‘His spirit will continue to animate the schools he founded’.

Handing on the specific Josephite spirit to future generations.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

FR MARTIN ASHCROFT CJ

 

 

 

 

Dissertation in partial fulfilment of the

MA in Chaplaincy Studies.

 

St Mary’s University College

October 2005.

Canon Constant William van Crombrugghe

(1789-1865)

Founder of the Congregation of the Josephites.

 

 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

 

I would like to thank my Josephite confrères for giving me the time and space to undertake this study. My thanks and appreciation must also go to those who have participated in this research, particularly the six members of staff at St George’s whose willingness to be interviewed enabled this study to be completed. Furthermore, I would like to acknowledge the wonderful welcome and enriching experience I enjoyed while staying at St Ignatius College, Riverview at Sydney in Australia. It was there that I learnt so much about the crucial importance of articulating and inculcating a school’s underpinning ethos for the entire school community. I am also indebted to my colleagues on the MA course for the great times we shared together during our meetings at St Mary’s and especially to Fr Patrick Kenna SDB who tragically died before completing the course. Finally, my sincere thanks and gratitude go to John Lydon for his constant interest, support and encouragement during the evolution and completion of this study.

 

Abstract

 

Since its original foundation in 1869, St George’s College, Weybridge has always sought to be a Catholic, Christian and Josephite school rooted in the educational principles of Canon Constant van Crombrugghe, the founder of the Josephites, a pontifical religious order of Roman Catholic priests and brothers.

 

In the past, the ethos of St George’s College was maintained through a process of ‘osmosis’ and oral tradition handed down by generations of Josephites. More recently, however, the number of Josephites working at St George’s has steadily declined creating the danger of the underpinning Josephite educational ethos being lost through the lack of any Josephite presence at the school.

 

Against this background, the Introduction starts by emphasising the importance of the underpinning ethos for a school’s success. It then establishes leadership formation as a raison d’être of Josephite schools and highlights the move towards a more collaborative approach to ministry in schools in keeping with Vatican II’s communio ecclesiology. The second chapter articulates the specific attributes of Josephite educational ethos, highlighting the importance of ‘family spirit’. The third chapter describes the evolution of the research question and methodology while the fourth chapter highlights the outcome of the interviews and offers a considered response to the research question: ‘To what extent is the Josephite ethos being maintained at St George’s College?’ The study concludes by offering a synthesis of its main conclusions before making four recommendations.

Abstract                                                                                                        Page    3

 

Contents Page                                                                                                          4

 

Chapter 1      Introduction

                        The aims of the study                                                                          5

                        The importance of a school’s underpinning ethos               6

                        The Josephites and their involvement in education                      10

                        Collaboration                                                                                     16

                        The educational importance of this study                                       19

                        The research question                                                                      20       

                        Summary                                                                                            20

 

Chapter 2      Articulating the Josephite Ethos

                        Identifying the founding Josephite educational ethos                   22

The Josephite educational ethos in the 21st century                     31

Concluding remarks                                                                         33

 

Chapter 3      The research methodology

                        Establishing the research question                                                 36

The Methodology                                                                              37

Summary                                                                                            42

 

Chapter 4      Analysis

                        The Data                                                                                            44

                        The extent to which the Josephite ethos is being maintained      53

 

Chapter 5      Conclusions                                                                                    57

 

Bibliography                                                                                                            61

Chapter One              Introduction

 

This chapter starts by identifying the study’s aims after which it establishes the importance of a school’s underpinning ethos as well as the pivotal role teachers exercise in maintaining a school’s distinctive ethos and culture. The chapter then moves on to outline the specific historical context of the Congregation of Josephites as a teaching order of Roman Catholic priests and brothers. The third part of the chapter highlights the importance of collaboration, an issue religious orders are having to address in respect of the governance and management of their (former) schools. This is set against the background of the move towards a more collaborative approach to ministry in the Roman Catholic church that finds its roots in the communio ecclesiology of the second Vatican Council. The final part of the chapter identifies educational importance of the study and the agreed research question.

