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…

 

 

What should college be about?

As I write this, our seniors are immersed in the college application process and their teachers are being inundated with requests for recommendations. Conversations about whether a particular college is a “Common Application” school and “Do you want me to submit the recommendation through Naviance?” opens up the brave new world of technology as it applies to the college admissions process. The bulk of their recommendations will be written by their teachers and college counselors; but every year, two or three seniors will, for a variety of reasons, want a recommendation from the School’s President. I don’t mind; it keeps me involved in their lives as students and aware of how their high school career has prepared them for college and beyond.  Plus, having taught English in a previous life - two or three recommendations a year is a light load!

The college application process is probably the most intellectually and emotionally draining experience of the four years teenagers will spend in high school. It is so stressful that, just shy of ten years ago, La Salle launched “Camp College,” a week-long program during the summer between junior and senior year in which students devote their time to the identification of colleges that represent a good “fit” for them (along with, what our College Counselors call, “safety” and “stretch” schools) and drafting the all-important college essay. Needless to say, Camp College fills up fast.

With nearly a third of our students earning a 4.0 GPA each semester of attendance (with similarly impressive performances at the 3.5 and 3.0 marks), I know our graduates will enroll in selective and competitive colleges and universities.  The performance of the Class of 2014 illustrates my point: 30 students matriculated at a UC campus (six students headed off to UCLA) with another 24 attending CSU. Private colleges and universities enrolling members of the Class of 2014 included: Brown, Carnegie Mellon, NYU, University of Chicago and Notre Dame. The University of Michigan, Ohio State, Purdue, VPI, Oregon, Indiana (Bloomington) and LSU represented some of the competitive out-of-state public institutions who received members of the Class of 2014. I’m not surprised by these results; over 60% of the Class of 2014 earned Honors at Commencement - the highest it’s been in five years.

We are particularly proud of Renaissance Forster ‘14 and Elizabeth Lynch ’14 who achieved the rare accomplishment of being admitted to West Point - from the same school (less than 30% of military academy nominations will be admitted). I can’t resist the temptation to make the point that Renaissance and Elizabeth highlight my firm conviction that La Salle, a coeducational school, can nurture leadership skills in young women as successfully as our single-gender counterparts assert.

Still, these impressive results beg the central question about higher education in the 21^st Century: to what end? Is a college or university education meant to be the capstone of 16 years of formal education, rounding out a student’s knowledge and honing in on a particular area of study called a “major?” Or is its purpose to ground a student in the rigors of a professional discipline that will provide access to employment after graduation?

Like many educators, I would argue for both outcomes. Higher education has always concerned itself with the education of both the mind and the person.  It is a false dichotomy to argue that one should take precedence over the other. I favor the perspective of Harvard Professor and cultural critic, Louis Menand (he hails from my home town in upstate New York), who captured the problem of confusing higher education with employability when he recently asserted:

“Education is about personal and intellectual growth, not about winning some race to the top.”

And yet, college students today are “voting with their feet;” they are choosing majors and concentrations that align themselves with the utilitarian end of higher education. The Pew Survey (2013) of higher education reports that 60% of college students are not liberal arts majors; the #1 major is business and more than twice as many degrees are awarded in parks, recreation, leisure and fitness than in philosophy and religion. This isn’t to suggest that these trends are misguided, just that they are incomplete with respect to what college preparatory schools like La Salle aspire for their graduates.

            The quality of college placements earned by the Class of 2014 suggests that our students leave La Salle knowing that both the mind and the person must be stretched over the course of the next four years. I believe their four years at La Salle have prepared them for what the Pew survey also reports - which is that the vast majority of graduates from a four-year institution say their college education helped them grow intellectually and to mature as a person. In other words, college may teach students as much about getting along with people as it does about analyzing Shakespeare’s sonnets (or mastering a spreadsheet).

            Our recent Annual Report highlights our successful Advanced Placement program - a critical element in providing our most talented students with a college-level academic program which nurtures their ability to interpret, synthesize, and use evidence found within a wide range of sources. This is the essence of a college-preparatory education and our AP and Honors curriculum is available to any student willing to challenge his/her ability to stretch their minds under the tutelage of extraordinarily talented educators.

