Why it's okay to disagree with Pope Francis

For obvious reasons, I can’t resist devoting yet another column to the impact Pope Francis is having on the Catholic Church and the larger secular world it occupies. Needless to say, his amazing trip to the United States sparks my desire to comment in this space.  That having been said, my perspective of his impact isn’t prompted by his ability to draw record breaking crowds, nor is it his role as the first pontiff in history to address both houses of Congress.  Rather, I’m drawn to comment on a little-known, albeit pernicious, incident that was reported by the media back in September and vanished from public attention, as quickly as it surfaced.

Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) wrote a letter explaining why he planned to boycott the Pope’s address to Congress.  The reason? Climate change.  Here is his explanation:

“Media reports indicate His Holiness … intends to focus the brunt of his speech on climate change… If the Pope stuck to standard Christian theology, I would be the first in line… But to promote questionable science as Catholic dogma is ridiculous…. If the Pope plans to spend the majority of his time advocating for flawed climate change policies, then I will not attend.”

I am troubled by three assertions Congressman Gosar makes.  The first:

If the Pope stuck to standard Christian theology, I would be the first in line

Ignoring the hubris inherent in the Congressman’s implication that he knows “standard” Christian theology at least as well as the Pope, I wonder if he has ever consulted the website of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, which articulates this, seventh, principle of Catholic social teaching (i.e. “standard” Christian theology):

Care for God's Creation:

We show our respect for the Creator by our stewardship of creation. Care for the earth is not just an Earth Day slogan, it is a requirement of our faith. We are called to protect people and the planet, living our faith in relationship with all of God’s creation. This environmental challenge has fundamental moral and ethical dimensions that cannot be ignored.

Those of us (myself included) who have taught Catholic social teaching within the context of a high school Religion classroom can easily assert that students and adults alike can disagree with respect to how we care for the earth, but all recognize – as a part of “standard” Christian theology that we must care for the earth. Which leads me to my next issue with Congressman Gosar’s complaint:

“But to promote questionable science as Catholic dogma is ridiculous”:

If Gosar is laying claim to knowledge about Catholic dogma, he might want to check his sources. In fact, according to one religious scholar, the faithful are only required to accept those teachings as dogma, if the Church clearly and specifically identifies them as infallible dogmas (i.e. incapable of error). There are 255 dogmas considered infallible by the Catholic Church and none of them reference Climate Change, its causes, effects or validity. In short, Representative Gosar – who is Jesuit-educated and considers himself a proud Catholic – mistakes the Pope’s challenge that Christians should care for the environment (a position Popes John Paul II and Benedict XI also promoted) for an arcane theological distinction that is as wide of the mark as his misunderstanding of “standard” Christian theology.  Which leads me to my last issue with the Congressman’s decision to boycott the Pope’s speech:

“If the Pope plans to spend the majority of his time advocating for flawed climate change policies, then I will not attend.”

“If”???  

Really? You mean he doesn’t know what – or even if the Pope will be “advocating for flawed climate change policies”? The Congressman boycotted the speech because he assumed that the Pope would be tackling this issue in a meaningful way. He assumed that the Pope would be arguing in favor of a position in opposition to the Congressman’s. He assumed that he would find himself in disagreement with the Pope and so could not bring himself to attend an historic occasion in which he could, at the very least, get a better understanding of the Pope’s vision for the Church in America…all because of one disputed hot-button issue.

                Any La Salle freshman can tell you what’s wrong with Congressman Gosar’s approach – the whole process of intellectual inquiry demands that attention is paid to opposing viewpoints. Walk into any Humanities classroom at La Salle and you will encounter robust debates in which the words “Yes, but…” dominate the exchange between students and teachers. We tell our students that to hold one position without understanding the other view is intellectually dishonest and we don’t accept assumptions that aren’t grounded in a careful examination of the contrary argument. We expect our students to hold competing views. We also expect them to not only defend their position but to attend to the opposing viewpoint. Why?  Because intellectual growth and development is nurtured in the Petri dish of opinion, argument and debate. Absent that set of conditions and the kind of stalemate that has paralyzed Congress for the better part of a decade becomes the norm. Shouting replaces authentic debate. Truth is defined as “my position.” Compromise becomes impossible.

                As saddened as I am by Congressman Gosar’s myopic view of Pope Francis’ moral and intellectual leadership, I am all the more encouraged by the rigor of the classroom experience our students encounter on a daily basis. I am quite confident that when they leave La Salle, they will be well on their way to becoming intellectually curious adults who recognize that “Truth” is to be sought, not defined and that there is great value in seeking out opposing views.

                I think Pope Francis would agree.

Let us remember...

Let us remember…that we are in the holy presence of God.