 

The aims of the study

 

The aims of the study are to articulate the Josephite educational ethos and establish the extent to which the staff are maintaining this specific ethos at St George’s College.  Furthermore, it is anticipated that the study will prove useful in assisting the revision of the school’s Mission Statement which is rooted in this ethos.

 

 

 

The importance of a school’s underpinning ethos

 

As a result of a number of recent studies,[1] there is a growing consensus about the meaning and the importance of a school’s underpinning ethos. A school’s ethos can be described as:

 

‘The fundamental spirit of the school that gives orientation to the energies of the school. Ethos is the touchstone for the character of the curriculum and the culture of the school’ (Treston 2001:17).

 

Canavan and Monahan offer a similar definition:

 

‘Ethos refers to the unique set of values that drives all aspects of a school’s culture’ (2000:2.27).[2]

 

The origin of a school’s specific ethos can usually be found in the school’s own history. As a consequence, although schools have to look to the future in order to survive and flourish, an appreciation of the school’s past stories and historical traditions are essential to understanding the evolution of its present underpinning ethos.[3]  Therefore the quest to re-discover a school’s founding ethos is much more important than Brien and Hack assume in their own quest to emphasise, ‘What are we yet to become?’ rather than ‘Who founded us?’ and ‘What have we become?’ (2005:81).

A school is only as good as its ethos (Brick 1999:88) and for a school’s ethos to permeate the entire life of a school, there must be a process of recognition and reflection (Gallagher 2003:196). To be neutral or indifferent about the school’s moral or spiritual ethos will inevitably generate an ethos of individualism, functionalism and ultimately fragmentation (Williams 2003:1). Furthermore, this process of reflection needs to involve all staff as it is they, rather than the pupils, who will maintain and reinforce the individual school’s underpinning ethos and culture.

 

There are, however, a number of challenges to the ethos of the Catholic school. Although Roman Catholic schools in England have been revisiting their ethos to make it more explicit and transparent, many teachers still lack a full understanding of the distinctive nature of the Roman Catholic school ethos and, consequently, any commitment to live it out (§66 The Catholic School 2004:36).

 

Another challenge to the ethos of Catholic schools is the increasing multi-faith culture of contemporary post-Christian England.[4] This situation was recognised in the 1988 The Religious Dimension of Education in a Catholic School:

 

‘It is not always easy to bring these two aspects into harmony; the task requires constant attention, so that the tension between a serious effort to transmit culture and a forceful witness to the gospel does not turn into a conflict harmful to both’ (§67 Church Documents 2004:167).

 

The traditional ethos of independent Catholic schools is being challenged by market forces and league tables especially as Catholic parents are no longer automatically choosing Catholic schools for their children, but those schools most likely to guarantee academic results.[5] Catholic schools that fail to reflect continually on their underpinning ethos can end up becoming little more than ‘examination factories where position in league table becomes their new raison d’être’ (Brick 1999:103) under pressure from parental expectations and the need simply to survive.[6] Where this occurs, it will probably also have a negative affect on the Catholic school’s prime commitment to religious, spiritual and moral interests (Grace 2002:181) as well as affecting its policies of admission and retention.[7] Linked to this is the effective school movement that challenges the Catholic schools’ ethos through a constant quest for ‘efficiency that is often given precedence over issues of social justice’ (Spry 2000:125). Catholic schools also need consider messages they are giving out about their ethos. For example, what statement is being made when, after a string of academic and sporting awards, no or only one award is given for Christian leadership? (cf Brien and Hack 2005:79).[8]

 

While ‘there is no one right way to live out one’s Christian faith’ (Sullivan 2001:5), there is a direct linkage between teacher relationships and a school’s ethos and, as a result, schools differ because of these relationships (Rosenholtz cited by Angelides and Ainscow 2000:150). In the ideal world, a Catholic school would be:

 