            This is why I look forward to the opportunity to write letters of recommendation for those seniors who request it. I know that their academic preparation, active involvement in and out of the classroom, on and off the field has enabled them to approach the college application process with confidence that they will successfully meet the challenges they will face in the next chapter of their academic career.

On the road again...

“If you don't know where you're going, any road'll take you there”

Beatles aficionados will recognize this as the refrain to Any Road, the Grammy nominated opening song on George Harrison’s posthumously published album Brainwashed. Harrison performed it in public only once - in 1997 - just a few years before he died of cancer at the age of 58. Harrison frequently used the line to describe his good fortune that he always knew he wanted to play the guitar professionally. What Beatles connoisseurs may not realize is that the line was drawn from a rather famous interaction between Alice and the Cheshire Cat in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland:

"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"

"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.

"I don’t much care where--" said Alice.

"Then it doesn’t matter which way you go," said the Cat.

"--so long as I get SOMEWHERE," Alice added as an explanation.

"Oh, you’re sure to do that," said the Cat, "if you only walk long enough."

I was reminded of this delightful interaction as I reviewed the results from the parent survey that was recently distributed electronically as part of our WASC/WCEA/Strategic Planning process. Not surprisingly, we received robust feedback regarding what works and what needs improvement at La Salle (for more on this, please plan on attending Back to School Night on Thursday, January 8^th). It was clear to me that our parents - indeed all of the School’s constituents - want to know what road La Salle is taking as we embrace a future not ours to control. And, cerrtainly, unlike Alice, we don’t want to get “somewhere” just for the sake of the getting.

We know that the essence of strategic planning resides in an institutional determination to choose a path forward which will advance the Mission while, at the same time, preparing for a future of twists and turns that will - inevitably - attempt to derail progress. We saw this dynamic play itself out during the implementation of our 2001 Strategic Plan.[1]   One of the goals, for example,

Aggressively pursue creative opportunities to resolve existing facilities limitations and which will maximize the delivery of the curricular and co-curricular program.

took over fifteen years to implement (finding a suitable off-site location for Baseball so that the existing space can be used to support the construction of new buildings as part of the School’s Master Plan). In many ways, La Salle faces a much more uncertain future now than it did fifteen years ago. Back then the economy operated at full steam, there were three applicants for every available seat and the School was expanding programs and renovating facilities to meet the needs of the students entrusted to our care. Now, the lingering effects of the Great Recession and the bust of the baby boomlet (there are 50% less students in surrounding public school kindergartens today than a decade ago) challenge the School to continue its focus on program and facility improvement while coping with a decline in earned income.  Happily, charitable giving from all of  La Salle’s constituents has enabled us to continue to renovate facilities and to support program enhancements that meet the needs of our students.  That having been said, it would be like “whistling in the dark” if the School assumed that all would be well if we just stayed the course…which is why strategic planning is so important to La Salle’s future well-being.

As a result, we have spent the last semester gathering data regarding the School’s strengths and challenges with a view towards examining their implications at a Strategic Planning Workshop on February 27/28. The time will be spent seeking answers to these critical questions:

• What are the central elements of La Salle’s Mission which must be preserved and enhanced over the course of the next decade?
• What strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and challenges confront the School, going forward?
• What should the School do more of, less of, to respond to a future not ours to control?
• What resources are available to the School to meet the challenges of an uncertain future and how can they be effectively leveraged?

Given that La Salle has not only survived but thrived over the course of the last five decades, I am confident that we will be able to successfully chart the course of the first decade of the next fifty years.  

 

So, in response to the challenge of George/Alice, I would like to quote a German proverb:

What's the use of running if you are not on the right road?

I am absolutely confident that La Salle’s strategic planning exercise will (like it’s 2001 predecessor) make sure we are running on the right road.

