It's not easy combating bad boy behavior

For quite some time I’ve avoided commenting on the twin scourges of sexual abuse and sexual harassment; the former because of the obvious mishandling of the issue by our own Church over the course of the last three or four decades; the latter because, quite frankly, it has been a head-scratcher for me to learn – particularly lately – of the systemic and pervasive character of this sin against the seventh commandment in American society. I assure you, I am not being naïve. I recognize that men – especially men in positions of power and authority – can succumb to the temptation of using their influence in deleterious ways, particularly with respect to women. People of a certain age don’t need the disgusting behavior of Harvey Weinstein to be reminded that a Hollywood stereotype – the “casting couch” – was rooted in reality. What causes me to scratch my head these days is not only the extent of the scourge of sexual harassment but that it can be (and is) found in pretty much every occupational category one can imagine: entertainment, politics, journalism, sports, transportation and, yes, religion. And, now, we learn (November 17, 2017, National Catholic Reporter) that this scourge can be found in the hospitality industry.[1] Unhappily for Catholics, renowned New Orleans Chef John Besh, the subject of a months-long sexual harassment expose by the New Orleans Times-Picayune, is well known as a Catholic activist, having served on the advisory board of the Center for Ethics and Culture at the University of Notre Dame as well as participating in the Middle East Ecumenical group Chefs4Peace. I suppose it is naïve of me to think that an individual with such a deep commitment to his Catholic faith could lose his way in such a spectacularly calamitous fashion…yet another head scratcher.

This is particularly discouraging for me as one who has spent the last 40 years in Catholic education. After 40 years, I recognize that it is enormously challenging for parents to guide their teenagers safely through the rough and tumble world of adolescence. I have seen these challenges manifest themselves in different ways, whether it was the seventies, eighties, nineties or – especially –the current moment. Not only has Social Media fundamentally altered the landscape teenagers negotiate, but it has also created an environment in which information is shared instantaneously, giving adults little opportunity to shape their children’s understanding of its significance. Shaping how young people understand the world which surrounds them is central to the process of forming a values-based perspective. Those of us of a certain age remember that the dinner table served as a Petri dish for values formation. Discussing the day’s events, its challenges and successes, enabled parents to provide a context for the moral formation of their children's consciences. With the advent of Social Media, it is almost impossible to prepare children for the onslaught of the unmediated information to which they are exposed, let alone to put it in the context of a values-based world view. Which is why the prevalence of sexual harassment is such a head scratcher for me – how do we help teenagers learn how to respect others – especially women – when they are fed a steady diet of #metoo messages? How do they learn to manage their own emerging sexuality when adult celebrities – some of whom they may be inclined to admire – have clearly failed to embrace the messages of respect for the other that we are trying to teach them at home and at school?

As bleak as this appears (to me), I am encouraged by the rapid response trend of different institutions to the charge of sexual harassment: they are quickly severing ties with those individuals who have been credibly accused. While I want our teenagers to learn Respect for all persons (a Lasallian core value) in the classroom and at the dinner table, I recognize that we all need reinforcement of social values through negative consequences (I am not necessarily being an upstanding citizen because I obey the posted speed limit). While our teenagers are being exposed to a steady diet of “bad boy” behavior by adult celebrities, they are also learning that there is a price to be paid for it. I suspect that the scourge of sexual harassment will continue to unfold, but it will be met with an increasingly vigorous “zero tolerance” response. Our young people will observe this dynamic, going forward, and will, inevitably, make the necessary connection to the importance of the values we teach them at home and at school.

It will not be easy. I regularly tell parents that everyone has their individual demons which lurk just below the surface; unfortunately adolescence is that time when the filter hasn’t been fully developed – all the more challenging when they see too many adults who are incapable of maintaining their own filters. We need to double down on this challenge. While I am comforted at the prospect of a healthy student culture at La Salle enabling our teenagers to acquire appropriate pro-social skills when interacting with their peers, I also recognize that high school is a time in an adolescent’s life when the hormones try to throw a party and forget to invite the brain! Together, parents, teachers and administrators must confront the scourge of sexual harassment and equip our young people with the tools to resist the bad boy behavior of celebrities who should have known better.

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[1] Chef’s Catholic connections in spotlight after sexual harassment allegations

A lesson in heroism

Anyone who has spent any time in my native NYC knows that there are three major daily newspapers: The New York Times, the New York Daily News and The New York Post. Journalists call the NYT a “broadsheet”, the News and the Post “tabloids.” Like everything else in NYC, there is a pecking order, and a “broadsheet” is considered more respectable than a “tabloid.” So, imagine my surprise when I discovered that it was the “tabloid” Post that published this headline on October 4^th:

Moms thank MLB prospect who shielded them from Vegas gunman

That MLB prospect is Bowdein (“Bubba”) Derby ’12 and this is what the Post reported:

“Jori Apsit Jellison, a California native, says Milwaukee Brewers prospect Bowdien “Bubba” Derby, 23, saved her and a friend during Sunday’s deadly mass shooting, offering his support and staying with them until the horror was over.”

