomes a member of the Marianist school culture, whether she or he be a board member, teacher, secretary, parent, or a student, she or he makes an alliance with the school and its mission. It is that mission that bonds members together both from a cognitive and affective perspective. Fundamentally, it is an alliance in Mary’s mission to make Christ present in the world and nurture him in others. Often it is expressed as education, understood in the full, rich sense of the Marianist tradition that stems from Chaminade.

8. Since mission is what unifies the diversity found among the school personnel, it is essential in inviting individuals to become educators (whether they be teachers or secretaries) to invite them to appropriate the mission. One non-negotiable in hiring an individual as a member of the school personnel or inviting someone to partner with the school (for example, as a board member) is whether she or he is willing to support and contribute to the mission, to educate not simply instruct.

9. Just as the membership of the Marianist Family is marked by differences in natural abilities and talents, socio-economic conditions, culture and race (Africans and Indians from different tribes and locations, Spaniards, French, Japanese, etc.), so also diversity characterizes the student body of Marianist schools. Mindful of Blessed Chaminade’s principle that it suffices “for everyone to be such as God wills him to be,” with different graces and destinations in life, Marianist teachers accept students as they are in all their individuality and help them develop their potential. To this end Marianists engage in a variety of schools, providing formal and non-formal instruction as well as vocational training.

10.  It is the goal of Marianist schools that graduates (as well as other members of the school community), having been immersed in this collaborative culture, where diversity as well as unity is appreciated, have an appropriate appreciation of their own individuality and that of others.  They need to sense at the same time the importance of collaborative leadership and decision making. Students witness parents and teachers, boards and presidents, teachers and other students working together to achieve the mission. They themselves participate in teamwork in the classroom, in learning together with other students, and in activities such as student councils. By this experience students are nurtured to value and to think collaboratively and appreciate each one’s unique contribution to any project or decision.

Contents of Culture and some of the ways it is affirmed, expressed, and communicated.

The following section is devoted to showing how some of the elements of Marianist culture are present in Marianist schools. In several instances comment on these elements will be enriched by a description of possible ways they might be affirmed, expressed, or communicated.

1. All Marianist educators, lay men and women, religious and priests, who are consecrated members of the Marianist Family, embody in mind, heart, and spirit all the  elements of culture that are part of the Marianist charism. That culture imbues their presence as they minister in Marianist schools.

2. But just as there were members of the Bordeaux sodality who, at least initially, varied in their degree of commitment, so also members of the Marianist school community vary in their degree of commitment to all the contents of culture, the full worldview, of the Marianist charism. As was remarked above, whether they be students or board members, they form a pool of persons who can be invited to greater degrees of commitment. Invitation to these individuals to deepen their commitment is a means of perpetuating the Marianist charism and because schools are enduring institutions, that pool of persons is always renewing itself with new students, new school personnel, new parents and the like.

The essential is that they understand the mission of Marianist schools, to educate in the full sense that Chaminade intended, and have the good will to support the mission in whatever way they are able.

3. As allied with Mary’s mission, Marianist schools intend to make Christ present in the world. They do this in a variety of ways.

a. To its constituencies and those beyond, the Marianist school communicates what the school’s mission is, namely, that the school exists to make Christ present through education. At the same time it makes clear that it is because of its commitment to Jesus and his example and his commission to Mary that it engages in the good works of instruction and education.

b. The Marianist school in its unity in diversity is a manifestation of the Body whose Head is Christ, as well as of the Christ who took on the humanity of all.

c. In some instances, were it not for the presence of the Marianist school, there would be no tangible manifestation of Christ among those whom it serves, for example, in parts of Asia and Africa. So its presence in these places is, perhaps, a more dramatic enactment of this dimension of Mary’s mission.

4. Being allied with Mary’s mission, Marianist schools intend to nurture Christ in others and in communities. In other words, they are intent on formation in faith. They do this in a variety of ways.

a. Marianist schools have a well developed curriculum for religion classes that is grounded in the mysteries of faith and appropriate to the student’s age, place, and time.

The goal of the religion curriculum is to develop not only the student’s knowledge base and cognitive capacities but also to nurture his or her affective and behavioral dispositions. As a result, it is the goal of the religion curriculum that through this instruction and education the student will have acquired  a “felt appreciation” of and commitment to Christ and his mysteries as well as a moral sense rooted in Christ-like values and attitudes, pertaining to both the individual and social aspects of life.

b. In the process of teaching religion a kind of reciprocal formation takes place. The teachers’ faith and commitment are enhanced by their preparation for class.  The faith of the students is enhanced as well.  Student questions, observations, and comments often are instructive for the teachers and their own understanding and practice of faith. What results is a learning community wherein all are enriched in faith.

In schools of higher studies and universities, professors and students have opportunities to explore of the mysteries of Christ and Mary at a more profound level as well as to consider the implications of their belief for their life and their future professions.

c. Complementing the religion curriculum are activities of the pastoral or campus ministry team. Among other things, this team, often composed of both students and adults, provides students with experiential opportunities for the expression of faith in Christ through such things as divisional and school-wide celebrations of the sacraments, pageants, pilgrimages, retreats, prayer services, and membership in small Christian communities. As with the teaching of religion, reciprocal formation takes place as the pastoral team works together and as it interacts with different groups of students.

d. Issues of faith, peace, service, and justice are considered across the curriculum, not only in religion class. For example, in discussing literature it is often natural to compare the outlooks of different authors on similar themes and trace their interpretation back to different philosophical and/or faith perspectives. In British literature, for example, one might compare Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “Grandeur of God” with William Wordsworth’s “The World Is Too Much With Us.” Both are Petrarchan sonnets, written in the nineteenth century, that lament the results of the Industrial Revolution. But Hopkins’ poem ends with a clear note of hope whereas Wordsworth seems close to despair. The themes are the same but handled differently because of different religious or faith perspectives. Literature as well as history and the other arts also easily lend themselves to questions of justice, peace, and service.