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[1] To view that document go to: http://www.lasallehs.org/s/639/2col.aspx?sid=639&gid=1&pgid=359&sparam=strategic%20plan&scontid=0

Na kana I Hawai'i (Saints in Paradise)

           

Recently I was privileged to visit the island of Moloka’i (Hawai’i) where the sad story of the forced relocation of victims of Hansen’s disease (Leprosy) played itself out for a little over a hundred years. In 1865 the (then) Kingdom of Hawai’i, in an effort to stem the spread of Hansen’s disease, decreed that all Lepers would be forcibly relocated to the isolated Kalaupapa peninsula on the island of Moloka’i. Children were taken from their parents as well as brother from sister and husband from wife. Even after the discovery of a variety of treatments beginning in the 1940s, it wasn’t until 1969 that the state of Hawai’i formally rescinded its isolation laws.

            What made my visit to Moloka’i so privileged was the role the Catholic Church played in caring for the physical, material and spiritual needs of the Lepers. Beginning in 1873 a young Belgian priest, Father Damien De Veuster, asked the Bishop of Hawai’i to be sent to Moloka’i in service of the Lepers. He was the first non-Leper to live on Moloka’i for an extended period of time. More than ten years later he was joined by Mother Marianne Cope and two Franciscan Sisters. Mother Marianne assumed responsibility for the Colony upon Father Damien’s death and, for the next 35 years, would faithfully - and cheerfully - serve the patients of Kalaupapa.

            On that visit I was privileged to “meet” Mother Marianne for the first time. I say for the “first time” because I have known about her for virtually my entire life. At the time that she accepted the request for nursing sisters to be sent to Hawai’i, Mother Marianne was Superior General of the Franciscan Sisters of Syracuse - the same nuns - a hundred years later - that taught me in elementary school and my sister in high school. Sister Bonaventure, my eighth grade teacher, was a native of Hawai’i. We grew up knowing the heroic story of Mother Marianne and her Sisters.  Needless to say, when the opportunity to visit Moloka’i came up, I jumped at the chance to “meet” Mother Marianne.

            By all accounts, she was a remarkable woman. While still in her thirties, Mother Marianne founded Saint Joseph Hospital (the hospital in which I first greeted the world) and at a fairly young age - 40 - she was elected the second Superior General of the Franciscan Sisters.  A little over five years later, Mother Marianne accepted the invitation (the only affirmative response to a letter that was sent to 50 other religious orders) from the Kingdom of Hawai’i to staff a hospital for Lepers. Having never encountered the scourge that was Leprosy, Mother Marianne boldly asserted: “I am not afraid of any disease.” In 2005 Mother Marianne followed Father Damien into the halls of sanctity when the Church declared her a saint.

            The Bishop of Honolulu, Larry Silva (the first native-born resident of Hawai’i to assume that office), accompanied us on the visit to Moloka’i and preached the homily at Mass that day. The Gospel - Luke 10:25-37 - contained the parable of the man robbed and left for dead on his way to Jericho (I’ve previously commented on this passage in my Blog:  http://lasallehs.blogspot.com/2013/07/who-is-my-neighbor.html). In that parable, Jesus asks the central question that goes to the heart of Christianity: “Who is my neighbor?” There isn’t enough space to recap the answer to that question, save that it includes the man who stopped to give aid to the one left for dead. Then, Bishop Silva posed this rhetorical question: “In the Ebola epidemic, who is the neighbor?”  The obvious answer is the medical professionals who have responded to the rapid spread of this deadly disease.  Sounds a whole lot like Father Damien and Mother Marianne!  But Bishop Silva pushed us to consider a more complicated perspective with respect to this question.  Father Damien and Mother Marianne were utterly ordinary people (indeed, both were immigrants) who, when confronted by an extraordinary challenge, simply said yes.  What fascinates me about Mother Marianne - to this day - was her speedy and uncomplicated commitment to a destiny not her own. Bishop Silva challenged us to look at ourselves from the perspective of Father Damien and Mother Marianne: as ordinary individuals who - at one point or another - are (and will be) surprised by God’s invitation to be neighbor to someone else.