                Anyone associated with La Salle - actually with any Lasallian school in the 83 countries in which the Christian Brothers are to be found - will immediately recognize this salutation. It begins the prayer at the start of the school day, it begins every class, it launches administrative and faculty meetings, indeed, it is even to be found at the start of athletic contests. It is so ubiquitous that I am fond of telling the story of one La Salle alum who decided to find out how many graduates of Lasallian schools were eating lunch in his college cafeteria.  So he stood on a chair and shouted out the first part of the salutation and, not surprisingly, received, in return, the second part of the response from throughout the room.  Needless to say, he struck up quite a few new friendships as a result.

                So, I was delighted to be in attendance at our recent Junior Class Leadership Ceremony, in which the students are presented with various symbols of their newly acquired status as Upperclassmen, to hear Aly Hartman ’17 and Jonny Clarizio ’17 not only begin their student presentation to their classmates and their parents with this salutation but to then expound on its significance for them as they described their journey at La Salle. It’s one thing to shout the salutation out in a crowded cafeteria as a way of identifying those who share the experience of life in a Lasallian school; it is quite another to get up in front of your teenage peers and expound on its actual significance in your day-to-day life.  Aly began her portion of the talk with this elegant, but simple observation:

The presence of God is a tricky thing to address.

Indeed. Adults can certainly empathize with her observation. After all Aly and Jonny – quite naturally - expect their parents and teachers to help them understand the work of God’s hand in their lives. Little do they know that we find talking about the presence of God just as tricky as they do. Yet, it was ever thus…children become adults only to find that understanding the presence of God is as tricky in adulthood as it was during their adolescence. Still, it is their adolescent belief in the transparency of life’s events which sustains their sense of wonder that God is present even in the smallest of details. How do they come to trust that, because of the presence of God, their world makes sense? Here’s Jonny’s explanation:

I experienced the presence of God every time I stepped onto the football field.  I felt the presence of God in each of those friends and each of the coaches. La Salle became a place where the

presence of God was present every day for me.

Aly echoed Jonny’s description of the close-knit quality of the ways in which his teammates interacted with each other by noting what happens when her fellow actors gather just before a show opens:

Standing in a circle, holding hands and praying with thirty people that I had begun to consider as family made me realize I wanted to be a positive asset in the lives of those around me.

Listening to these two remarkable young people describe their essential trust in the presence of God and attributing it to their experience of life at La Salle was not only humbling but challenging at the same time. I am humbled to think that we can nurture such a profound experience of God’s presence that teenagers can name clearly quotidian moments as examples.  At the same time, I am challenged to support my colleagues - who faithfully deliver the Mission every day – by providing the resources they need to be their best selves in and out of the classroom. And in being their best selves, they create the conditions that nurture trust in the presence of God which the young people entrusted to our care deserve to take for granted. Aly described this dynamic even more eloquently:

We often forget God in the simple times.  It is typical for us to only turn to Him in times of need or in times of triumph. Yet it is in the most mundane of moments of our lives that we

develop the most in the hands of the Lord.

Aly and Jonny remind me of that wonderful translation of Matthew 21:16 – “out of the mouths of babes…” This year’s Junior Leadership Ceremony showcased two special teenagers who encouraged this world-weary adult to pay attention to the myriad ways in which La Salle High School creates a nurturing space for them in order to develop an appreciation for the hand of God in their lives. Saint John Baptist de La Salle probably did not realize that - centuries later - the priorities he set for the early Brothers would so powerfully impact young people when, in the 1718 edition of his Rule, he stressed the importance of:

…giv(ing) the greatest attention they can to the holy presence of God

and will take care to renew it from time to time

The 2015 Annual Report is replete with examples of how De La Salle’s Mission to instill a sense of the presence of God continues to play itself out here in Pasadena. I encourage you to review the accomplishments of the Class of 2015 in order to see for yourself how they have blossomed over the course of four years. And, lastly, thank you for so generously supporting the Mission so that our young people can discover the presence of God on a daily basis.

The future depends on us...

The future depends

on what you do today.

-Mahatma Gandhi

                After ten long years, the City of Pasadena has finally scheduled the first of three public hearings regarding our proposed Master Plan. It is hard to believe that it has taken this long. As I have explained in this space and elsewhere, the City is extremely sensitive to neighborhood concerns when it comes to school construction projects. So, for the better part of ten years, we have been challenged to justify the substantive need for the projects identified in the proposed Master Plan and to conduct a variety of studies (traffic, noise, pedestrian movement, etc.) in order to determine the relative impact our plans will have on the surrounding residential streets.

                For those who are new to the La Salle community; our Master Plan proposes three phases of projects:

o   Phase I: construction of a practice gym, fitness and aquatics centers

o   Phase II: construction of a visual and performing arts center

o   Phase III: construction of a field house on Kohorst Field

There are some smaller projects associated with each phase, but – for the most part – these three elements form the focus of neighborhood concerns.

