To every thing there is a season...

Many of us are familiar with the Pete Seeger song, Turn, Turn, Turn. It is based on the famous passage from the Book of Ecclesiastes, Chapter 3: 1-8 that begins with:

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven

Biblical scholars argue that the relatively rare use of the word “season” in this passage is due to a more formal translation of the Hebrew concept of “fitting time”. That is to say, things happen when they are supposed to – when it is a fit time for the event to occur. As one scholar put it:

(The author) speaks of this diversity of time for two causes: first, to declare that there is nothing in this world perpetual; next, to teach us not to be grieved.

At December’s faculty meeting we listened to the first 8 lines of Ecclesiastes, Chapter 3 as we made the announcement that the time is near for the School to search for a new principal. More specifically, to hire a new principal to succeed Pat Bonacci, AFSC in the 2012-2013 school year. After occupying virtually every administrative position at La Salle for the last 25 years (15 as principal), Pat has asked to step back from the challenging responsibilities of the principalship at the end of the next school year. Happily, he wants to continue to serve the students entrusted to our care; albeit with a less intense set of responsibilities. Without hesitation, I knew what Pat’s next job would be at La Salle: Vice President for Mission.

This will be a new administrative position at La Salle, aimed at supporting Lasallian values among Lay Partners. In addition to serving as a resource for Lasallian pedagogical practices, it is expected that the Vice-President for Mission will coordinate all local and District Formation programs intended to reinforce the vision and values of the Christian Brothers.

Why this position and why Pat? Forgive me if I take a rhetorical detour into the world of the Christian Brothers. For over three hundred years Lasallian schools have endeavored to remain faithful to the central Mission of the Brothers of the Christian Schools:

To provide a Human and Christian education to the young, especially the poor.

Following the Second Vatican Council, the 34th General Chapter (1966) of the Christian Brothers called for an increasing integration of Lay Partners into the implementation of this Mission at the local level. Over time, as the Brothers have focused more deeply on their role as animators of the vision of Saint John Baptist de La Salle, there has developed a greater need for ongoing support for the formation of Lay Partners in the constitutive elements of the Lasallian Mission. The (2010) report of the Superior General of the Brothers to the US/Toronto Conference of Christian Brothers stressed this point:

It seems that local Lasallian formation programs are not as strong as those at the regional level.

and also stressed that:

Quality Lasallian formation is essential to keep alive the Lasallian charism as a

gift for the universal Church

Mindful of this challenge given by the Superior General, La Salle High School has created the position of Vice-President for Mission. In addition to serving as a resource for Lasallian pedagogical practices, it is expected that the Vice-President for Mission will coordinate all local and District Formation programs intended to reinforce the vision and values of the Christian Brothers.

It is within this context as well as the Founder’s insistence that his teachers engage in the “conversion of souls” that La Salle High School places particular emphasis on the creation of an Office for Mission:

In carrying out your service to children, you will not fulfill your ministry adequately if you resemble Jesus Christ only in his guidance and in his conversion of souls. You must also enter into his purposes and his goals

-Meditation 196.3

When Lasallian schools were operated by a preponderance of Brothers, this catechetical imperative transcended the artificial boundaries of academic departments. Whether a Brother taught Religion or Math or English, the legacy of Saint John Baptist de La Salle’s vision for his schools was transmitted through the person of the Brother teaching his subject competency. For 40 of its 54 years, La Salle High School was fortunate to rely on the services of a critical mass of Christian Brothers in the classrooms and in administrative offices. That is no longer the case at La Salle and at other Lasallian schools on the West Coast. To address that shift in personnel, the District of San Francisco has sponsored a series of robust formation programs aimed at educating Lay Partners in the understanding of and responsibility for the Lasallian Mission. After almost 15 years of sending teachers and administrators to these programs, La Salle High School is ready to respond to the Superior General’s call to strengthen local Lasallian formation programs by bringing responsibility for supporting Formation for Mission programs to the local (Pasadena) level. It does so mindful of the growing awareness that the Brothers’ distinctive approach to Mission (“Together and by Association”) requires Lay Partners to view their role in a Lasallian school through the lens of vocation. This is not to suggest that Lay Partners must become like Brothers. Rather, it is to recall the challenge of the Second Vatican Council to nurture the vocation of the laity in the life of the Church. By virtue of our Baptism, we are each called to share responsibility for the implementation of the Kingdom of God here on earth. Happily, Lasallian schools on the West Coast have a strong track record over the course of the last forty years with respect to encouraging Lay Partners to share in the Mission bequeathed to us by Saint John Baptist de La Salle. It is this experience which prompts the School’s strategic move to emphasize the central importance of Formation for Mission by creating a senior administrative position responsible for its implementation. One of the more recent documents that remind us of this shared Mission was produced in 2006 by the Symposium of Catechesis in the Lasallian Tradition convened by the Brothers Visitor of the six Districts in the US/Toronto Region:
• “All Lasallian educators, Brothers and lay colleagues alike are evangelizers and catechists by their vocation of giving witness to the Gospel in ways that invite young people into a deeper, more integrated, more committed faith.