‘Permeated by an ethos of prayer and moral virtue: this would, of course, depend on the character of the teachers themselves. The integrating force behind the curriculum of such a school would be love; love for creation, love for humanity, love for God – and finally love between pupils and teachers’ (Caldecott 2005:40 - emphasis added).[9]

 

Finally, the on-going recovery of the past at St George’s is helping to clarify and keep alive the school’s historical Josephite educational ethos. At the same time it is a reminder, to those involved, of the school’s continuous willingness to be adaptable to changing circumstances throughout its history. Furthermore, the story of College Melle, outlined in the next section of this chapter, shows the extent to which van Crombrugghe was prepared go in order to adapt his Josephite schools to changing circumstances.

 

 

 

The Josephites and their involvement in education

 

It needs to be remembered that the ecclesial, cultural and socio-political circumstances in 1817, when Constant van Crombrugghe founded the Brothers of Mary and Joseph – the precursors of the Josephites, were significantly different  from those prevailing at the start of the 21st Century.[10] Furthermore, van Crombrugghe was an ultramontane, conservative priest[11] who belonged to a Roman Catholic Church that saw itself as the societas perfecta, in other words, ‘the perfect society - visible, hierarchical, and juridical’ (Hume 1988:66) in which the few were ‘the custodians of power and truth’ (Cooper 1993:24). Moreover, at the time, European culture was still overwhelmingly Christian in outlook and practice albeit exhibiting nationalist tendencies.

 

It was on 1st May 1817 that Constant van Crombrugghe, at the time a Canon of Gent Cathedral and Headmaster of Le Collège d’Alost, founded a Roman Catholic Religious Order known as the Brothers of Mary and Joseph that later became known as The Congregation of Josephites.

 

Van Crombrugghe had humanitarian and religious motives for the establishment of the Brothers of Mary and Joseph. He wanted to alleviate the suffering and hardship caused by famine and the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars. Van Crombrugghe also sought to protect the moral lives of the young children from poor homes since he was convinced these children might be forced, by their parents, into stealing food in order to survive and, as a consequence, the children would fall away from their religious practices.[12] Initially, the Brothers of Mary and Joseph were sent to van Crombrugghe’s own home town of Grammont in West Flanders, now part of present day Belgium, where they established work schools for the children.[13]  

 

In setting up these work schools, van Crombrugghe established the founding raison d’être for the Josephites and their schools: ‘The evangelisation and education of young people’.

 

By the end of 1834, the Brothers of Mary and Joseph were involved in the running of four schools in Belgium.[14] In 1837 van Crombrugghe accepted the invitation of his brother-in-law to take over the running of Le Pensionnat de Melle otherwise known as College Melle, then a secondary boarding school for boys.[15] The opportunity to move to College Melle presented van Crombrugghe with his first chance to attract better educated men to his religious order and, moreover, it is with the move to Melle that the Brothers of Mary and Joseph are renamed Josephites.[16] More importantly, within the context of this study, this is a seminal moment as it created the second raison d’être for Josephite schools: the education of the Catholic boys belonging to the new ruling classes who would eventually become the future leaders within society.[17]

During 1839 van Crombrugghe began to conceive the idea of adapting the curriculum offered at Melle so that it might better suit the needs of the new ruling classes and the socio-economic needs of the country while not, at the same time, denying pupils the benefits of a traditional Christian humanistic education. The following year, the revised curriculum at College Melle introduced courses in Italian, German, Natural Sciences, business and commercial law.[18] In 1841, the Melle prospectus was published in English, German and Spanish and emphasised this new curriculum. In 1843 Melle was given a new title: L’Institution commerciale, industrielle, littéraire et scientifique de Melle. This exciting and successful venture was brought to a premature end seventeen years later due to new government regulations for entry to higher education. The story of College Melle does, however, illustrate the willingness of van Crombrugghe to radically adapt his schools to changing circumstances.