In the same way, the teaching of science and technology raises questions of faith, justice, peace, and service. There might be some discussion of how in the development of scientific knowledge individuals necessarily exercise a natural faith or trust in the work of others (sometimes misplaced) by using their results as a base to do further research (see: Michael Polanyi). Though one should not turn the teaching of biology into a religion course, some time might well be devoted (perhaps in cooperation with the teacher of religion) to issues such as faith and the Darwinian theory or the religious and ethical issues related to cell manipulation. Obviously, questions arise about peace and justice in regard to technology, for example, in terms of who has access to it and how it is used, whether in service of creation and human welfare or for destruction.

The above examples are not the point. The point is that the curriculum of Marianist schools integrates issues of faith, peace, service, and justice in all domains of knowledge and skills and thus indicates that these are not just peripheral matters which can be easily dismissed or simply relegated to the religion class.

e. Looked at from the perspective of St. Irenaeus’ often quoted saying that “the glory of God is man fully alive,” the Marianist conviction that the school should develop the whole person is really a contribution to the formation of individuals in Christ. For Irenaeus Jesus is the glory of God, for he is the most fully alive human being. In his humanity the habits of mind and heart are fully integrated, all suffused by unwavering trust or faith in the Father. The gospels picture him as sage, prophet, healer, friend, lover, forgiver, servant, and teacher. He delights in fellowship, is attentive to the beauties of creation, has moments of ecstasy, experiences both emotional and physical pain, suffers and dies, and is transfigured with eternal life. He is present to people of every strata – little children, women, tax collectors, day laborers, prostitutes, ascetics, students of the law, wielders of power. He can listen, learn, instruct, debate, touch and be touched, be angry at evil, unite, intuit reality, go beyond appearances, be silent.

Integrity characterizes his life. His ways of thinking and believing, his ways of feeling – his desires, emotions, passions and his relationships with others and with the Father – worked in harmony with one another. Nothing human was foreign to him. He experienced every dimension of human life and as such he was the one who was fully human.

In genuinely developing the whole person – the physical, intellectual, affective, moral, and spiritual dimensions – Marianist educators aim at enabling students to become fully alive like Christ. Just as nothing human was foreign to Jesus, so education of the whole person ultimately involves fostering such a humanity in each student. And like Jesus who in his humanity grew in his sense of vocation, so also, in educating the whole person, Marianists aim at aiding students discover the “deep purposes that lend meaning, wonder, and fulfillment to their lives” as they come to understand the vocation, the calling in life, that is theirs.

f. Another very important way the school community and individuals are formed in faith is through the kind of presence, atmosphere or climate school personnel create, especially teachers. As one of the early Marianist pedagogical treatises phrased it, teachers are the “soul” of the classroom, or in Olier’s terms, “sacraments.” Simply put, they form Christ by giving a Christian example in “every word, look, and gesture.” They stand as models of maturity, examples of Christian living to whom students are attracted to imitate. The diversity among them witnesses to the fact that there is not just one way to be Christ-like – each person is called to manifest Christ in his or her individuality.

To be attractive models, teachers need to be adequately prepared in their subject matter, adept at teaching methodology, skilled in adapting and changing methods according to student needs, and able to win the esteem and friendship of students. The teacher, in other words, needs to be a professional, a reflective practitioner, because that is what justice to the students and to their parents demands, as well as because it is in the course of good instruction that education is carried out.

But beyond professionalism, Marianist teachers have to possess certain virtues or strengths to carry out their ministry, many of which are developed in the Marianist System of Virtues – the five silences, recollection, perseverance, patience, confidence in God, humility and the like.

Teachers also need to live by certain convictions:

that theirs is a vocation, a calling, a ministry, not simply a job;

that their mission is to educate as Chaminade and other Marianist documents have defined the term;

that this mission is their fundamental intention, orienting all that they do;

that to fulfill their mission of nurturing Christ in others and in the community, they themselves must be exemplars of faith;

that their mission calls them to prayer for themselves, the community, and their students.

Teachers also have to foster certain attitudes or beliefs about students:

that each is made in the image and likeness of God;

that it is sufficient for a student to be as God intends her or him to be;

that no student is given exactly the same graces and potential as others;

that though no student is perfect, that which is not perfect should not be rejected as totally bad;

that a student should be helped to develop that potential that he or she has;

that each student is capable of mirroring Christ;

that with others each student has the possibility to transform the world in some way.