                Ironically, the timing of the first Hearing (Design Review Commission) couldn’t be better. The main question which must be addressed at each Hearing (Design Review, Planning Commission and City Council) is this: How will La Salle justify the necessity of each phase of the Master Plan? For those of you who have been following my comments in this space will remember that, at the same time we have been pursuing the Master Plan, we have also been working on the development of a new Strategic Plan. I am pleased to report that the draft goals which emerged from the Strategic Planning Retreat held last February provide substantive evidence in support of each phase of our Master Plan. There are six goals:

1.                   EXPAND AND DEEPEN LASALLIAN FORMATION PROGRAMS TO BETTER ARTICULATE THE SCHOOL’S CATHOLIC AND LASALLIAN IDENTITY.

2.                   ENSURE THE DELIVERY OF A RELEVANT AND CHALLENGING COLLEGE PREPARATORY CURRICULUM TO ADDRESS THE DIVERSE LEARNING NEEDS OF ALL STUDENTS.

3.                   STRENGTHEN THE RECRUITMENT OF A DIVERSE FACULTY AND STAFF TO BETTER ALIGN WITH A DIVERSE STUDENT POPULATION.

4.                   STRENGTHEN THE QUALITY OF THE STUDENT EXPERIENCE OUTSIDE OF THE CLASSROOM IN:

·         Athletics

·         Guidance & Counseling

·         Student Life

5.                   ENSURE CAMPUS FACILITIES EFFECTIVELY SUPPORT THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE MISSION

6.                   ENSURE SUSTAINABILITY OF THE MISSION THROUGH EFFICIENT AND EFFECTIVE LEVERAGING OF FINANCE, DEVELOPMENT AND MARKETING FUNCTIONS

The casual observer will note that these six goals make sense for any educational institution. What makes them compelling for the future of La Salle is the underlying expectation that the School must deliver excellence in every aspect of the programs it offers to the students entrusted to our care. Why? One of the facts of life we discovered through the strategic planning process is the undeniable reality of a shrinking population of school-age children available to afford the tuition of the ten private high schools in and around Pasadena with which La Salle competes. From a strategic perspective, La Salle must capture its fair share of Mission-appropriate students; to do that requires that we offer the same level of service being provided at schools who charge more – often twice the price – of what we ask families to pay.  Quite simply – and understandably - families who are able to pay most - or all of our tuition - expect La Salle to deliver the same quality of education as schools charging up to twice our price.

                This is the link between our strategic and master plans. La Salle cannot succeed as an independent school in Pasadena without the ability to provide the facilities necessary to attract families who have excellent – and more expensive - options for their children.  I would be remiss, however, if I didn’t also note that there is an absolute link between our strategic/master plans and our commitment to serve families on the margin. We wouldn’t be the school we are without the inclusion of children from all walks of life. I am fond of noting that our full tuition families regularly inform me that they appreciate the kinds of children who hang out in their family room.

                So, in the end, the substantive justification for the projects we want to pursue in our Master Plan is simply this: the students entrusted to our care deserve the absolute best facilities and programs to ensure that their lives will be full and productive – an outcome any parent can support.

La Salle's Value Proposition

Dr. Michael Porter, a member of the faculty of the Harvard School of Business, once observed:

Strategy is about making choices, trade-offs; it's about deliberately choosing to be different.

I used this quote in my opening remarks at last February’s Strategic Planning Retreat.   At that event, I offered my view of the world La Salle occupies in the greater Pasadena area.  It is a world only now emerging from the pernicious effects of the Great Recession. It is a world in which the “Baby Boom” has gone “bust” and fewer middle income families can afford private education without the support of financial aid.  It is a world in which excellent private secondary schools are increasingly competing for the same students and it is a world in which programs and facilities occupy an out-sized role in how families choose a high school.

It is this latter challenge that, in Southern California, means attracting Mission-appropriate students cannot be limited to the classroom; but must account for the fact that families choose private high schools in and around the greater Pasadena area based on the perception that their sons and daughters will be well taken care of from the moment they arrive on campus until the moment they leave (which, I might point out, is virtually impossible to predict, since I am convinced that La Salle is the “City that never sleeps”). This means, however, that in the first part of the 21^st Century, there are three legs to the stool which must shape La Salle’s approach to the recruitment of Mission-appropriate students:

Academics • Arts • Athletics

And, like a three-legged stool, kick one out from under and the whole thing collapses. Our ability, therefore, to attract and retain Mission-appropriate students is dependent upon the degree to which La Salle offers superior programs in Academics, Arts and Athletics…which brings me back to Michael Porter who offered this justification for the importance of an interdisciplinary approach to the educational process:

I teach in the Medical School, the School of Public Health, the Kennedy School of Government, and the Business School. And it's the best perch... because most of my work crosses boundaries.