Not only that, but Bubba and his family shared their hotel suite with the two women until they could be safely reunited with their families.[i]

With the recent spate of mass shootings in public places, there has been a plethora of stories describing personal heroism in the face of outrageous danger. We are encouraged by these stories because they express, for us, the hope that, should we face similar circumstances, we would be similarly inclined towards heroism. It’s easier to feel that way when the heroic act is far removed and performed by a stranger we’ll never encounter. When the heroic act occurs closer to home and is performed by someone well known to us, there’s a certain sense of awe – perhaps fear - with which we greet the possibility that we, too, would be able to respond in a similar fashion. That having been said, we can’t ignore the fact that, when so many were fleeing the rain of bullets, Bubba risked his own life in choosing to care for the safety of two strangers.

As I reflect on Bubba’s act of heroism, I can’t help but think that this moment of spontaneous reaction to the needs of another person is not learned but ingrained in him by his family, his friends and (I hope) his school (both La Salle and Holy Angels).  I am humbled to have been a part of his world since 2008 (and his two sisters since 2000). Watching the three of them grow up at La Salle, I know that his parents, Al and Julie, are the central explanation for Bubba’s behavior as a teenager, a young adult and a hero. Because I have had the privilege of knowing his family for the better part of two decades, I am confident in my belief that Bubba could not not have acted any other way on that fateful night. And yet, he readily acknowledged his own fear:

"I remember looking in [my aunt's] eyes, and it was that look of 'Are we about to die? Is this it for us?'"

That all-too human fear didn’t prevent Bubba from doing what he knew he had to do; which reminds me of Eleanor Roosevelt’s famous comment on heroism:

We do not have to become heroes overnight. Just a step at a time, meeting each thing that comes up ... discovering we have the strength to stare it down.

Bubba has had a lifetime of discovering the strength to stare down obstacles in his path. While I’d like to think La Salle had a part to play in that process, I am convinced now, more than ever, that, in Bubba’s exemplary behavior that awful night, we find the true measure of the School’s success: when our graduates have something to teach us about what is noble and, in the end, heroic.

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[i] For more info - http://nypost.com/2017/10/04/moms-thank-mlb-prospect-who-shielded-them-from-vegas-gunman/

Lessons learned from a broken toe

           

A little over five years ago, I was walking in Manhattan in July when I managed to slam my right foot into a sidewalk that had been elevated by a nearby tree root – a common occurrence in my native NYC. I was wearing sandals at the time (a SoCal affectation that is frowned upon by most New Yorkers) and, wait for it, managed to break the big toe on my right foot. Ignoring the fact that there was blood everywhere, I managed to hobble into the local Walgreens, purchase miles of bandages, cover up the offending injury and move on with my day. Needless to say, being a (stereotypical) middle age male, it never occurred to me that I should see a physician. Fast forward to 2016, my right toe began to take the shape of an angry hump back whale that resulted in a fair amount of skin irritation whenever I wore dress shoes (which, as most of you know, is all the time).  Of course, this was a staph infection waiting to happen and, of course, I ignored it until I ended up in Urgent Care, whereupon emergency surgery was the only treatment of choice. That was 18 months ago. Since that time, I’ve had to endure orthopedic shoes, which redistributes my center of gravity, making me look like Captain Hook hobbling on a bad day. My physician explained that, once my toe stabilized, I could have corrective surgery, which would enable me to return to wearing normal shoes.

              Enter the present moment. Being the work-a-holic that I am, I had hoped to be able to schedule the second surgery during the summer as it required a minimum of two week’s recuperation. That’s when I learned the true meaning of “Managed Care.” As a Kaiser patient (and happily so for the last 25 years), I learned that non-emergency surgery is scheduled based on significance (major vs. minor surgery) and frequency of the procedure. It turns out that podiatric surgeries are not all that frequent and, consequently, I would have to wait until there were enough patients like myself to warrant the allocation of a surgical suite. That’s when I discovered “Managed Care” means “you manage your care.” After weeks of interacting with the automated scheduling system, I finally received a surgical appointment for the middle of September…great…now I would have to miss two weeks of school.