(For a much more developed list of convictions and activities necessary to Marianist teachers see Appendix A: Convictions and Actions of Marianist Teachers as delineated in Characteristics of Marianist Education.)

g. Much of what has been stated about the implementation of faith formation, the nurturing of Christ in others, in regard to teachers and students also applies to the other constituencies of the school. The Marianist school, in so far as it is able, strives to provide opportunities to all the members of its community to grow in faith both individually and communally. Through newsletters, presentations, participation in events of faith such as pilgrimages, pageants, and the celebration of sacraments; through instruction in the mysteries of faith, prayer experiences, workshops; and through an invitation to join branches of the Marianist Family, the Marianist school strives to foster faith in all who are associated with it. Also, as students in Chaminade’s schools became apostles to their parents, so, too, today, very often it is through their sons and daughters that parents catch the spirit of the Marianist school.

h. As part of faith formation in Marianist schools, knowledge and devotion to Mary are cultivated because it is her mission that provides the fundamental motivation for the schools’ existence. Statues and other art work stand as tangible reminders of her presence and role in salvation. Several of her feast days are celebrated. Characteristic Marianist prayers are incorporated into the routine of the schools. The mysteries of her life are considered in the religion curriculum. In schools of higher studies and universities, students and professors from a variety of disciplines study her influence through the centuries.  Mary as a model for all women as well as all disciples is explored and appropriated.

i. Because of a sense of inclusivity (a modern interpretation of the fundamental Marianist conviction of diversity), Marianist schools, as noted above, invite people of various levels of commitment to be part of the different constituencies of the school. This does pose a challenge to the mission, since it is difficult to imagine, for example, non-Christians attuned enough to the mysteries of Christ and willing enough to foster an explicit Christian faith in students and others. What these individuals can be expected to do is to support, affirm, appreciate, value, and contribute to the mission in whatever way they can.  Integrity requires this of such persons.

Clearly, though, the mission of Marianist schools requires a critical mass of teachers and other school personnel fully committed to Christ and to Christian formation in faith. Other constituencies of the school, especially boards, also require such persons.

Especially in schools of higher studies and universities, the presence of teachers and others who profess beliefs different than those of Catholics or no religious beliefs at all present an opportunity for ecumenical discussion as well as conversation with those who constitute the members of what Benedict XVI has called the Court of the Gentiles. As has often been noted, when such dialogues or conversations are really genuine, one of the results is the enriching of one’s own faith. Thus, these conversations can become opportunities for faith formation.

j. A similar challenge that faces Marianist education in regard to formation in faith is how to articulate the way this central mission is to be achieved in schools, as well in other educational institutions, that serve mainly non-Christian populations. Today, the first concern of Marianists is not to convert these people, though Marianists do show them the attractiveness of Christianity and offer them that gift in so far as societal and political conditions allow.

A major Marianist motivation in the newer African and Asian missions to non-Christians is to serve the poor and marginalized, thereby to follow Christ’s injunction to serve the least, to make him present in action, and to meet the universal call for education. As stated above such activity serves the first dimension of Mary’s mission, to make Christ present, but it does not address the second part of the mission, nurturing Christ in individuals and communities.

In this context of ministry to non-Christian populations one might imagine that formation in faith, nurturing Christ, is carried out in the educational process by fostering in students and other constituencies of the school Christ-like attitudes and dispositions, which, as argued above, really express what it means to be truly human or fully alive. Such formation does not address issues of explicit trust in Christ and participation in his mysteries but it nonetheless seeks to permeate the habits of the minds and hearts of the students and others with the Christian spirit.

Marianists need to continue to discuss how the Marianist school which serves non-Christian populations is faithful to the alliance with Mary in her mission. The above offers but one way to articulate the matter.

5. In alliance with Mary’s mission, Marianist schools form individuals and communities empowered to transform the world.

a. Knowledge is power. Through the instruction imparted to students, Marianist schools prepare them with an integrated understanding of the various branches of knowledge as well as the development of skills essential to living and working in today’s world. Such quality instruction is essential to enable students to become agents of change.

Through the education imparted through instruction, students are formed in attitudes or perspectives that orient their use of knowledge and skills not simply for themselves but also for the development and Christian transformation of the various communities to which they belong: familial, municipal, national, and global.

Through exposure to Catholic social teaching, through study and experience of various social problems, and through the example of their teachers and others of the school constituencies, a sense of solidarity with humanity is fostered in students’ minds and hearts as well as the realization that they, individually and corporately, have a responsibility for the betterment of society.

Extracurricular activities such as service clubs, participation in peace and justice activities, and programs that immerse students in different cultures and in different socio-economic settings give them some real-life understanding of the reality of the world and some indication of what needs to be changed. Hands on work in tutoring disadvantaged students, in visiting prisons, in providing food for the poor, in community organizing, and the like, provide students with some practical experience in changing or bettering the situation of others. Service-learning, where a service component is linked to instruction in a particular discipline such as social studies or art, offers students an opportunity to connect the knowledge or skill they learn in a classroom with how it can be used to help others or transform conditions in their environment. The reflective component of  service-learning, done individually and with fellow classmates, spurs students to consider why service and transformation are necessary, what changes have to be made, who needs to be served, what motivations move one to serve, and how adaptations and changes might be practically effected.

Marianist schools foster a disposition in students to be attentive to the signs of the times and to evaluate the cultural assumptions of their society in terms of the coherence of those assumptions with the Christian vision. Just as Chaminade realized that a “new fulcrum” had to be found to move the modern world, so, too, students are skilled in the use of imagination in order that they might frame or picture situations in new ways for the sake of the mission. In fact, education in all five silences of the System of Virtues provides habits of mind and heart that nurture reflection, behaviors, and emotions that assist students to be attentive, discerning, and pro-active as they collaborate in the transformative process.

Since our world has become global, Marianist schools prepare students to be citizens of the world as well as of their own city or nation. Learning how to engage in productive and civil conversation, how to evaluate the opinions of others in an objective manner, how to articulate one’s own opinion and how one arrived at that opinion, and how to incorporate into one’s own understanding what is judged good in the opinion of others and to work toward consensus – all these skills are essential as part of quality instruction that prepares students to live and work for positive change in a cross-cultural, global situation.