I believe that Porter’s preference for interdisciplinary engagement is exactly what La Salle does best.  Why shouldn’t we choose “the best perch” when searching for the Truth - we know that the answer will be found in the Christian Brothers’ three hundred year mission to promote

A human and Christian education of the young, especially the poor.

And, how we do this at La Salle relies on a three-legged stool comprising academics, arts and athletics. In support of this approach, the Strategic Planning Committee articulated this value proposition to characterize the unique elements that differentiate La Salle from other private secondary schools in the area:

As the only Catholic, co-educational high school in the Pasadena area and rooted in its Mission to nurture, inspire, challenge and motivate the students entrusted to our care, La Salle High School of Pasadena is committed to the delivery of an excellent college preparatory education in which students are encouraged to 
LearnŸ
Serve
Lead

What distinguishes La Salle from other college-preparatory high schools in the greater Pasadena area is the opportunity for students to nurture their individual passion in academics, the arts, athletics and/or the spiritual life. Because it is the largest private high school in Pasadena, La Salle is able to offer a diversity of opportunities both in and out of the classroom that is unparalleled among its peers.

With this value proposition as the basis for their deliberations, the Strategic Planning Retreat set to work on developing strategies to ensure that La Salle will continue to offer excellent programs in academics, the arts and athletics (more on that next month). This, I believe, is what Porter meant when he noted that strategy is “about deliberately choosing to be different.”

            We recently welcomed the incoming Class of 2019. They are a talented group and offer great potential for taking advantage of our academic, arts and athletic programs. I look forward to the next four years as they benefit from the strategic initiatives that we are beginning to put into place to ensure that our value proposition (La Salle is able to offer a diversity of opportunities both in and out of the classroom that is unparalleled among its peers) continues to differentiate us from other high school options.

Lessons Learned at Graduation

A tried and true approach to describing the process by which students move from one level of education to go on to another is to juxtapose the word “graduation” (i.e. “completion”) with the word “commencement” (i.e. “beginning”). Countless valedictorians, salutatorians and invited dignitaries have resorted to this well-worn trope for decades, if not hundreds of years. It continues to resonate, year after year, however, because, unlike many over-used clichés, it actually characterizes the reality of students’ experience as one chapter of their lives ends and another begins. Whether it is graduation from elementary school, high school, and college or beyond, young people experience these moments of transition as exciting and challenging – at the same time.  They are thrilled to have reached a particular moment of accomplishment and nervous about what comes next. Having spent the last 35 years listening to countless descriptions of how the graduation/commencement dichotomy is expected to play itself out, it was a bit of a shock for me, therefore, to discover at this, my 16^th graduation ceremony at La Salle, that I am no less subject to this dynamic than the young people eagerly awaiting the parties that would follow their formal participation in the awarding of diplomas on Friday, May 22, 2015.

For me, that dynamic typically plays itself out along the axis of “I am grateful our seniors succeeded at La Salle and am excited to see what comes next for them.” This year, however, was different. I discovered that, at the “tender” age of 60, like our graduating teenagers, I still have much to learn. My learning curve – my axis between completion and beginning – revealed itself in a rather mundane, but no less dramatic way; and here’s how…but I must digress for a moment.

We have all attended various graduation ceremonies – from elementary school to graduate school. Our American culture has witnessed a steady erosion of – what would have been called in an earlier era – manners.  This is nowhere played out more dramatically than at school graduations where all sorts of bad behavior is tolerated in the name of “celebration.” There was a time when graduation ceremonies were viewed with the same reverence as church ceremonies.  That era is rapidly withering away. So much so, that some public and private institutions are trying to “put the toothpaste back in the tube” by insisting on proper behavior on the part of parents and graduates during the commencement ceremony.  I fear the effort is more quixotic than practical – a perspective I learned the hard way at our most recent graduation ceremony this past Memorial Day weekend.

Don’t get me wrong, as commencement ceremonies go, graduation at La Salle is fairly tame.  We don’t see beach balls bouncing around or seniors behaving badly on stage. What does happen – and which is problematic as our ceremony takes place in a church – is the excessive cheering and shouting by proud family members who, unbeknownst to them, drown out the announcement of the name of the next graduate in line.  Even with reminders throughout the ceremony, this continues to happen. Here’s how Tracy Stanciel a middle class mother described her experience of a sixth grade graduation ceremony on the South Side of Chicago – the title of her Blog was “It’s Graduation, not a football game.”

Let me make this perfectly clear: You should NOT clap when specifically asked not to. Nor should you whoop, holler, scream, catcall, or yell things like “Mah baybay!” or “You go, girl!” or “Work that stage! Work that stage!” (These are actual statements shouted at various children.)

In the abstract, we recognize that her counsel makes abundant sense. In reality, however, over-enthusiasm often leads to the behavior she described at her child’s elementary school graduation. Then, of course, gone unchecked, it is only human nature for the next proud family to make even more noise than the one before.

