Mirror of Justice

As many but by no means all readers of this blog know, in 1680 a man called John Baptiste de la Salle began to serve poor French children by providing the education no one else was even close to offering.  La Salle's efforts didn't immediately win much support from the Church in France.  But, in time, La Salle's initiative was institutionalized by the Church and granted the "permission" of the Crown, and it comes down to us as the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools, more commonly known as the Christian Brothers, the largest order in the Catholic Church dedicated to education.  La Salle himself was canonized in 1900, and fifty years later Pius XII named him Patron of All Teachers of Youth.  The unique vow La Salle's Brothers take, even today, is this: "service to the poor through education."

The Christian Brothers' contribution to Catholic education in the U.S. over the last century and a half has been stunning.  Today, however, the Brothers are facing extinction in this country, following the line already traced by so many other non-clerical orders.  More immediately, the Brothers' efforts to serve the poor through education are foundering on the costs of running schools no longer indirectly subsidized by Brothers' working for free.  (The disappearance of vocations to the Brothers has meant paying lay people, who do not take vows of poverty, salaries).  Today's Brothers, along with their Partners in the La Sallian educational ministry, are struggling to find ways to provide Christian education to the poor.

In aid of finding such ways, the west coast province of the Brothers recently sponsored a colloquium on "school choice."  The aim was to stimulate constructive discussion of new ways to allow the La Sallians to do their work of serving the poor through education.  The colloquium made it possible for leading contributors to issues touching schools, family, children, and religion to talk together about the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.  I was privileged to join in the colloquium, which was organized and beautifully executed by Tom Brady and Jack Coons.  Among the contibutors to the dialogue were Rosemary Salomone, Jesse Choper, Goodwin Liu, Charles Glenn,Terry Moe, Howard Fuller, Jim Blew, Paul Dimond, Joe Viteritti, Steve Sugarman, Michael Guerra, Frank Kemerer, and Jack Coons.

One can hope that the colloquium's work will lead the Brothers and their Partners to undertake new efforts to teach not just the children in their classrooms, but, differently, all those who control the political conditions under which the Brothers and all other educators of the young operate.  "School choice" is a divisive issue in American politics, but the following text of the Second Vatican Council (in its declaration Gravissimum educationis) seems to me, in light of the deliberations of the recent colloquium, grossly under-appreciated by American Catholics:  "Parents, who have a primary and inalienable duty and right to the education of their children, should enjoy the fullest liberty in their choice of school.  The public authority, therefore, whose duty it is to protect and defend the liberty of citizens, is bound according to the principles of distributive justice to ensure that public subsidies to schools are so allocated that parents are truly free to select their schools for children in accordance with their conscience."  The Brothers embody commitment to these principles, and their witness is as profound as their service has been effective.  But the Brothers and their Partners need help if they are to continue doing their work of service to the poor through education.  And many others, too, of course, need systemic change if they are to continue their work of educating children whom the current system leaves under-served.  The current educational monopoly blocks family and other efforts to see that children obtain the education that is indicated by their parents' conscience.

Today, only the rich (or otherwise lucky) can choose schools "in accordance with their conscience."  Today, the Brothers and others are increasingly stymied in their efforts to serve those whom local property-tax revenues leave under-served.  Distributive justice is nowhere to be seen in the land of education, and dramatially few Catholic voices are heard to say that education, too, must be justly distributed.

I'll soon post a draft of my paper from the recent colloquium.  I would be most grateful if it would stimulate discussion of what, exactly, Catholics and others who want to see distributive justice done in education can do, now and in the coming seasons, to bring about change in the prevailing discourse and policy.  Three centuries before the U.N. or Rome acknowledged the right of all children to education, La Salle announced the right and went to work for it.  Sadly, the initiative he launched is now almost without means to do its work in the U.S.  The Catholic leadership needs help on this.