Gaining an understanding of various cultures and being able to recognize similarities and differences among them as well as with one’s own culture, broaden students’ vision. Developing a critical sense that can distinguish between what is simply something different from one’s own cultural practice, versus a cultural practice that is harmful and unjust is crucial to discerning what needs to be transformed in our global world.  For example, having rice as a staple food of the diet rather than pasta or potatoes is culturally different, but not wrong.  Female circumcision, on the other hand, is a cultural practice that is harmful and unjust.  Even more essential to a Christian global vision is an absolute belief that every human being is made in the image and likeness of God and thereby has inalienable dignity and worth despite her or his ethnicity, race, culture, nationality, degree of learning or socio-economic condition.  So too is unwavering conviction that the grace of Christ encompasses all people, even those unaware of it.

These are some of the elements of an education for a global world that Marianist schools provide as part of their effort to enable students to be missionaries, those who move the modern world as did Chaminade.

b. Having been educated in an incarnational spirituality, students possess the conviction of the ever present love of God for all people and all creation. That love most fully manifested in Jesus’ mission to renew creation makes them sensitive to the cost involved in any transformation – for Jesus the cost was the cross. But it also brings them assurance that ultimately the good God intends will be achieved, as revealed in the resurrection. Thus, a sober hope stays them in their efforts to contribute to what John Paul II and Benedict XVI have called a “culture of love.”

c. Schooled in the history of Blessed Chaminade, students, graduates and other members of the school’s constituencies see a similarity between his time and their own. In fact, they recognize that today’s secularism may be more of a challenge than what Chaminade called “religious indifference.”   In the words of Benedict XVI, the present state is one in which the radical Enlightenment culture has reached its full development so that “in a manner unknown before now to humanity, [it] excludes God from the public conscience, either by denying him altogether, or by judging that his existence is not demonstrable, uncertain and, therefore, belonging to the realm of subjective choices, something, in any case, irrelevant to public life.”

Just as Chaminade proposed a spectacle of saints, who would show the practicality of the Gospel and challenge the propaganda of philosophes, such as Jean d’Alembert, so graduates of Marianist schools, educated as indicated above, teachers, and other members of the school’s constituencies form a cadre of involved, articulate men and women ready to challenge this culture and work to transform it through the example of their lives and the presentation of a convincing argument for and a description of the Christian vision of humanity and society.

d. Since the future of society depends upon each succeeding generation, the Marianist school serves as a resource of persons ever renewing itself and oriented to transforming the world as did Christ.

These, then, are some examples of how the contents of Marianist culture are enacted in Marianist schools.

Affirmation, Expression, and Communication.

The following points indicate some more ways the Marianist culture is affirmed, expressed, and communicated in schools.

Affirmation

1. Marianist schools celebrate Blessed Chaminade and his partners in founders’ day activities, affirming their inspiration and the Marianist educational tradition that animates the schools.

2. Marianist schools regularly celebrate the mysteries of Jesus and Mary in prayer services, pageants, pilgrimages and the like.

3. Awards to students, teachers, school personnel, and other members of the school’s constituencies are named for Chaminade and other outstanding Marianist educators.

4. Awards to students, teachers, school personnel, and other members of the school’s constituencies are given for exemplifying characteristics of the Marianist charism, especially as they pertain to education.

5. Schools, projects, centers, lectures, programs, scholarships and the like are named for the founders of the Marianist culture and other significant figures of Marianist history.

6. The budget of the school is created in such a way that appropriate funds are allotted for support of the Marianist characteristics of the school.

7. In enrolling students, hiring teachers and other school personnel, and enlisting board members, Marianist schools strive to maintain diversity in its membership.

Expression

1. Documents, such as the Characteristics of Marianist Education, provide expressions at the international level of the Marianist features manifested in the Marianist educational culture.

2. Statues, portraits, posters and serigraphs of Blessed Chaminade, his partners, other notable Marianist educators as well as Marian scenes stand in schools as reminders of the Marianist educational tradition.

3. Essays, monographs, dissertations, and books examine and publish aspects of the Marianist educational tradition and the figures who stand behind it.

4. School mission statements, histories, evaluative instruments and the like articulate the Marianist school culture.

5. Characteristic Marianist prayers express the Marianist charism enacted in the Marianist school culture.

6. Display of the school mission statement and the five characteristics of Marianist education in prominent places in the school express the Marianist educational culture.

7. School emblems and logos incorporate expressions of the Marianist educational tradition.

Communication

1. Newsletters, assemblies, orientations, school web pages, yearbooks, and media exposure are some of the many ways that the Marianist educational culture is communicated to a variety of persons.

2. Telling the story of the school and of some of its outstanding members is a way of communicating in a concrete manner the principles of the Marianist educational culture.

Recruitment, Initiation, and Continuing Formation of New Members.

Unless new members are born into a culture or recruited to it, it will eventually become extinct. Therefore, the recruitment, initiation, and continuing formation of its members are essential to any culture, including the Marianist culture and that of Marianist schools. Below are some examples of how these activities in Marianist schools are carried out.

1. Just as Chaminade thought that sodalities and schools should gain new members by the attractiveness of their community, so many are drawn to Marianist schools today because of the same reason. In some families one generation after another enters a Marianist school because of the positive experience the older members have had in them. Other students enroll in a Marianist school because they or their parents are attracted by its mission or the experience they had when they visited the school or reports of its success in education. Still others enter the school on the basis of recommendations by friends who had attended the school.