              Happily, the surgery was a success and, as I write this column, I am home learning how to be patient being a patient. As I near the end of my first week of recuperation, I have discovered five lessons concerning the beneficial – albeit unintended – consequences of having to take an unplanned amount of time off from work. Top Five Lessons:

#5 Take the time to think

We all gripe about how little time is available during the workday to just think. We’ve all heard (or been guilty of saying): “If only I had more time to think.” Well, now I have plenty of time to think and here’s what I have discovered: there really isn’t enough time in the workday to think. It is just too easy to fall into the temptation that, if I’m not doing something at work, then I am not being productive. And yet, in my role as President of La Salle, I am expected to see the “big picture” and to chart the trailing effects of any single decision (mine and others) made at any time during the work week. How can I measure up to that expectation if I don’t carve out some time to think? I’ve spent a lot of time this week thinking about the things I didn’t have time to think about last week and I am astonished at how much better I am at crafting solutions to the daily challenges I was previously managing on the fly. Because of my impending enforced solitude, I brought home a handful of big projects that would need my quality attention, and which would not receive it during an ordinary workweek, with a view that I would have plenty of time to think about how to execute them. The latter assumption has proven to be correct; ironically, I’ve made significant progress on only one of them. Which leads me to:

#4 Do not treat recuperation time as if it were “prison” time

A mere 24 hours after the surgery, I was wondering what I was going to do with two weeks’ worth of time at home in which I would have a limited ability to move around (as I write this, but for my patio, I haven’t been outside the house in a week). Surely, I thought, the next two weeks would move at a glacial pace and I would start to behave like Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (a dated reference, if you aren’t a Baby Boomer).  As I look back at the week now ending, I wonder – where did the time go? In point of fact, it was fairly evenly divided between sleeping more than I have in a very long time, reading books that have been piled up next to my desk for years, working on school projects and interacting with friends, colleagues and family; which leads to:

#3 Cheerfully accept the kindness of friends (and family)

My brother-in-law, a retired health care professional, flew in from Wisconsin to act as my personal Florence Nightingale (which was particularly appreciated when he arrived at midnight to administer the pain meds). At first, I felt guilty that I was imposing on his good nature and was reluctant to ask him to do things for me. As time went on, I realized I had to let go of my need to be independent and to give myself permission to accept his kindness – a very humbling moment for this “Type A” personality! In a similar way, I was surprised by the steady stream of visits, phone calls, texts and emails (not to mention the array of flower arrangements that arrived on my doorstep!) from friends and colleagues. Despite the toxic political environment we all face, empathy is alive and well in Pasadena … which leads me to:

#2 Recognize your colleagues need the break, too

Anyone who has worked with me over the last 18 years (employed/volunteer) will roll their eyes when they learn that my time away from the office has helped me to realize that my intense focus on moving the School forward can be exhausting for everyone who gets sucked into my orbit. While I continue to struggle with the notion that I didn’t need a break from work, it has become clear to me that they needed recovery time at least as much as I did. They get to catch up on their “to do” list while I am gone; free from the dreaded “Richard question:” Have you thought about this idea? Which leads me to the #1 lesson I’ve learned while recovering from surgery:

#1 God writes straight with crooked lines

My Sottish-Irish father constantly reminded us of this admonition from the time we could walk. Whatever went right/wrong, he would remind us of this principle: we can’t know the long-term consequences of what is happening to us right now because “God writes straight with crooked lines.” Each zig/zag in our journey is there for a purpose and the straight path those curves feed into is only visible when we look in the “rear view mirror” decades after they happened. Certainly my own journey as a Catholic educator provided enough zigs and zags that, when I started teaching in a Catholic high school on the edge of the South Bronx in the 1970s, I never imagined I’d end up in Southern California 40 years later.  In a similar fashion, I never imagined that, when I arrived at La Salle 18 years ago, I would find myself obsessing about how I would handle two weeks away from work and the necessity of reevaluating how I structure my time to accomplish the tasks necessary to ensure the School’s continued success now and in the future. And yet, that is exactly my “take-away” from this experience. God needed to remind me that I’m not essential to the School’s success without the support and collaboration of my family, friends and colleagues. I needed to take the time to see the “big picture” that I am constantly reminding everyone else to look for; to recognize that this particular zig/zag in my journey at La Salle was necessary to ensure that I become more aware of everyone else’s journey and the crooked lines they – inevitably – must negotiate.

Not a bad lesson to be learned from a five-year old broken toe.

How to have a good day

“Someone ate my summer!” was my answer to a parent’s question about how life was treating me as we both experienced the first day of school. I’ve come to the conclusion that the cliché – the older we get, the faster time speeds by – is also a truism. For most of my administrative life, I’ve had the luxury of using summertime to catch up on work that languished on my desk in the run up to Graduation. So, I was discouraged to see the same piles on my desk as our students returned for the start of a new school year. To be sure, there were plenty of reasons for my lack of administrative progress: an exciting partnership with Kids Klub which brought elementary school children on our campus (it was a delight for me to encounter their cheerful young faces on a daily basis), the long hoped for launch of the renovation of the Blakeslee Library, the opportunity to make a presentation at a Principals Conference in Boston, a gaggle of lunch/dinner encounters with donors and, happily, two quick trips to my favorite island in the Pacific.  Still, I wonder what I could have done differently in order to manage my time better.