                With that in mind, and recognizing that hindsight is always 20/20, here’s the lesson I learned and which convinced me that we are all works in progress and needing to be reminded that it isn’t just teenagers or college graduates – but adults as well - who are confronted by an endless series of beginnings and endings: at a particular moment, midway through the graduation ceremony, some attendees spontaneously broke out in the kind of cheering that Stanciel described at her child’s sixth grade commencement event. I was about to shake the graduate’s hand, when suddenly – and without much thought – I swung around and stared at the source of the disruption in the congregation gathered in the church.  In those few seconds, the proud senior was unable to shake my hand and proceeded to walk off the stage. It didn’t take me long to realize the mistake I had made and the ineradicable memory of that teenager and that family with respect to that graduation ceremony that night

                I later sent a note of apology to the graduate but, of course, the damage had been done. I realized that, I, too, had more to learn, that I, too, must greet the future as a new beginning and to take the lessons of the distant – and recent – past and use them – as we expect our graduates – to figure out how to take advantage of the future lessons which await us.

Earlier today I was exiting the 210 Freeway at the Madre Street exit. Those who frequent this intersection will know that there is an ever changing cast of homeless people who await the first car to come to a stop when the light turns red. From time to time, if I am the first one in line, I’ll give the person whatever change happens to be in my possession at that particular moment. Today was one of those days. The petite woman to whom I gave the meager coins in my possession seemed aged beyond her years.  Her face was weathered by too many days of sitting in the bright Southern California sun.  What was more remarkable for me was the brilliant smile she offered me as we concluded our transaction. And, as I was preparing to roll up my window, she turned to face me, with that amazing smile and said: “Take one day at a time.” I thought to myself, how often we assert that maxim to each other; and how rarely we really take it to heart. It took a homeless woman with an infectious smile to stop me in my tracks and confront me with the inescapable fact that we are all works in progress and we all must negotiate endings and beginnings one day at a time.

Determining the right "fit"

            Registration Day for the incoming Class of 2019(!) took place only two months ago, but the time since has been so hectic that it feels like it was yesterday. It is a stressful time for private high schools because the admission and enrollment process is increasingly taking on the look and feel of what has been happening for years at the college and university level: multiple applications are sent to a variety of schools in the hopes of landing on one’s “Plan A or B” college/university.

Here are some startling statistics: the National Association of College Admission Counselors reports that, although the number of high school graduates has begun to decline (and will continue to do so until 2020), growth in the number of applications per student has increased. NACAC reports that 87% of fall 2010 freshmen submitted three or more applications, and 25% submitted seven or more applications. In addition, a large majority of colleges (73%) reported increased application volume for fall 2010 compared to fall 2009. With few exceptions, approximately three-quarters of colleges have reported increases each year for the past decade.

Unhappily, a similar dynamic is unfolding at the secondary school level; particularly here in the Pasadena area. As the number of school-age children continues to shrink (students going on to high school next fall will be 50% fewer than students who graduated from Pasadena-area high schools in May and June), family angst around private high school placements increases. For example, even though La Salle is the largest private high school in the Pasadena area and we received over 400 applications for the Class of 2019, these students were applying, on average, to three other private high schools; meaning that at least a third of those students would end up enrolling at another school.

Happily, the Class of 2019 frustrated the statistical prediction inherent in the data: the incoming freshman class is a mere 9% smaller in number than the senior class who will be graduating in May. And, equally happily, the characteristics of the incoming class are consistent with their older counterparts:

Ø  male/female ratio is 47%/53%

Ø  29/40 applicants who qualified for Regents Merit Scholarships (scoring at or above the 96^th percentile on the Entrance Exam) enrolled

Ø  29% of enrolled students received need-based financial aid (12 students on full tuition-assistance; 11 students on 50% tuition assistance; 24 students on partial tuition-assistance)

Ø  The Class of 2019 came from 50 elementary schools (the largest number of schools in ten years) with 53% coming from 10 schools (7 were private/Catholic schools)

Ø  40% of schools sending students to La Salle are Catholic

Ø  For the first time, three of the top ten “feeder” schools were public middle schools

Ø  54% of students identify as Catholic

Ø  60% of the Class of 2019 identify as other than European descent

Ø  The freshman parent pledge program was wildly successful; bringing in well over $131,000 - the second largest outcome in four out of the last five years

Ø  The average gift from parents of the Class of 2019 was just shy of $1,000 - the best performance in 9 years

These statistics boldly proclaim that La Salle is doing just fine in the often chaotic scramble parents endure in achieving their objective of finding the “right” school for their child; which causes me to revisit an interesting finding of the NACAC study. The researchers note that:

Technology also makes it easier for students to apply to multiple colleges, complicating the job of both secondary school counselors and admission officers. The ease of applying to multiple colleges creates disincentives for students to spend time evaluating the “fit” of their college options. And the increased application volume that results makes it more difficult for institutions to predict yield.