• “The Lasallian educator must be committed to the values and mission of the Church and of the Institute, and to the Lasallian School as a community that gives witness to and embodies Gospel values.”


• “Although the teachers of religion in the school may have a unique role or opportunity in the evangelization and catechesis of the young, the entire Lasallian educational community assists the young to interiorize and make normative Gospel values in their lives, to become more and more conscious of God calling them to help fashion a world according to God’s design.”

The specialized nature of this challenge (to encourage all educators to share responsibility for the implementation of the Lasallian Mission) necessitates the allocation of human resources in support of this goal. For the better part of the last decade this responsibility was shouldered by the President, Principal, other administrators and graduates of LLI. It is now time to allocate these responsibilities to a dedicated senior-level administrative position called the Vice President for Mission.

Pat is particularly well-qualified to take on this challenge. As an Affiliated member of the Christian Brothers, Pat has a deep appreciation for the mission and ministry bequeathed to us by Saint John Baptist de La Salle. His personal and professional behavior is uniquely Lasallian and he understands the power of the Lasallian pedagogical model. I am confident that, under Pat’s guidance, teachers and students will flourish in their appreciation of and commitment to Lasallian values. Pat will continue as Principal next year (2011-2012) which will allow the School to develop a profile of the ideal candidate to serve as Principal in 2012-2013. Recognizing that it will be a challenge to fill Pat’s shoes, we want to take the next 18 months to carefully examine the central characteristics of Pat’s 25 years of leadership here at La Salle. With that as a foundation, we will identify the critical issues facing La Salle in the next 5-10 years and begin a search for the next Principal. I also want to assure you that our succession planning efforts will carefully take into account all of the wonderful values that you have found to be typical of your interaction with La Salle.

This Annual Report is a particularly special one because, not only are we giving you an accounting of the past 12 months, we are also giving you a glimpse of an exciting future framed by a chapter that sees Pat Bonacci, AFSC shift from one set of Mission-driven responsibilities to another, equally critical, set of challenges. It’s a story that is worthy of pursuing.

After the quote from Ecclesiastes was read to the faculty, Associate Principal, John Ring read a quote from the “Book of Pat”:

A time for transition to allow for new leadership and institutional reflection, a time for grandpa to spend more time with grandson, a time for Pat to step back and embrace a new professional challenge!

Indeed, there is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens! It is an exciting and challenging time for all of us!

Why it's important to know who Maimonides was...

The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life recently published a report on the degrees of religious knowledge within various segments of the US population; and the findings are surprising. According to the Pew Forum:

Atheists and agnostics, Jews and Mormons are among the highest-scoring groups on a new survey of religious knowledge, outperforming evangelical Protestants, mainline Protestants and Catholics on questions about the core teachings, history and leading figures of major world religions.

I suppose that I could accept the fact that people of the Jewish faith would know more about the Christian religion and its core teachings (after all, they are responsible for authoring the Old Testament); but…Mormons? I don’t have a problem with the existence of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints; but they’ve only been around since 1830! One would think that the faithful of the Catholic religion - all of 2000 years old, would have a better command of knowledge regarding our shared written traditions - the Old & New Testaments.

Previous surveys by the Pew Research Center have shown that America is among the most religious of the world’s developed nations. Nearly six-in-ten U.S. adults say that religion is “very important” in their lives, and roughly four-in-ten say they attend worship services at least once a week. But the U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey shows that large numbers of Americans are uninformed about the tenets, practices, history and leading figures of major faith traditions – including their own.

In other words, while we Americans tend to take our religion very seriously, we aren’t as concerned about knowing why we believe what we do. From a Catholic perspective, for example, it is disturbing to discover that 45% of Catholics who responded to the survey did not know the central distinguishing tenet of Catholicism - which is that the bread and wine used in Communion do not merely symbolize but actually become the body and blood of Christ.

I suppose there is some cold comfort in the fact that this lack of religious knowledge is not limited to Catholics alone. Slightly more than half of Protestants could not identify Martin Luther as the instigator of the Protestant Reformation and 40% of Jews were unable to identify the significance of Maimonides. Nevertheless, these results help explain the rising tide of secularism in American society. Without religious literacy, it is practically impossible to refute those who seek to exclude religion from the social order, much less maintain fidelity to one’s own beliefs.