              I’m not a big fan of “self-help” literature, but in search of a summer reading project, I stumbled across How to Have a Good Day - Harness the Power of Behavior Science to Transform Your Working Life by Caroline Webb. Its main thesis consists of constructing a “good” day by focusing on three elements:

·       Aim – what matters most today?

·       Attitude – what concerns do I have about today?

·       Attention – what do I want to make sure I notice today?

Upon reflection, I realized that all three elements seek to push me out of my comfort zone of task-oriented behaviors to people-oriented behaviors. As I contemplated how to put more energy into the latter strategy, I realized that my frustration with the long-lasting piles on my desk was really a product of how, over the years, I had come to define success: a neat and clean desktop! My aim has been to move paper; my attitude – efficiency; my attention was to work through a “to do” list. Obviously, efficiency in getting things done is a necessary part of everybody’s work day; but as I looked back at a very fast summer, I realized that the activities I enjoyed the most found me engaged with other people: problem solving, brainstorming, and strategizing. I found in those activities that what matters most is being available to others; my daily concern is to be helpful and what I want to make sure I notice are opportunities to encourage the success of my colleagues.

              In a way, the students entrusted to our care are confronted by the same dynamic I faced this summer: balancing efficiency and productivity with the need to build a community of care and concern. This dynamic is embedded in the Five Core Principles of a Lasallian School:

·       Faith in the presence of God

·       Quality education

·       Social Justice and concern for the poor

·       Inclusive community

·       Respect for all persons

I am fond of summarizing these five principles with this imperative: at La Salle, we produce good students and good people…in other words, we expect our students to be efficient and productive with respect to their classroom responsibilities while also developing a faith-filled appreciation for service to others in a welcoming and supportive community.  They, too, are faced with the daily task of determining their aim, attitude and attention. As teenagers, they are beset with competing claims on how to establish personal priorities. They know – often better than the adults in their lives – how difficult it is to appreciate what’s important at any given point in time. They recognize they need our help, but often don’t know how to ask for it – and we can – sometimes – give them mixed signals as to what ought to be important.

              As we launch another school year at La Salle (my 19^th!), I know that I must remind myself of how important it is to balance my priorities between efficiency and quality interactions with those around me. I need, also, to remind myself of the importance of setting a good example for the students entrusted to my care. I look forward to the challenge!

The making of a Saint

Not long ago, we received a wonderful email from Duke Banks ’64, which was triggered by his receipt of the School’s annual Christmas card. The card featured a portrait of Brother Solomon, our newest Lasallian saint, with an explanation of how his canonization was approved by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints because of a miraculous cure of a young girl in Caracas, Venezuela. It seemed altogether a bizarre connection between an obscure 18^th Century Christian Brother who was martyred in the French Revolution and the Catholic community in Caracas who had been venerating a statue of Brother Solomon over the course of the last fifty years. It turns out Duke’s extended Venezuelan family (he was born in Caracas with Venezuelan heritage on both sides) was intimately connected to educational institutions sponsored by the Christian Brothers in Central America. Somewhere, along the way, a statue of Brother Solomon ended up in a chapel serving residents living on the outskirts of Caracas. The Chaplain, who was educated by the Christian Brothers, gave the statue pride of place in the Sanctuary and, upon its installation, declared:

“We receive Blessed Solomon, and we will yet make him a Saint.”

It only took a mere fifteen years for that to happen.

I dwell on this wonderful story because it seems to me that as the English Romantic Poet, William Wordsworth, penned at the time of the Industrial Revolution:

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers

His critique, back then (and, perhaps, applicable to this modern-day moment) was described by one critic as: “the decadent material cynicism of the time.” The current news cycle is rife with apocalyptic stories of political intrigue, charges of cronyism and a never-ending (and exhausting) Washington battle over how to provide health care for 22 million people who would not, ordinarily, have a reasonable opportunity to access it. It is at times like this that I conclude that “the world is too much with us.”

I suppose it was ever thus. After all Saint Solomon was confronted by the awful choice of denying his vowed commitment to the Church and losing his life – and that was over two hundred years ago! I think we can learn something from Brother Solomon’s steadfast commitment to his vows. We may be fortunate not to have to consider the ultimate sacrifice in defense of our life’s commitments, but we aren’t excused – any more than Saint Solomon was – from living our lives with dignity and integrity. Here is what Brother Robert Schieler, the Superior General of the Christian Brothers had to say about Brother Solomon at the time of his canonization:

“Brother Solomon gives us a lesson of great integrity and loyalty with the options taken, even at the sacrifice of his life. And God only knows how necessary it is today to live with integrity and loyalty in a world where it has become normal to trample rights unscrupulously against our conscience, against others and against God, for mere interest and profit ... Secondly, there is another message that Brother Solomon proposes to Christian teachers and consecrated persons in general: to be witnesses of Christ, whatever the cost.  The world today needs more than ever loyalty, consistency, justice, generosity, altruism even at the cost of your own life. “

This last sentence captures, for me, the essential challenge this Lasallian school in Pasadena must face every day if we are to be faithful to the principles of our founding Brothers as well as those in a long line of Brothers who preceded and followed Saint Solomon: to exercise loyalty, consistency, justice, generosity and altruism even when the world around us appears to have abandoned them.