So, while the greater Pasadena area continues to experience college-like dynamics in managing their recruitment and enrollment processes and, La Salle, like its private high school counterparts, is increasingly reliant upon technology to facilitate the application process; I am pleased to report that, based on the overwhelming pleasure parents of the Class of 2019 expressed throughout registration day, our School continues to enjoy a home/school dynamic which clearly illustrates that our newest families understand why we are the right “fit” for them.

            I guess the stress of the last two months was worth it…

 

 

When the Web is not your friend...

            Recently someone in Texas hacked into my bank account and attempted to withdraw a substantial sum of money. Fortunately, the Internet security professionals at Wells Fargo used what I can only describe as an impressive algorithm to detect and stop the fraud before the cash left my account. I spent most of an afternoon on the telephone with these folks and came away from the experience not only chastened, but amazed that this doesn’t happen more often.

            By way of explanation, I am reasonably paranoid about Internet security - that is to say, my own on-line security.  I never use mobile devices to manage any kind of financial transaction.  I only use my home laptop for this purpose and the Wi-Fi is password protected and subject to Norton security software. I regularly use proprietary software to clean out temporary Internet files, cookies, etc. So, imagine my astonishment when Wells Fargo alerted me to the fraudulent attempt to transfer funds out of my account.  Here’s what I learned: with the explosion of on-line shopping and the proliferation of accounts with on-line retailers (especially during the Christmas season!), pop up windows that take the careless user down an unexpected dark path and the widespread use of Google’s search engine, not to mention the appeals from desperate people trying to get money out of Nigeria, Internet fraud is a lot more common than we’d like to think. One inadvertent click on the wrong email or a mistyped web address can send the user down a rabbit hole of spam, viruses and malware.

            It’s the malware that caught me in a “web” (pardon the pun) of trailing consequences that, as I write this column, I am still sorting through. I was fairly certain that the cause of this nightmare of closing accounts, making sure that automatic debits and credits were not interrupted and several trips to the local Wells Fargo branch was to be found in my laptop.  So I took it off to a terrific service called FoothillTek in Sierra Madre (my new best friends) who analyzed the computer and found a variety of viruses and the dreaded malware that caused all the havoc in the first place. In my situation, whatever stray website that I encountered at some point installed the malware on my laptop, which enabled it to “read” the password for my bank account as I typed it on-line.  The rest of this drama played itself out in the way I described earlier.  It turns out that my Norton anti-virus software doesn’t protect against malware; and so FoothillTek installed the appropriate software to guard against future incursions.

            As I chased down the last details of converting over to my new bank accounts, it occurred to me that if someone as cautious as me can be unknowingly dragged through the Looking Glass of Internet fraud, imagine what is in store for La Salle’s teenagers who, like all teenagers, are blissfully ignorant of real world consequences for their poor choices in Life, Love and the Internet. It’s the very definition of a teenager to believe that one is invincible and that bad things only happen to other people. Let’s just be relieved that, when we were teenagers, the Internet didn’t exist and our mistakes thankfully slipped through the cracks of faulty, aging memories. Not so for young people today. Their on-line mistakes never fade with the passage of time.

            At La Salle, we spend a fair amount of time - especially in Mentor Period, -cautioning our students about the dangers of careless use of the Internet. And, when we do, the sound of teenage eyes rolling is almost audible. We talk to them about how to set responsible privacy settings on Facebook accounts. We caution them about posting inappropriate pictures on Instagram and other social media sites. We urge them to resist sharing passwords with friends and, above all, we attempt to strike fear in their hearts when strangers attempt to “friend” them. According to one media source, there are over 83 million fake Facebook accounts. Social Media watchdogs encourage parents to engage in frequent conversations with their teenagers about how they use social media; especially with respect to privacy settings (never publish a birth date that includes the year of birth and always restrict access to personal social media sites to known individuals). Do you know what “catfishing” is?  Neither did I, until Notre Dame football star Manti Te’o endured the humiliation of publicly acknowledging that the tragic death of a “girlfriend” with whom he developed an on-line relationship was a hoax.

Here are some startling statistics:

 

ü  Internet crime is the fastest growing crime in the U.S., and children are the fastest growing victim pool

ü  In the U.S., 95% of schools are now connected to the Internet (as of 2014)

ü  Over 45 million children ages 10 through 17 use the Internet. Among them:

§  One in five has been sexually solicited

§  One in four has encountered unwanted pornography

§  Close to 60% of teens have received an e-mail or instant message from a stranger and half have communicated back

While we all recognize the challenges, pitfalls and dangers of the Internet, we often hope that it won’t affect us - or our children - in any meaningful way. I am one of those who now - painfully - understand that, when it comes to the Internet, hope is not a strategy.