 

The final stage of the development of the Josephites and their schools, during the life of van Crombrugghe, came with the acceptance of the offer made in 1842 by Cardinal Archbishop de Sterckx of Malines to take over a school being run by one of the Cardinal’s priests. For van Crombrugghe, the move to Leuven offered a place for the initial formation of future Josephites. Furthermore, the school, because of its location in Leuven, would allow Josephites to follow the courses necessary for the priesthood offered by the Katholieke Universiteit te Leuven.

Finally, even though van Crombrugghe founded no more schools after Leuven, he continued to maintain an active interest in his schools and their methods until his death in 1865.[19]

 

In 1869 the Josephites established a boys’ boarding school in England, initially at Croydon, then at Woburn Park on the outskirts of Weybridge. Unfortunately, like many religious orders, the number of new recruits to the Josephites in England started to decline in the 1970s and by the late 1980s it had become clear that some major decisions would have to be taken if St George’s College was to survive into the 21st century.

 

In 1989 the decision was taken to close the boarding facility at the College and sell ‘Barrow Hills’, the boarding preparatory school run by the Josephites since 1950, to the parents. In September 1992, the Junior School of St George’s College, located in the grounds of the College, opened an Infants Department for boys that proved to be an immediate success. In September 1994, girls were admitted into the Nursery at the Junior School and started the process by which it, and the College, would become fully co-educational schools. During the summer holidays of 2000, ‘The Move’ took place. This involved the Junior Schools of St George’s College and St Maur’s Convent coming together and relocating into the buildings previously occupied by the senior girls at St Maur’s in Weybridge. At the same time the senior girls moved to Addlestone to join the College at Woburn Park. ‘The Move’ marked the end of a period of significant adaptation during which St George’s successfully transformed itself from being a medium size boys’ boarding school with day pupils into the largest co-educational, independent day school in England and Wales.

 

Furthermore, in another defining moment, on 11 February 1993, the Josephites formally handed over the governance and management of St George’s to the trustees of a charity specifically created for this purpose.[20] Moreover, unlike some transitions from religious to lay governance, where the school’s charism (ethos) was downgraded or even lost (Sullivan 2001:5), the handover at St George’s took place with a public commitment by the Governors to promote the Catholic, Christian and Josephite ethos of the school.[21] This transfer from religious to lay headship and administration, however, marked the end of the traditional means of maintaining the Josephite ethos at St George’s College.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Collaboration

 

Since the second Vatican Council’s Decree Perfectae Caritatis on the renewal of Religious Life, members of religious orders have been undertaking a process of rediscovering the original, founding charism of their religious orders.

 

Running parallel with this renewal has been a reappraisal of the relationship existing between consecrated religious and the laity. This was precipitated, in part, by the post-Vatican II ecclesial image of the Church as fellowship or communio. The Trinitarian underpinning of communio, or koinonia as it is also called, is found in §4 of Vatican II’s Lumen Gentium where the universal church is described as ‘a people made one from the unity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit’. Theologically speaking, collaborative ministry involves the entire ‘People of God’ – laity, religious, priests and bishops – sharing their common priesthood, working together in the Church’s mission and ministry as a consequence of their Baptism (The Sign We Give 1995:28).[22] In addition, it is more than simply working as a team since to be considered as collaborative ministry, five criteria need to be satisfied:

 

·       It must express the koinonia of the Church.

·       It must be an ecclesial activity.

·       There must be a commitment to values and convictions.

·       There must be a desire to work together because ‘we are called by the Lord to be a company of disciples, not isolated individuals’.

·       It must be a ministry committed to the mission of the Church (TSWG 1995:17).

Furthermore collaborative ministry, being rooted in communio, is also a witness and sign to others of ‘the inclusiveness of the Church’ (TSWG 1995:28).[23] Since, therefore, a key feature of any authentic Catholic school is its existence as a ‘community within the Church’ (Battams 2003:64), all Catholic schools should have a spirit of collaboration as a distinguishing feature.