As we begin a new year at La Salle (my nineteenth!), let’s pray that the courage and integrity that inspired Saint Solomon will enable all of us who are responsible for the students entrusted to our care to demonstrate a similar, quiet heroism in the midst of a world that sometimes seems to have lost its bearings. After 60 years of fidelity to the principles of Saint John Baptist de La Salle, the Founder of the Christian Brothers, I think this Lasallian community is up to the challenge.

Why we should place our hope in young people, now more than ever

             

I recently attended the annual LAMP (Leadership, Achievement, Management, Professionalism) Mentor Scholarship Luncheon sponsored by the Gamma Zeta Boulé Foundation.  The Foundation is a subsidiary of the Gamma Zeta Boulé (Chapter) of the Sigma Pi Phi Fraternity, the oldest African American Fraternity in the nation. Founded in 1904 to serve adult male professionals, its roster includes such notables as W.E.B. Du Bois, the Reverend Martin Luther King, Vernon Jordan, Arthur Ashe, Ambassador Ralph Bunche, former Atlanta Mayor, Andrew Young and former Attorney General, Eric Holder. Gamma Zeta Boulé was founded here in Pasadena in 1984. The GZB Foundation, which was set up in 1998, has as its special mission, the development of young men during their high school years in order to better prepare them for higher education. The cohort meets once a month throughout the academic year at various locations in and around Pasadena (including La Salle). The young men are exposed to a variety of opportunities to explore the world they might want to occupy after college. At the end of their senior year, the Foundation hosts a luncheon in which a variety of scholarships are awarded to the participants. I was pleased to applaud three La Salle seniors – Angelo LeRoi, Myles Bailey and Rodney Wagner – who were awarded scholarships (more than one for each of them).

              As I sat in the packed dining room of the University Club, it occurred to me that there is a great synergy between the goals of GZB Foundation (as well as the Boulé which sponsors it) and the aspirations of La Salle’s Mission Statement. We like to summarize our Mission by highlighting its four main values:

·       NURTURING THE TALENTS OF EACH STUDENT

·       INSPIRING IN STUDENTS A SENSE OF RESPONSIBILITY FOR OTHERS

·       CHALLENGING STUDENTS TO EMBRACE DIVERSITY

·       MOTIVATING OUR STUDENTS TO RESPOND COMPASSIONATELY TO THE NEEDS OF OTHERS, ESPECIALLY THE POOR.

The event’s program contained brief resumés of each honoree. Here’s what I noticed:

ü  Each young man brought athletic, artistic, community and/or co-curricular talents to his high school experience

ü  Each young man engaged in direct involvement in activities which encouraged his high school peers to take responsibility for those around them (school, church, local community)

ü  Each young man experienced some level of diversity within the context of his high school experience (La Salle, Flintridge Prep, Maranatha, La Canada, Marshall Fundamental and San Dimas)

ü  Each young man could cite his significant engagement with service to the poor and marginalized

It was this latter characteristic which particularly struck me. At La Salle, we take great pride in the depth and breadth of the service opportunities which our students encounter over the course of their four years with us. I had generally assumed that, while all Pasadena-area private high schools expect some engagement with community service, at La Salle, it is built into the school’s DNA. And, while I still believe that to be true, I was gratified to learn that an impressive organization like GZB Foundation prizes this component above all other criteria by which they encourage and honor the next generation of young men who they expect to be adults imbued with passion, commitment, integrity and service.

              So, as I left this remarkably encouraging moment to celebrate the potential of these young men to shape the future of a world that we tired and – sometimes discouraged - adults often despair of evolving into a better place – a place La Salle’s Mission espouses – realizing that none of us do this alone. Parents, teachers, school administrators and – equally importantly – community organizations such as Gamma Zeta Boulé – recognize that, as the delightful guest speaker so beautifully articulated (with visuals):

You can easily break a single toothpick…try, as you might, for as long as you might, you can’t break a bundle of them.

As I left the event, I came away with a wonderfully encouraging message from Gamma Zeta Boulé: together, we make a difference – but it must be a “long game.”  Not a bad way in which to breathe a sigh of relief that a busy year is behind us; but more importantly, to remind ourselves that what we do to encourage our young people to achieve their potential matters.

             

In search of authentic politeness

“Alleluia! Alleluia!”