Some of these same motivations apply to teachers and other school personnel who seek employment at a Marianist school. Also, alumnae and alumni are often motivated to serve in a Marianist school because of the positive experience they had of Marianist education as students. Therefore, attraction still provides a powerful motivation for the influx of new members into the school community.

2.  At the same time many Marianist schools also have a very active recruitment program to attract potential students. Through the activity of school personnel and/or various media, Marianist schools publicize their mission as a Catholic Marianist school and invite new students to become members of the school community and commit themselves to the purposes of Marianist education. Often principals, presidents or those whom they designate interview parents and students to make clear the commitments of the Marianist school and thereby insure that the students and parents clearly understand the commitment they are making to the educational mission.

Schools also recruit faculty and school personnel. Hiring for mission is central to this recruitment process. The mission of education, as understood by Father Chaminade and expressed in the five characteristics of Marianist education, is clearly communicated to those individuals invited to become a part of the Marianist educational community. Only those willing to support the mission to the best of their ability are employed as members of the school community.

Others are also recruited to be a part of the various school constituencies. Of particular note are board members. Besides the particular expertise that they bring to the board, it is essential that board members be formed to fully understand and support the Marianist educational mission, for board members are custodians of the mission.

3. Marianist schools provide new student, parent, faculty, administrator, school personnel, and board orientation programs. Each is tailored to the specific needs of each constituency, though all contain an overall presentation on the elements of Marianist culture that derive from the Marianist charism.

These orientations also provide a first introduction to Father Chaminade and his associates, Marie Thérèse Charlotte de Lamourous and Adèle de Batz de Trenquelléon. Since the figure of Blessed Chaminade, as the founder of the Marianist charism, is so essential to the continuing vitality of the Marianist culture and schools, an understanding of his life, thought, and activity serves to draw the various school constituencies deeper into the Marianist culture that derives from him.

This first introduction is complemented by a continuing formation composed of such things as more detailed presentations of his life in books and lectures, pilgrimages, multi-media presentations, classes, artifacts, and in the continual reference to him in school publications, announcements, and day-to-day school interchanges. The inspiration of his life and the sense of living his legacy serve to elicit from the members of the school constituencies deeper forms of commitment to the Marianist culture, and for some, membership in some branch of the Marianist Family.

4. Because the faculty is so central to the mission of education, besides the initial orientation program, various workshops and retreats that consider such things as teaching as a ministry, the importance of developing certain convictions and virtues as a Marianist teacher, and an introduction to the System of Virtues, are provided for new teachers as part of their on-going formation.

Periodic workshops, courses, readings, and retreats are provided for members of the seasoned faculty. Their purpose is to deepen reflection on the Marianist spirit and to be an occasion to renew their commitment to the mission of making Christ present and nurturing him in individuals and communities.

Gatherings of local, national, and international school personnel also provide on-going formation in the Marianist school culture.

5. In a similar way, board retreats and national and international meetings of board members deepen the members’ knowledge and commitment to mission.

6. At the beginning of regular school meetings – such as faculty, school council, administrator, and board meetings – time is devoted for some element of faith formation and the deepening of awareness about the Marianist mission.

7. Throughout the school year retreats and the like are offered as an opportunity for students to grow deeper in faith and knowledge of themselves. Often the retreat team that conducts the retreats are composed of students, teachers, and pastoral ministers who, in the process of preparing the retreat, enrich their own faith through a kind of reciprocal formation.

8. Like members of the other school constituencies, students are invited to a deeper commitment to the Marianist charism through membership in small Christian communities or school sodalities. New members participate in an initiation process and through the year various other formation experiences are provided. The regular meetings of these groups provide opportunities for reciprocal formation and often delegates of these groups meet on a national level for interchange and formation.

9. Finally, just as was true of Chaminade’s sodality, simply belonging to a Marianist school community is to some degree formative. Simple membership in that culture has some effect on the individual’s cognitive, affective, and behavioral attitudes and disposition.

SUMMARY

From 1817 on Blessed Chaminade focused more and more of his energy on founding and supervising schools. He came to believe that to re-Christianize France, to be faithful to his alliance with Mary in her mission of making Christ present in the world and nurturing him in others, it was necessary to contest the virulently anti-Catholic thought of the age on the “battlefield of the schools.” The goal of these schools was not simply instruction but education, imbuing the habits of the mind and heart of students with an apostolic faith.

Today, Marianists continue to believe, like Chaminade, that schools are a major way of living out their alliance with Mary in her mission of making Christ present and nurturing his presence in individuals and communities. They see them as an enactment or manifestation of the Marianist charism or culture that was founded by Chaminade.

The primary, fundamental, profound mission of Marianist schools is to participate in Mary’s mission; here lies the core conviction of the Marianist charism. First of all, they achieve that mission by the type of community that is fostered among the schools’ constituencies. From a faith perspective, it mirrors the Mystical Body of Christ, for it is marked by unity in diversity, where the role of every member is seen as important to the educative process and where a fundamental equality exists among the members. As is true of the Marianist culture or charism in general, what characterizes this community is Family Spirit. All aspects of the school are evaluated in terms of how well they contribute to this sense of community.

Since Mary’s mission is the most profound force of unity among the diverse school constituencies, Marianist schools are, at their core, apostolic faith communities. Therefore, recruitment of new members to the community is a way of carrying out its mission of nurturing Christ, because by their interaction in the community new members begin to grow in faith.       The very presence of the older members of the school community, of seasoned teachers and other school personnel, creates a Christian atmosphere by “every word, look, and gesture.” Almost by osmosis, as it were, new members gradually are absorbed into the spirit of the community. And as they mature in the community, they are invited to deeper levels of commitment in the Marianist Family.