 

What makes Pope Francis different?

What makes Pope Francis different?  It’s not his refusal to wear ermine-lined red capes; nor his choice to ride in a Ford Focus rather than a bullet-proof limousine. His decision to live at the Vatican guest house (Santa Marta) rather than the Apostolic Palace is impressive, but not necessarily the defining measure against which his difference from previous Popes is to be understood.  Nor should the laity be distracted by his preference for simplified liturgical ceremonies and a conscious choice to wash the feet of lay people (as opposed to priests) on Holy Thursday - oh, and by the way, we should include his decision to wear ordinary business shirts (as opposed to French cuffs and their required cuff links) under his white papal cassock. These are symbolic differences - clearly intended to broadcast a message to the faithful that downplays the Pope as supreme ruler of the Catholic Church and promotes an image of the Holy Father as a man of the people who stands with and beside them.  One of my favorite symbolic images which reinforces this vision of his papacy occurred just about a year ago this month when, while presiding at a Lenten Vespers service in which the Pope and sixty other priests were about to enter confessionals to minister to the faithful gathered in Saint Peter’s Basilica, he stepped out of the recessional line and knelt before a priest already in a confessional and made his own act of contrition.  I can’t think of a more dramatic example of how Francis understands his papacy than at that particular moment in which he is photographed kneeling before a priest, making his confession.

            Even as dramatic as that particular image was, it only reflects the symbolic differences which this Pope has sought to articulate with respect to how he wants his papacy to be understood. So, what makes Pope Francis different? It’s not the symbolic choices he has made in favor of simplicity and shared communion with the faithful - a direct result of his deliberate decision to adopt the name of Francis, the Apostle to the Poor.  I believe it is his unrelenting focus on the Gospel imperative to minister to the needs of the poor and marginalized.  And, the evidence in favor of this contention continues to pile up.

            Even before his formal installation, Pope Francis made clear his preference for the poor and marginalized when, in a press gaggle with Italian journalists, he had this to say about his vision for global Catholics:

"How I would like a church that is poor and for the poor."

As reported in the press, the remark seemed off-handed, idealistic and, frankly, naïve; and yet, two years later, the Holy Father’s words and actions have reinforced this notion that the Gospel message demands that the faithful and their clerical mentors must stay focused on the needs of the least among us. His first encyclical, Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel), mentioned “the poor” 91 times - only the words “love” (154) and “joy” (109) eclipsed his references to the least among us. That emphasis on the needs of the poor explains the significance of what I consider to be one of the most powerful assertions in the entire encyclical,

“An authentic faith – which is never comfortable or completely personal – always involves a deep desire to change the world, to transmit values, to leave this earth somehow better than we found it.”

            While Francis is not only the first Jesuit Pope, his assertion that, in ministering to the poor and marginalized, we should have a “deep desire to change the world, to transmit values, to leave this earth somehow better than we found it.” would also qualify him as the first Lasallian Pope.

For over three hundred years, the disciples of Saint John Baptist de La Salle have been faithfully implementing Pope Francis’ imperative to “change the world, to transmit values, to leave this earth somehow better than we found it.” De La Salle’s vision for his Institute and for the Brothers and Lay Partners who would minister to the needs of the young especially the poor[1] insisted that a secular and religious education should equip the children of poor and working class families to advance economically and spiritually so that they could take their place in society and ensure that the next generation would be able to take advantage of opportunities not available to their parents and grandparents. He described these children as “far from salvation;” meaning that, without an education, they would not only be denied the opportunities readily available to children from more affluent families, but would also never receive the “the truths of religion” (De La Salle’s ministry was launched in France - a thoroughly Catholic country at the time) which would enable them to participate in the saving message of the Gospel.

            It is this Jesuit and Lasallian vision of a world in which Church institutions enable the marginalized to not only sit next to the sons and daughters of affluent families (one of De La Salle’s earliest classroom innovations) but to enter the world of commerce as equals that nurtures Pope Francis’ desire to experience a “church that is poor and for the poor.” He, like Ignatius and De La Salle, recognized that a Church burdened by the trappings of power and prestige is inclined to be “tone-deaf” when it attempts to meet the needs of the poor and marginalized. And yet, any Lasallian Partner visiting our ministries in Tijuana or De La Salle Blackfeet Reservation or any of the Miguel or Cristo Rey Schools will nod affirmatively in response to this assertion in Evangelii Gaudium:

“I can say that the most beautiful and natural expressions of joy which I have seen in my life were in poor people who had little to hold on to.”