For decades, I have loved the repetition of this word. Liturgically, it only occurs during the period between Easter Sunday and Pentecost. The point of repeating the word “Alleluia” is to remind Christian believers that the Easter event – Christ’s resurrection – is such an overwhelming moment (i.e. because He rose from the dead, we have the opportunity to enter Heaven) that our joy should be impossible to explain without repeating “Praise the Lord” (a rough English translation of the Hebrew term). At the same time, I also wonder why this expression of joy shouldn’t be repeated throughout the year. I suppose it’s the flip side of my difficulty with the forty days of Lent – I simply don’t like the obligation to refrain from eating meat on Fridays. Yes, I understand the purpose of the practice – to remind me of the importance of Christ’s journey to Calvary – and the subsequent joy I should experience at His resurrection; but I find myself becoming impatient with a liturgical period which requires that I have to wait for the better part of six weeks before I can celebrate something every Christian takes for granted.

In a sense, I realize that the whole point of the liturgical cycle of the Church is to remind us of the need to stay faithful to Gospel imperatives – and I certainly recognize that I need reminding – but I struggle with the notion that penitential practices (like not eating meat on Fridays) will get me closer to the achievement of this ideal. So, imagine my surprise, when I came across a column by Jesuit, John Conley in the most recent issue of America Magazine (https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2017/04/19/politeness-forgotten-virtue) in which he offers an outstanding defense of the role politeness should play in the social arena.  Okay – wait for it – how does this line up with my annual gripe about Lent and Easter? Here’s the thing – we repeat the word “Alleluia” because we believe that the Easter event transformed the world we experience…but the world we experience consistently disappoints us…leading to the obvious question – how do we reconcile the excitement of Easter with the facts of what we will face tomorrow? Father Conley’s column helps me to face that conundrum. Here’s his take on the day-to-day dilemma we all confront:

Behind all the gestures of politeness lies a fundamental respect for the dignity of other persons. A mature moral agent does not use language or gestures that insult another person. One can vigorously disagree with another person’s positions. One cannot demean the person himself or herself.

And that’s my problem with the world we – and the students entrusted to our care – occupy. Disagreements no longer represent differing views of the world. They have become fundamental road blocks to how we talk to others who don’t share our perspective. It has taken me a long time to get to the point, but the philosopher, Stephen Hayner said it best (for me):

“I believe in objective truth, but I hold lightly to our ability to perceive truth.”

There can be no question for an educator – or a parent – that the search for objective truth must be paramount; but I challenge each of us to define the concept in advance. At La Salle, we expect students to suspend disbelief in the search for Truth. More importantly, we expect them to recognize that the search for Truth is an ongoing experience that will take the rest of their lives.

And, for me, that’s the point of repeating “Alleluia.” Christians rejoice because the Easter event made Hope possible. Yes, we are struggling through a difficult time…but when was it the case that we haven’t? We are all on a journey to Calvary – but we won’t experience the Easter event until after our time here comes to end…which helps me to appreciate Father Conley’s wisdom:

Politeness … respects the debt one owes to other persons for one’s own happiness and achievements. It is striking how many current television programs specialize in the glamorization of resentment. A procession of angry people unleash their criticism of their parents, their teachers or their doctors in front of a cajoling host. Where are the programs where we thank that patient parent or devoted teacher? Without gratitude, our soul shrivels and our civic life deteriorates into mutual recrimination. Authentic politeness springs from the gratitude we acknowledge for the gifts given us by other persons.

And for that, I say “Alleluia, Alleluia.”

The real problem with fake news

Fake News has been in the news a lot lately…and it’s not just because the President and the mainline news media are engaging in a war of words. The well-researched role of Facebook’s Newsfeed in enabling “alternative news” to go viral resulted in that organization being inundated with a storm of criticism in the month following the presidential election.  According to Forbes Magazine, Facebook’s algorithm encourages “engagement,” which gives priority ranking to sensational stories that attract more “clicks,” causing the story to continue to rise in the rankings on Newsfeed. In a highly polarized society such as the one we are now experiencing, it should come as no surprise that biased, misleading and incorrect stories rise quickly to the top.

              With 62% of adults reporting that social media is their primary source for news and two-thirds of Facebook users relying on its site for news (Pew Research), is it any wonder that a bitterly contested presidential election became even more contorted by internet memes promoting false stories about the candidates (and their supporters) that subsequently went viral? It is estimated that, in the run-up to the November presidential election, 30% of all fake news traffic could be linked back to Facebook. According to the same Study, 23% of those polled admitted they had personally shared fake news, whether knowingly or not.