 

The Sign We Give offers two further important insights about collaborative ministry. First, it has to be a consciously chosen commitment by all those involved since it will not function when people are compelled to engage in it against their will (TSWG 1995:28).[24] Secondly, because of its very nature, collaborative ministry requires a lengthy process of skill development[25], supported by group prayer and reflective theological practice (TSWG 1995:30), and all must believe they have a meaningful and valued contribution to make (Slater 2004:4).

 

Communio ecclesiology and collaborative ministry have significant implications for leadership within Catholic schools. Such schools need special leadership because ‘they are special places that must respond to the unique realities they face’ (Sergiovanni 2000:165). While Catholic schools will never be democracies, they must embody a leadership spirit of collegiality based on communio and subsidiarity, which is the willingness to distribute discretionary decisions down to the appropriate level, and a genuine sense of mutual trust throughout the entire school community.

 

A third factor since the second Vatican Council has been the dramatic decline in the number of consecrated religious involved in education.[26] The 2002 Vatican document, Consecrated Persons and their Schools, having addressed the issue of religious orders and their schools, concluded by stating:

 

          ‘No difficulty should remove consecrated men and women from schools and from education in general, when the conviction of being called to bring the Good News of the Kingdom of God to the poor and small is so deep and vital’. (§84 2002:44)

 

Despite this injunction, some religious orders have already abandoned their schools. Those orders, however, that are maintaining a presence in their (former) schools are having to address issues of governance and management. As a consequence, Josephites are no longer asking the traditional question, ‘How can others help us?’ but rather ‘How can we help others at St George’s?’[27]

The educational importance of this study

 

The educational importance of this study is grounded in the belief that a school’s ethos plays a pivotal role in establishing the school’s culture and, therefore, the ultimate success or failure of a school (Flynn 1993:7, Prosser 1999:3, Brick 1999:88).

 

Furthermore, the study should provide a basis for others to build on in the future; a process that will also be able to make considerable use of good practice already taking place in other schools run, or formerly run, by religious orders.[28]

 

More specifically, this study is undertaken in the belief that a role of school chaplains is to be ‘the court jesters of old’ who remained outside the management line, but able to tell the truth to those in authority without fear of losing their heads (Cameron 2000:12). In imitating Jesus, it is part of the prophetic role of school chaplains to highlight incongruence between the school’s mission statement and its ethos although the responsibility for upholding the school’s ethos should not fall solely on the chaplains (Hayes 2002:134). It is also the responsibility of schools chaplains:

‘To enable people to enter into the theological reflection required to ensure the school environment, at both personal and institutional level, reflects gospel values’ (CES 2004:12).[29]

 

In addition, chaplains need to ensure all discussion about the school’s ethos values other people, respects their dignity, and promotes dialogue and discussion rather than confrontation; since the ‘way things are done is often more important than the end result’ (CES 2004:14).

 

The research question

 

It is because the staff in a school are so crucial for maintaining the ethos of a school that this study seeks to ascertain how well the staff are maintaining the Josephite educational ethos at St George’s College, by asking the following research question: ‘To what extent is the Catholic, Christian, Josephite ethos being maintained at St George’s College today?’ Furthermore, it does so in the belief that, in the future, the number of committed (practising Roman Catholic) teachers prepared to support the school’s Catholic, Christian and Josephite ethos will be more critical for the long term maintenance of this ethos than the percentage number of Roman Catholic pupils attending the school.

 

Summary

 

The number of Josephites at St George’s has necessitated some radical thinking about how the Josephite educational ethos is to be handed on in the future. The paradigm of collaborative ministry was posited as the way forward to serve the future governance and management needs of St George’s. As well as establishing the importance of a school’s ethos, the chapter justified the educational importance of the study, highlighting the prophetic role school chaplains have in maintaining a school’s ethos.

 

The next chapter seeks to articulate the core aspects of the founding Josephite ethos using primary and secondary sources relating to Constant van Crombrugghe.