Secondly, Marianist schools carry out Mary’s mission of faith formation through the structure and elements of their curriculum as well as through opportunities for religious experience available in activities of the pastoral or campus ministry team. The program of the school also affords students opportunities to learn and to gain hands-on knowledge of issues of peace, justice, and service. This instruction and education instills in students a down-to-earth hope and prepares them to work for the betterment of the world as individuals and in collaboration with others.

The Marianist culture or charism, then, is incarnated in schools in the following ways: through their recognition of Chaminade as their founder and inspiration, through their foundational mission, through their emphasis on a rich understanding of education, through the kind of community that constitutes them, through their faith formation of the school’s constituencies both through membership in the community and through formal instruction and education, and through their preparation of students and other members of its constituencies to be agents of transformation, or to be, in Chaminade’s language, missionaries.

In addition to manifesting the charism in a school setting, Marianist schools also perpetuate its existence. As long as Marianist schools exist, they will cause the Marianist charism or culture to be present where they are, for, as described above, it is that culture that accounts for their distinctiveness among other schools.  Further, since schools have a regular influx of new persons – students, teachers, parents, school personnel, board members – they serve as an ever-renewing source of new members for the Marianist culture.

Today, as in the past, Marianists and the Marianist charism are known in Europe, North and South America, Africa, and Asia principally through Marianist schools.

CONCLUSION

As Marianist educators we are heirs to the great legacy of Blessed Chaminade.  It is his inspiration that has chartered our course in schools, and it is to his mission that we forever return for direction. We join him in his divinely conferred vocation of alliance with Mary, as we adapt it to our situation and times. We recognize that it is the elements of the Marianist culture or charism that constitute the distinctiveness of Marianist schools and shape their educational outcomes.

Ever mindful of his crucial distinction between instruction and education, we seek to develop the mind and heart of our students – the physical, spiritual, psychological, intellectual, affective, and moral dimensions of their lives – and suffuse them with the Christian spirit. We aim at developing persons who are truly alive and therefore other Christs, for Jesus is the “fullness of what it means to be a human being” and as such “the reference point of all educational work.”

Just as Christ’s presence was transformative, so also we strive to foster school communities of faith, marked by unity in the midst of diversity, that create a corporate presence of Christ within civil society. By their attractiveness and by their incorporation of others into the communities, they become agents of transformation. Having been formed within these communities to be other Christs, their members, by their presence and by their everyday interactions, in their vocation, occupation, and volunteer service, and in the market place and in the public square, also carry out the mission of moving the world closer to the vision of God’s reign.

Since schools are enduring institutions that regularly renew themselves through the incorporation of new members, we see them as a means to perpetuate the Marianist charism and to make it known to generation after generation. Though informed by the past and faithful to it, our orientation is toward the future, for to teach is touch the future through our students. What the world will become is to a large extent entrusted to them.

Looking to Mary as the one who shaped the humanity of Christ, taught him how to be human as only God could be, we seek to develop her attitudes, dispositions, convictions, and behaviors in order to fulfill our vocation as educators. In the process of doing so, we offer the Church educational communities rooted in a Marian style. These may serve as an attractive model for other ecclesial communities and the Church itself to imitate. Since Mary is the Mother of the Church it is only natural that the Church would desire to take on her spirit and foster communities that engage in Marian practices and exhibit a Marian character.

As Blessed Chaminade proclaimed: “Ours is a great work, a magnificent work.  …it is because we are Missionaries of Mary….”

APPENDIX A

CONVICTIONS AND ACTIONS OF MARIANIST TEACHERS AS DELINEATED IN CHARACTERISTICS OF MARIANIST EDUCATION (1996)

(#: refers to a section in Characteristics of Marianist Education)

MARIANIST TEACHERS

Convictions

have a living awareness of the inescapably moral and spiritual dimensions of education #15

know that the deepest needs are those we cannot fill ourselves  #18

know that the most valuable knowledge comes from loving others  #18

realize they sow seeds that will bear fruit for generations  #19

hold that training in responsibility is oriented toward drawing out young people's unique talents and calls them to mature, socially-conscious leadership #24

General Apostolic Actions

offer those around the world the testimony of their lives  #8

see their work not merely as a job but as a ministry of love and service #15

sense that they are missionaries, in a permanent state of witnessing to the Good News of Jesus Christ #54

sense themselves as part of a global network of educational apostolates #36

educate by their every word, gesture, and look  #45

Professional Actions

are open and attentive to new approaches, thereby keeping Marianist education up to date by their contributions  #8

have a solid grasp of subject matter and effective, creative pedagogical techniques #12

develop and continually improve their own distinctive professional capacities #33

learn to employ new kinds of learning and new technologies  #65

Specific Faith Actions

emulate Jesus in love of and service to others #16

combine knowledge and virtue #16

value human life in all its dignity #55

see all people as brothers and sisters #36

be personal models of prayer and of love, bearing witness to the faith their schools propose  #21

commit themselves to living by gospel values  #23

challenge their students by personal example to develop an authentic interior spirit  #25

strive personally to possess the virtues and dispositions of Mary #26

work to transform the school into living testimony of new evangelization #54

search for the truth #22

stimulate and learn from dialogue between faith and culture  #22

view the signs of our times in faith, prayerfully open to their possibilities #65

be committed to a just and peaceful society #55

be committed to the common good  #55

work with others in the school toward "the enrichment of culture and the transformation of society in accord with the message of salvation"  #76