Candidly, I hadn’t really considered the impact Fake News is having on how some segments of the electorate perceive the veracity of information passed on to them via social media sites until I came across these Fake Headlines:

"Pope backs Trump"

"Hillary sold weapons to ISIS"

"FBI Agent Suspected in Hillary Email Leaks Found Dead"

I’d like to think that most informed citizens would find the latter two Fake Headlines so absurd as to be dismissed out-of-hand; but the first Fake Headline gave me pause. As a practicing Catholic and an unabashed fan of Pope Francis, I couldn’t believe that His Holiness would enter into the tempest of American politics; but the American Church has more than a few Bishops who skirt that boundary from time to time, so it piqued my curiosity. Not surprisingly, Factcheck.org, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, debunked the headline by tracing its origin back to a Fake News TV station/web site WTOE5 News­ – which acknowledges its purpose is to create satirical news stories around controversial issues (Think: The Onion).

Here’s the troubling part: all three Fake Headlines went viral on Facebook in the run up to the election. How can two patently absurd statements and a claim written as satire gain so much traction so quickly? I recognize this is a rhetorical question, but I grew up in an era when a news anchor, Walter Cronkite, was considered “the most trusted man in America.”

Since Cronkite’s retirement, his replacement, Dan Rather, resigned in humiliation after he broadcast an inaccurate story about George W. Bush’s war record. Fast forward, ten years later, and NBC News Anchor, Brian Williams, is fired for misrepresenting his experience as a reporter in the Iraq War. Meanwhile, Fox News’ “fair and balanced” approach gains traction with America’s middle class just as the Internet picks up steam as a source of “unmediated” news. In the 30+ years since “the most trusted man in America” retired, broadcast journalism has not only become an increasingly unreliable source of information (Think: how many pollsters and pundits got the Presidential Election of 2016 wrong), but is steadily being replaced by an equally unreliable output of Internet “news.”

Readers of this space know that my concern isn’t about who won or lost an election, but how that tortured process impacts the ways in which the students entrusted to our care make sense of the world around them. I worry about their ability to distinguish fact from fiction – especially when terms like “alternative facts” and “fake news” – bandied about on both sides of the political spectrum – inevitably create doubt in their minds as to who they should believe. I worry about how they process the deluge of opinion masquerading as news which confronts them whenever they log-on to the Internet. I see this dynamic at play every time my Mentor group discusses controversial political and social issues in which their young perspective is so clearly being shaped by the latest unmediated newsfeed.

I am particularly concerned about how our young people make sense of this barrage of misinformation because, as a Lasallian school, we expect our students to acquire habits of:

§  Faith in the presence of God

§  Concern for the poor and social justice

§  Respect for all persons

§  An inclusive community¨

These core values are under assault in the current toxic political and social climate. Our students are too young to intuitively know how to balance fundamental human values with what they see on the daily newscast and the latest Internet meme. They do not experience a framework of trust whenever they turn on the television or log on to the Internet. And, because they are young and impressionable, they are inclined to accept at face value what they encounter in these arenas where, frequently, shouting and name-calling dominate the message. How can they acquire a “respect for all persons” when they encounter disrespect for those who hold a different opinion from commentators who claim to speak for the majority encountering television and the Internet? How can they appreciate the importance of creating an “inclusive community” when they are exposed to political strategies which emphasize exclusion rather than inclusion? And, most importantly for a Lasallian school, how can they nurture a “concern for the poor and social justice” when they are barraged by messages which claim that they should take care of themselves first?

              I’m not sure how to respond to these rhetorical questions, but I do know that, as educators and parents who are committed to Lasallian values, we cannot rest until the young people entrusted to our care are able to distinguish “fake” news from its real counterpart.

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¨ Core Principles of a Lasallian School

Whose President is he?

Readers of this space will know that I’ve been focusing on the aftermath of the recently concluded presidential election. My attention to this significant development in our Nation’s political evolution hasn’t been so much on who won the election but on how this historic moment came to be.  In particular, I’ve been scratching my head on how pundits and pollsters could get the outcome so spectacularly wrong. The Media have offered what I consider to be glib explanations for this dichotomy between prediction and outcome: the “Tom Bradley effect,” angry white voters, vanishing middle-class jobs, class/race dysphoria; to name a few. I’m confident that historians will offer a variety of theories to explain the 2016 Election, and I’m equally confident that they’ll be arguing about which theory is correct ten – and surely – twenty years from now.

What I’m not confident about is the – symbolic – challenge to America’s historic peaceful transfer of power represented by the appearance of “Not My President” signs at the various protests popping up across the Nation.  It’s bad enough that this was, probably, the nastiest presidential election in modern times; but to reject a constitutionally valid candidate raised to the highest office in the land by claiming he’s “not my President” is to abandon the fundamental principles upon which our Republic was founded. Like it or not, the system produced a validly-elected president. Individuals do not have the option of rejecting the outcome because they disagree with it.

I worry about this tendency to refuse to accept the outcome of a valid election for the same reason that I worried about the nonsensical “birther” rejection of the last two presidential elections – either the system works or it doesn’t – and those who find the outcome unacceptable don’t get to redefine the rules that produced an undesirable result.