 
Chapter 2      Articulating the Josephite educational ethos

 

After identifying van Crombrugghe’s founding vision for Josephite schools, this chapter articulates and analyses the core aspects of Josephite educational ethos.[30]

 

Identifying the founding Josephite educational ethos

 

It is possible to trace the roots of the Josephite ethos back to the time van Crombrugghe spent as a boarder at the Le Collège St Acheul at Amiens in France.  Despite his initial very tentative start, van Crombrugghe spent four happy and enjoyable years at Amiens. The very homely and totally positive experience of Le Collège St Acheul, run by the Fathers of the Faith, became the formative experience of Crombrugghe’s own vision for his Josephite schools.[31]  Furthermore letters to his parents during this time show van Crombrugghe had already recognised the importance of the ‘family spirit’ at Le Collège St Acheul.[32] In addition, the happiness van Crombrugghe enjoyed at Amiens was shared by others, including Alphonse Lamartine who wrote:

 

‘I felt as though I had entered another family…The teachers, my friends, rather than my professors, will remain models of holiness, of vigilance, of fatherliness, of gentleness towards their students….in reality, this was the beautiful ideal of a Christian boarding school… charity and union among all’ (Cited by Garcia 1980:21 and T Clements 1983:29).

 

In 1808, van Crombrugghe wrote to his father making a tentative enquiry to see if he would support the idea of allowing Sister Julie Billiart to set up an orphanage in Grammont similar to the one she was running in Montdidier.[33] In the end the idea came to nothing but was indicative of Constant’s concern for the plight of the poor and disadvantaged.[34]

 

During his last year at Amiens, van Crombrugghe took over the responsibility for supervising the choristers at Amiens cathedral. It was while undertaking this role that van Crombrugghe first showed his genius at adapting other people’s ideas as he revised the rules for the choristers.[35]

 

Figure 1 Part of the revised rules for the choristers at Amiens (reduced in size).

 

                  

In September 1814, just two years after his ordination, van Crombrugghe sent by his bishop to be headmaster of Le Collège d’Alost.[36] He arrived to discover the school had just five pupils and the previous headmaster had not been a Roman Catholic. When van Crombrugghe left in 1825, Le Collège d’Alost had become one of the most sought after schools in Flanders and equal in stature with Le Collège St Acheul at Amiens.[37]

 

It was while at Alost that van Crombrugghe began to formulate his vision for education as the process for forming L‘honnête homme et parfait Chrétien.[38] 

 

‘The goal which one proposes in this house is to cultivate the mind and heart of young people….the young people admitted to the College receive a careful and complete education, adapted to all states of life. It is therefore education’s task to form the good man and to prepare him for society; consequently its task is to form in youth both the heart and the mind, to perfect reason and to adorn the imagination’.[39]

At Amiens, van Crombrugghe had already been exposed to the classical Christian humanistic education taught according to the traditional Jesuit style of the Ratio Atque Institutio Studiorum Societatis Jesu.[40] The Ratio Studiorum had become the basis of most secondary education in Europe and exerted a considerable influence on the educational vision of van Crombrugghe. The purpose of Jesuit education is stated in the 1599 edition of the Ratio Studiorum:

 

‘The teacher shall so train the youths entrusted to the Society’s care that they may acquire not only learning but also habits of conduct worthy of a Christian. He should endeavour both in the classroom and outside to train the impressionable minds of his pupils in the loving service of God and in all the virtues required for this service’.[41]

 

The stress was on formation rather than information and the aim was the development of the character as well as the skills necessary for learning through the integration of the spiritual, moral and intellectual aspects of education.[42] The attitude of the Jesuit teacher to the pupil was as ‘father to son’. Extra care and attention was to be given to those who appeared to be struggling while discipline was firm but sensitive.[43] As with the Jesuits, van Crombrugghe believed religion underpinned everything in education.

 

‘The fear of the Lord is the foundation of wisdom. There is no good education which is not founded on religion and piety towards God. Since religion is the foundation of the building on which we are working, it must