            As I spent five hours on my return flight from Hawai’i, I had time to consider the challenging perspectives my visit to Moloka’i forced me to consider with regard to my own life. I thought about Bishop Silva’s challenge to constantly ask myself the question: “Who is my neighbor” and somewhere, over the middle of the Pacific, I realized that this is the exact same question we ask the students of La Salle (and all Lasallian schools) when we challenge them to: Enter to Learn and Leave to Serve. At La Salle, everything related to the activities of Student Life, of the Retreat Program, of the various drives to respond to the needs of the homeless and the marginalized are designed to inculcate in the students entrusted to our care a sense that anyone who is in trouble needs a neighbor.  Like Father Damien and Mother Marianne, we need to listen to that “still, small voice” that is God challenging us to figure out who we need to be neighbor to - and then - to act on it.

 

The road to Calvary

          

  A friend recommended that I go see the movie, Calvary. It covers seven days in the life of an Irish priest serving in an isolated parish on a windswept corner of County Sligo.  The film opens with the priest, Father James, hearing confessions.  A man enters the confessional and reveals to Father James that he was abused from the ages of 5-7 by a now-dead priest.  He intends to extract retribution by killing Father James seven days hence. “No point in killing a bad priest,” he says. I’m going to kill you because you’ve done nothing wrong.” The penitent wants the world to know the trauma visited upon him and, in his mind, what better way than to kill an innocent man?

            It’s easy to see the parallels between the movie title, Father James’ predicament and his journey of seven days. Father James’ “road to Calvary” takes a week to complete and is filled with the flotsam and jetsam of encounters with a variety of unruly, unappealing and often unlikable parishioners.  Father James deals with each of them with a mixture of patience, righteousness, humor and even, sometimes, anger. Needless to say, this parish priest is respected, but is not popular.

            Father James’ isolation in relation to his parishioners caused the recovering English teacher in me to focus on two moments in the film which paralleled scenes in Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar and Mark Twain’s novel Huckleberry Finn (hang in there).  With respect to the former parallel, there’s a scene in the film where the Pub owner, smarting from a losing encounter with the priest, says to one of his customers: “(Father James) needs to be taken down a bit.” His words reminded me of Cassius - who had his own issues with Julius Caesar - when he said to Brutus:

“Why, man he doth bestride the narrow world / Like a Colossus, and we petty men / Walk under his huge legs and peep about.”

Later in the film, having acquired a gun for the purpose of defending himself on the seventh day, Father James wrestles with his conscience - he had just chastised a parishioner for thinking there are exceptions to the fifth commandment - and pitches the pistol into the stormy waters of the Atlantic ocean, thus committing himself to the final confrontation with the man who intends to kill him. That scene echoed the words of Huck Finn - “All right then, I’ll go to hell” - when he commits himself to freeing his friend, Jim, the slave.  I won’t act as a spoiler for the rest of the film, should you decide to see it; but I do want to comment on the theological and ethical elements in Calvary which should, I think, resonate with what we try to do here at La Salle for the students entrusted to our care.

The word and the place of Calvary are synonymous with the Christian understanding that Christ’s death represents the sacrifice of an innocent man in order that the sins of the many can be forgiven.  I’ve always struggled with the cause and effect of this core element of our Christian faith. It seems so incredibly outsized as to be incomprehensible. And yet, having watched Calvary, the priest’s belief that he will be able to convince his potential murderer to abandon his malign goal makes sense to me (especially after he throws the gun into the sea). In short, innocence forms its own moral compass. The film reinforces this point when, in a debate with one of the other characters about the difference between recrimination and forgiveness, Father James blurts out this blockbuster:

“We have too much talk about sins … and not enough about virtues, I think forgiveness has been highly underrated.”

It is all too easy for organized religion to dwell on sin more than on virtue - we see this played out in the news headlines on a daily basis, it seems. Rarely, though, do we devote as much time to the Gospel virtue of forgiveness…hence Father James’ comment. This is particularly problematic during the stormy adolescent years of high school. Confrontation - not forgiveness - is often the dominant social paradigm among teenagers. At La Salle, we seek to tilt the scale towards forgiveness by surrounding our students with adults who are also on a journey towards becoming more forgiving.  We don’t always get it right, but we know that our goal to produce good students and good people necessitates that we keep trying - just as Father James kept trying to win over his recalcitrant parishioners to more fully embrace Gospel values.