What can be done? The Pew Forum’s findings point to several important strategies. First, the survey results suggest that educational attainment (highest level of schooling) is the single largest predictor of religious literacy. Not surprisingly, the Survey also suggests that those who read Scripture on a regular basis, talk about religion with friends and family and attend church weekly are more likely to demonstrate greater religious literacy than those who don’t.

I’ve often argued the point that the purpose of the Religious Studies curriculum at La Salle is to:

• Nurture the faith of our Catholic students
• Encourage our non-Catholic students to grow in their faith tradition
• Enable our unchurched students to appreciate the religious basis for our shared moral values

We do this through the same strategies (albeit School Masses are monthly, not weekly) that the Pew Forum suggests will enhance religious literacy and, by extension, religious fidelity. In a time when our society is desperate for a moral anchor that doesn’t emerge from the “chattering class” found on television, radio and the Internet, I can’t think of a better argument for the Mission of La Salle High School than the findings of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

I was a stranger in my own hometown...

I am fond of saying that La Salle is like the “Hotel California” (for Gen Xers who may not be familiar with this reference to the 1976 Eagles hit song – you can look it up on Wikipedia); “you can check out but you can never leave.” For the Eagles, the hotel in question is the state of California and the notion that one “can check out but…can never leave” refers to a particular state of mind which is formed by living in the Golden State for any length of time. To paraphrase the Eagles, you can leave California but California won’t leave you.

I was reminded of this dynamic when I recently returned from a family funeral in New York (I am writing this on my return flight). Aside from the fact that I encountered thunderstorms for the entire weekend I was on the East Coast, it struck me that, after twenty years in California, I had become a stranger in my home town. Mind you, I wasn’t particularly troubled by the experience (the thunder storms in June cured me of that), but I was surprised…especially since it has been more than ten years since I had returned to the small town that marked my elementary and secondary school years.

What I discovered was that, while I missed the experience that, for the better part of twenty years had represented “home” for me, I didn’t need – to paraphrase author F. Scott Fitzgerald – a “second act.” The flight home helped me to see that California is my home now and that; not only did I not need to “check out;” I didn’t need to leave either.

So, what do these ruminations of a quasi-home-sick adult have to do with equating La Salle with the “Hotel California?” The answer, it seems to me, lies in the second annual Mothers of Alumni cocktail party which took place two weeks ago. The event, coordinated by a committee of alumni mothers, is designed to maintain the connection between the parents of our graduating Seniors and the social network that was sustained throughout a four-year involvement in their child’s experience with academics, arts and athletics. The event “inducted” those among the 50+ attendees whose son or daughter had just participated in the 2009 commencement ceremony. As I think about the wonderful spirit which permeated the cocktail party, I began to realize that La Salle can be, for many, the “Hotel California.” Because I have heard – repeatedly – the comment that parents were not ready to “graduate” from La Salle at the same point as their children, I have come to realize that the adults can “check out” but they can’t, necessarily, “leave;” I now realize that the “magic” that is La Salle impacts adults and students alike.

New to this year’s Mothers of Alumni party was the announcement of the Gloria Delaney, P’82, ’85, ’89 Volunteer of the Year award and the creation of the Gloria Delaney, P’82, ’85, ’89 Memorial Scholarship. Both projects are intended to honor the memory of an amazing parent volunteer whose life was prematurely cut short by the ravages of cancer. I won’t take the time in this short space to list the many, wonderful ways Gloria’s involvement at La Salle helped to transform the school (check out the current issue of Lancer Magazine that should be hitting your mailboxes right about now); but I do want to highlight the significance of these two memorial projects. The first – Volunteer of the Year award – was established by the Executive Committee of the Mothers of Alumni Council to honor an “unsung” graduating parent(s) who have quietly and unobtrusively made themselves available for any request the School made of them for volunteer help. (I was thrilled when the Committee nominated Deacon Harry and Seta Kazarian, P ‘09 for the inaugural award). The second – Memorial Scholarship – was established by Gloria’s family to honor her lifelong commitment to the Catholic education of middle income children.

As I juxtaposed the experience of the Mothers of Alumni cocktail party with the need to be present at a family event on the East Coast, I began to recognize that the Eagles were right: we are all shaped by powerful influences that – only with the passage of time – are we able to fully appreciate the ways in which we have been changed by those experiences. So, as La Salle gears up for another school year, I warmly welcome the incoming parents of the Class of 2013 to the “Hotel California”…err…La Salle and hope that you, like legions of parents before you, will come to embrace the marvelous notion that you can “check out” but you can never “leave” this amazing place.