Actions to Foster Faith in Students

teach students to be faithful and compassionate #14

carry out their mission of forming others in faith, by helping youth with the search for meaning, enabling them to welcome the sacred, and guiding them toward contemplating the good, the true, and the beautiful  #21

provide time inside and outside of class for nurturing habits of silence and reflection  #35

aid students in their practice of faith  #23

form students in the wisdom of the social teachings of the Church #23

with students create model communities of faith centered in charity #25

Actions to Provide an Integral, Quality Education

teach students to be competent and capable #14

encourage students to be bearers of the best of our tradition #65

work together with one another and administrators to integrate the academic disciplines and foster cooperation among academic departments #67

train students to develop the will and the discipline to accept responsibility in the school and in other areas of their lives  #24

call each student to personal and communal responsibility #47

Actions to Foster Community/Family

honor the variety of people in the school and encourage them to use their gifts toward the common good  #37

characterized by "family spirit," work together with each other, students, and other constituencies of the school to achieve lasting relationships of friendship and trust, supporting and challenging each other in developing their mutual gifts  #15

share the responsibility to create and sustain an environment in which can flourish beauty, simplicity, harmony, discipline, and creativity  #44

be present to students, not only to teach them but also to love and respect them #14

communicate respectfully, recognizing others as individuals within the community  #45

praise, thank, and recognize members in the school community  #45

have students together develop each other's skills and strengthen mutual self-esteem  #34

listen attentively and engage in dialogue with trust and empathy #45

as teachers be available and open to others  #45

provide a climate of acceptance, discipline, and love  #44

exhibit a "prudent tendency to leniency" #47

encourage students, challenge them and respect their differences by adapting teaching styles to their individual needs and abilities  #34

welcome students from various ethnic and economic backgrounds and educate students with differing abilities and gifts  #37

adapt what they teach to the cultures of their students #22

Actions to Foster Social Consciousness and Global Awareness

encourage student work with and for the poor, developing in the school and in the civic community programs of physical, economic, educational, and social assistance #56

encourage students to meet change actively with discernment and reflection #65

encourage the study of foreign languages #68

encourage international student and teacher exchange programs #68

APPENDIX B

QUESTIONS FOR PERSONAL REFLECTION, INDIVIDUALLY OR IN A GROUP

1.      How would you describe your vocation as an educator in a Marianist school?

2.      As an educator in a Marianist school do you believe you have made an alliance with Mary in her mission?

3.      What similarities and differences do you see between the present culture in which you live and that of Chaminade’s day?

4.      How do you and members of your school community respond to the current situation of your culture as did Chaminade in his day?

5.      How do you understand the design of God in your life and in the Marianist mission?

6.      How do you contribute to education, not only instruction, in your school?

7.      How would you describe the role of schools in general in your society?  How would describe the role of Marianist schools in your society?

8.      How does the leadership of the churches contribute to the estrangement of people to Christianity, as was the situation in Chaminade’s time?  In what ways do you think you as an educator or your school can remedy this situation?

9.      Do you consider yourself and your colleagues as a “creative minority” in society?

10.      How do you and your colleagues enrich your spiritual, intellectual, moral and emotional life as individuals and as a community?

11.      Chaminade seems to have had the ability to face disappointments with equanimity, not give up, and start anew.  What do you think accounted for this ability?  How do you face disappointments or failures and not give up?  What strengths do you have or need in this regard?

12.      How would you state the difference between instruction and education?  What do you think of that distinction?

13.      Do you think that the school in which you serve achieves the goal of education as articulated by Chaminade?  Why?  Why not?

14.      How do you see the relationship between your school and the homes from which your students come?

15.      Do you consider yourself to be an educator who, by that fact, is an apostle?

16.      What do you know about the Marianist Family and its origins?  How do you experience the presence of the Marianist Family in your school?

17.      John Paul II called Blessed Chaminade the “apostle of the laity.”  Do you agree?  If so, what evidence would you give to support your position?

18.      How would you articulate the dispositions, convictions, and behaviors recommended by Chaminade for teachers?  How can teachers develop these dispositions, convictions, and behaviors?

19.      What do you think the term “unalterable intention” means?  Does that characterize you as a member of the school personnel?

20.      How important to you is the conviction that the teacher/educator is “to sow not to reap”?

21.      How important to you as a teacher/educator is the affective dimension of the school and of education?

22.      Do you ever think of yourself as a missionary?

23.      Do you look to Mary as a model of the kind of person one needs to be in order to be an effective teacher/educator?

24.      How would you describe the ecological context of your school?  How do these factors impact carrying out the school mission?

25.      How knowledgeable are you about Chaminade?  To what extent do you refer to his inspiration in making decisions related to your school?

26.      How important to you is the mystery of the Incarnation?  How would you describe the Incarnation and its implications?  What do you do to deepen your knowledge and experience of the mystery?

27.      What kind of appreciation do you have of Mary?  How do you see her in terms of the Bible and her influence through the centuries?  Does she have any place in your life?

28.      Do you see yourself, school personnel, students, alumni and alumnae, as agents of positive change in society?

29.      To what extent do you give yourself to becoming one with Jesus and Mary?  What practices help dispose yourself to this transformation?  How would you describe what this transformation is like?

30.      Are you convinced of the importance of collaboration and the value of each individual’s contribution?

31.      How would you describe the kind of faith that characterizes Marianists?  How do you develop that faith in yourself and foster it in others?