This paradox of the Gospel imperative (that the poor have something to teach us) is not only the fundamental irony inherent in what the poor give to those of us who don’t share in their circumstances, but an existential paradigm governing what we must do to respond to Jesus’ call:   “… whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”(Matthew 25: 40)

             Saint John Baptist de La Salle clearly understood the “no-win” situation faced by poor children and their parents in 17^th century France: they had no access to education and, faced with parents who constantly worked to make ends meet, were often left to their own devices. By telling the Brothers:

“It can be said with real reason that a child who has acquired a habit of sin has more or less lost his freedom and has made himself miserable and captive.”

De la Salle recognized the transformative power of education in the lives of the least fortunate among us.  As Pope Francis argues in Evangelii Gaudium:

“While it is quite true that the essential vocation and mission of the lay faithful is to strive that earthly realities and all human activity may be transformed by the Gospel, none of us can think we are exempt from concern for the poor and for social justice…”

so, too, have Christian Brothers in over 80 countries been articulating this Gospel imperative to the students entrusted to their care - regardless of economic status - for over three hundred years. I’d like to think that the then Cardinal Bergoglio, Archbishop of Buenos Aires - a priest of and for the people - who daily took the subway to work, would have passed by one of the of ten Lasallian ministries operating within the city limits of Buenos Aires; knowing that their service to poor and affluent children alike reinforced his vision of a “church that is poor and for the poor.”

            And if that was the case, then it is also the case that he would later become the first Jesuit and Lasallian pope…which is what makes him different.

 

 

 

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[1] In 1680 De La Salle wrote this Mission Statement governing the work of the Christian Brothers for the next three centuries: “The purpose of this Institute is to provide a Human and Christian education to the young, especially the poor.”

On the "integrity of the game"

For the past few years, I’ve been looking forward to the annual occurrence of the Super Bowl, but not for the usual reasons - which team is the superior one, how will the quarterbacks perform against each other, how wide will the point spread be?  Rather, I now await the Super Bowl to see what fresh scandal will hit the NFL and to what degree will it manage the aftermath with more or less competence than the prior year? Last year, at this point, you may remember, Seahawks Cornerback Richard Sherman was in the news because of a tantrum he pitched in front of the cameras at the conclusion of their successful contest against the 49ers. Back then, I commented on the disproportionate and negative reaction of the news media to an incident that lasted exactly 34 seconds and which led to an Internet feeding frenzy (see my Blog entry at: http://lasallehs.blogspot.com/2014/02/why-we-need-black-history-month.html). Now, we have the question of who deflated eleven of the twelve footballs supplied by the Patriots for their 45-7 victory over the Colts in the AFC Championship game. The NFL, always quick to overreact and slow to anticipate the inevitable consequences of its own myopia (see Matthew Kory on Forbes’ Blog: Deflate-gate Is The Dumbest Sports Controversy Ever in which he reminds football fans that, ironically, it was the Patriots’ Tom Brady and the Colts’ Peyton Manning who encouraged the NFL to modify its requirement that the league maintain possession of all footballs used during the season), launched an investigation.

 Really? This, from an NFL that can’t police the behavior of its bad-boy players and their often corrupt owners?  To wit:

Ø     2007  - Patriots Spygate incident

Ø     2007 -  Falcons Quarterback Michael Vick's dog fighting ring

Ø     2009 -  New Orleans Saints bounty scheme

Ø     2013 - Patriots Tight end Aaron Hernandez murder case

Ø     2013 - Dolphins Offensive linemen Ritchie Incognito bullying teammate  Jonathan Martin

Ø     2014 - Ravens Running back Ray Rice dragging his, then, fiancée, from an elevator

Ø     2014 - Vikings running back Adrian Peterson whipping his child

 

I have to ask: what is the significance of a deflated football in a game - which concluded with a lopsided score - when viewed against the context of horrendous player (and team) behavior on and off the field? Where are the NFL’s priorities?

 Please don’t get me wrong; as an educator, I abhor cheating of any kind. Yet, I wonder how the NFL can assume such a high-profile presence regarding a minor violation of its game-day rules and continue to fail to establish and enforce policies governing player-behavior on and off the field - especially when it leads to an arrest?  NFL Vice-President Troy Vincent said the league is serious about the deflated football allegations because the integrity of the game is at stake.

Really? Then, is the integrity of the game not at stake when bad boy players beat up their future wives, or abuse dogs, or murder another football player? Where are the league’s priorities? If we accept the notion that, because of their popularity, major league athletes - like it or not - present themselves as role models to young people, then shouldn’t the NFL - which happily accepts the revenue generated by fans - young and old - pay at least as much attention­ - to the performance of its players off the field as it does on? What happens to athletes between the halcyon days of JV football and the world Michael Vick occupies?  

I don’t have answers to these questions; but I do know they form the context within which the La Salle family seeks to inculcate in the students entrusted to our care a righteous understanding of what it means to protect the “integrity of the game,” and I’m pretty sure it doesn’t look like what the NFL sees as its responsibility.

 

I guess I’ll just have to wait until next year…