Needless to say, I worry about these behaviors because of their potential impact on the students entrusted to our care. At La Salle, we seek not only to “produce good students and good people,” but thoughtful and dispassionate students and responsible, balanced adults as well. Suggesting – as “Not My President” signs do – that one can reject the outcome of a valid presidential contest is to tell our young people that they don’t have to care about – much less pay attention to - rules governing social norms which underpin the fundamental elements of how we negotiate our shared space in a democratic republic.

I want to be clear: my concern about “Not My President” signs isn’t to argue for or against the outcome of the November election. It is to articulate a basic principle of our democratic enterprise: it doesn’t matter who wins an election – it matters that the outcome was legitimately derived.

We can applaud or boo the results of the November eighth contest – that is our right as American citizens. What we don’t get to do is to challenge its legitimacy. This is what I worry about when I see “Not My President” signs. I want our young people to trust the system that was put in place 240 years ago. I want them to understand that democracy means that some people are happy with the outcome of an election and others are not. I want them to appreciate that Truth (yes, with a capital “T”) is not the exclusive provenance of any one group, but a product of the ebb and flow of decades of electoral cycles that – only over time – begin to form a pattern out of which we can make sense.

I worry about our country at this point in time – not because of who was elected president – but about how that outcome has polarized the electorate. Somehow, we must get past this agonizing moment in a way that enables our young people to embrace the elegant complexities of the American democratic experiment without succumbing to narrow partisan perspectives.

I’m not sure how to accomplish this task, but I know that it was never more important than right now.

The Face of Prophecy

              

  I am a big fan of Reverend Ronald Rolheiser, OMI, currently, the President of the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, TX and a prolific writer and columnist. He has been writing a weekly column in the Archdiocesan newspaper, The Tidings (now called Angelus) since before I arrived at La Salle in 1999.  His columns tend to focus on the challenge individuals have in connecting with institutions – church, state, social organizations and business, to name just a few. One of his October, 2016 columns caught my attention because it sought to reclaim the stereotypical notion of Prophet (one who shouts in the wilderness to a disbelieving world – think, John the Baptist) for a more nuanced understanding in which the prophetic voice understands the complexity of the audience listening to his/her message. Here is how Father Rolheiser positions this dichotomy:

Anyone can be angry. Anyone can be one-sided. Anyone can be in somebody else’s face. Prophecy requires more. It requires the capacity to listen, to respect, to have critical balance, to carry complexity, to walk in unresolved tension and to empathize with those who do not agree with us.

Unfortunately, that’s not the current vision.

The recently concluded presidential election cycle has troubled me for some time, precisely because, echoing Father Rolheiser’s observation: it has focused on anger and being in somebody else’s face.  Regardless of one’s political affiliation, I think we can all agree this election hasn’t been about balance, the ability “to carry complexity, to walk in unresolved tension and to empathize with those who do not agree with us.” Rather, as Father Rolheiser goes on to note:

Today we pride ourselves instead on being one-sided, on being so on fire about something that we refuse to consider anything else. This is true on both sides of the ideological spectrum. Everyone, it seems, is a warrior for truth, and few seem to recognize that one person’s freedom fighter is another person’s fanatic. The line between prophecy and militant fundamentalism can be very thin.

I don’t know if the American political experience has ever veered towards balance and empathy, but I do believe the current moment is a toxic one that will entail long-lasting reverberations, not only for “Millennials” but also for the young people entrusted to our care here at La Salle. Over the course of the last year, our young people have been exposed to a steady diet of anger, intolerance for alternative world views and an inexorable drive to castigate those who disagree as wrong-headed fanatics. This has not been an easy time for anyone – students, teachers and parents.  I am reminded of Yeats’ poetic commentary at the end of World War I:

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world …

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

These sentiments aren’t a function of who won the presidential election; rather they are a commentary on the process which produced this outcome. How did our politics become so toxic? How did left and right ideology become so polarized that no one is listening? How did name calling and reputation bashing become normative in our society? How, in the words of Rolheiser, did one person’s freedom fighter become another person’s fanatic?

These are rhetorical questions, but they must inform how we work with the young people entrusted to our care. Our charge is to equip them to be responsible citizens when it is their turn to take ownership of civic, religious and social structures.  How we heal the national fault line that this election cycle rammed into place is a crucial responsibility for all of us who hope our young people will be better able to manage the world we will leave behind.

If Father Rolheiser is correct that prophecy is about balance and empathy, then the Acts of the Apostles got it right when Saint Peter quoted the Prophet Joel:

…your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions;

and your old men shall dream dreams…

Let’s help those entrusted to our care to prophesy, envision and dream of a future which fosters the ability to listen, to respect, to have critical balance, to carry complexity, to walk in unresolved tension and to empathize with those who do not agree with us.