I suppose I will always wrestle with the magnitude of Jesus’ sacrifice; but in watching Father James’ journey to Calvary, I have a better idea how to encourage our students to imitate Christ’s example, who, at the time of His Calvary, forgave his persecutors.

The Don Draper Problem in Real Life...

I must admit that I have never liked Don Draper.  I tried liking him in Season One of Mad Men; largely because the critics said I should like the brutally honest way in which the hugely popular TV show portrayed the rough and tumble, testosterone fueled battle for gender and career dominance in the decade of the sixties.  After having watched about a third of Season One, I realized that, contrary to the critics’ perspective, not only did I find Don Draper repulsive (irrespective of the later revelation of his traumatic childhood) in his personal and his professional life, but I also found him “unwatchable.” By that I mean, even for this recovering English teacher there is a certain level of verisimilitude which deserves to be ignored; if only because there are aspects of Life that don’t require imitation by Art.  In the case of Mad Men, Don Draper’s odious treatment of women, including his - then - wife, is all too much still with us in the second decade of the 21^st Century. I’m not at all clear as to why any thinking person needs Television to remind us that Draper’s aggressive, self-absorbed and misogynous persona continues to haunt the halls of corporate America some fifty years later.

These musings surfaced after reading a Blog entry by New York Times writer Michael Port entitled:  The Don Draper Problem: Root Out Your False Narratives. His column makes the case that Draper, the protagonist in Mad Men (actually, he’s the antihero of the show), is ultimately undone by the, rather farfetched, back-story in which Draper assumes the identity of an Army buddy killed in the Korean War. Port’s column highlights the brutal price Draper pays decades later for (literally) burying his secret identity.  What irritated me about Don Draper’s character (and to a lesser extent, Port’s deconstruction of it) is how little attention was focused on the price paid by family and friends who unknowingly suffered because of the (unacceptable) ways in which he compensated for his secret past. However, Port uses Draper’s dysfunction to make the case for personal authenticity in our every day adult interactions.  He explains his point this way:

 

“A great deal of the literature around "authenticity" really comes down to this question (do) we have the courage to talk about who we really are, not just who we want others to think we are.”

 

Don Draper’s fatal flaw, in effect, was his creation of an identity that was at odds with who he really was. And while Draper’s dramaturgy is an extreme case - even for the most credible of viewers - Port’s point is well worth considering.  He hit home with me when he posed this, all too common, scenario:

 

“Think about how some of us add on layers of personae to gain others' approval while hiding parts of ourselves that we think are embarrassing.”

 

Of course, we all do this to some extent. What our family knows about us is not necessarily the same as what our friends know about us (and some times, vice-versa). Port isn’t suggesting that we should become completely transparent in all situations - that would spell disaster for most of us; but he is making a compelling case for the value of being vulnerable in front of others, especially with respect to those aspects of our lives that keep us from being our best selves.  As evidence for this  never-ending challenge, Port sites Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg's success as the author of the bestselling book Lean In as an example of someone who was willing to name her internal conflict around intimacy, marriage and having children.

 

            At La Salle, it is not our role to encourage teenagers to be vulnerable (they are often able to accomplish that in highly unattractive ways all by themselves); but it is our role to nurture authenticity in their public and private behavior. Adolescents are fully capable of hiding their weaknesses from themselves and others. What they need to learn - and what Don Draper learned too late in life - is that personal authenticity (and its cousin, integrity) is strengthened when they allow themselves to be vulnerable in the presence of those who care about them - their parents, extended family and, at La Salle, their teachers and coaches. I have been privileged over the last 16 years to observe our students blossom because of the trust they placed in a teacher or coach who challenged them to be their best selves.

            So, I suppose that Don Draper’s character is worth paying attention to, if only to remind ourselves that a lack of authenticity - and integrity - can cause any one of us to walk down a path we didn’t intend and probably won’t result in a life well-lived. As our teenagers gear up for another school year, its worth noting that the most important outcome of their journey through their four years at La Salle is that they become good students and good people.