32.      How, as a member of the school community, do you work at the education of the whole person?

33.      Describe what presence means.  What kind of presence do you create in school?

34.      How do you appeal to the affective dimension, to the heart of students?

35.      Can you list the characteristics of Marianist education and give a short description of each?  How do they influence your presence and ministry in the school?

36.      What are some of the manifestations of the characteristics of Marianist education in your school?  In what ways can they be better realized in your school?

37.      What is your experience of diversity in your school?  How have you found it enriching?  How has it been a challenge?  What has been the principle of unity in the midst of the diversity?  Do any religious convictions serve as unifying factors?

38.      Do you sense a common feeling, a family spirit, among the constituencies of the school?  How effective is that spirit?

39.      Do you experience growth in your role as an educator through interchange with educators in other Marianist schools and through national and international meetings?

40.      Have you been introduced to the System of Virtues?  If so, what is your experience of it?

41.      How did you first encounter the Marianist charism?  What was your impression of it then?  What is your impression of it now?

42.      How aware are you of other Marianist schools around the world?  Have you met personnel from other Marianist schools?  What has been your experience in meeting others from Marianist schools?  Have you considered any ways to improve yourself or your school through interaction with other Marianist schools nationally and internationally?

43.      Do you experience a shared sense of mission, a sense of ministry, among the personnel of your school?

44.      Have you been invited to become a member of the Marianist Family?  If so, what was your response and why?

45.      Describe your experience of interaction with others of different faiths in your school.

46.      Have you participated in service learning teaching?  If so, how would you describe the experience?

47.      In what ways do you help students become citizens of the world?

48.      Do you sense a hope in students?  How can you enhance it or initiate it in them?

QUESTIONS ORIENTED TO ACTIONS

1.      Does the school engage in a periodic cultural audit to ensure that the various elements of the Marianist charism are adequately enacted?

2.      Does the school periodically review whether there is a need to adapt or change the way the characteristics of the Marianist charism are expressed in the school?

3.      Does the school make its Marianist mission known to its constituencies and to the public at large?

4.      In what ways are the constituencies of the school introduced to the Marianist culture?  How effective are these programs?  What measures indicate their effectiveness?

5.      What opportunities exist for on-going formation in the Marianist culture for the school’s consitutencies?

6.      How are the outcomes of the school curriculum linked to the five characteristics of Marianist education?

7.      How do the pastoral or campus ministry team and extracurriculars contribute to the Marianist culture?

8.      What opportunities exist for collaboration among the school constituencies?

9.      Is there a periodic review among the school personnel and students of the characteristics of Marianist education?  Is there discussion of what they mean and how they are implemented in the school?  Is there discussion about how better to implement them in the school?

10.      What kind of diversity exists among school personnel and students?  What efforts are made to develop diversity in the school constituencies?

11.      Are policies framed and executed in terms of community, in terms of family spirit?

12.      What are indications of collaboration within the school constituencies?  Are there other opportunities for collaboration?

13.      How do the national and international networks of Marianist schools enrich the experience and manifestation of the Marianist culture in the school?

14.      In what ways is the Marianist culture of the school affirmed, expressed, and communicated? Are there other opportunities for its affirmation, expression, and communication?

15.      How are invitations to members of the school constituencies to deeper commitment to the Marianist culture extended?

16.      What religious symbols and practices are incorporated into the school routine?

17.      Is hiring carried out in terms of mission?

18.      How many Marianist laymen and women and religious are members of the school personnel?

19.      How many committed Christians are members of the school personnel?

20.      What are indicators that the school is successful in educating students to be agents of positive change in society, to work at the transformation of society in Christ?

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Acknowledgements

Without the invitation of José María Alvira, the Assistant General for Education in the Society of Mary, along with the task force, José María Arnaiz, SM, Charles-Henri Moulin, SM, and Thomas French, SM, I would have never written this book. I thank them for confiding this project to me. I especially want to thank Brother Alvira for all he has done to shepherd this work so that it is fit for printing as well as for suggesting that I rework the second part of the book. This revision, I believe, has resulted in a much stronger and clearer text.

Several Marianists religious acceded to my request to read drafts of this book. To Raymond Fitz, David Fleming, Thomas Giardino, John Habjan, James Heft, and Mark Ormond along with Savio Franco, a lay Marianist in India, I am indebted for suggestions of style, content, grammar, and arrangement. To the extent I was able, I made their helpful changes. I particularly want to thank Thomas Giardino for being kind enough to re-read sections of this work as well as John Habjan for tracking down some bibliographic details in the Marianist Archives in Dayton. Though the work was tedious, both willingly responded and were very quick to meet my need.

Of course, without the many opportunities the Society of Mary has given me to study and without the many conversations about, as well as experience of, Marianist schools and education, I could have never written this book. Therefore, my thanks extend all the way back to 1954 when I first walked through the door of a Marianist school and met the brothers at Purcell High School in Cincinnati, Ohio.

For all this I am extremely grateful.

Joseph H. Lackner, SM

May 2012

Table of Contents

Marianist Charism

and Educational Mission

Volume 1

(Untitled)

Table of Contents

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION

1. CHAMINADE’S APOSTOLIC INTENT IN FOUNDING SCHOOLS -AN HISTORICAL ACCOUNT

CHAMINADE'S VISION OF SCHOOLS, TEACHERS, AND EDUCATION

2. SCHOOLS AND THE MARIANIST CHARISM

CONCLUSION

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Acknowledgements