From a series of newsletters: Head teacher John Boyce explores his vision of Catholic education.
Like the good Samaritan, we must decide who is our neighbour. We must decide what our responsibility is to others. Catholic schools often look at our community, and at the world we live in, to see how our neighbours are faring.
The Church places a huge emphasis on community – not just in schools, but in parishes, religious orders, dioceses, the whole Church and the whole of humanity. St Paul described us as all being part of the body of Christ: we all share in the mission of Jesus to be priest, prophet, and leader.
Even death is not an obstacle: we see death as being a change – but not the end of life – and all of us as being part of the community of saints.
All that means we have to build and sustain a life-giving, just, and positive community.
In our Catholic schools we consciously work to help our students become aware of the injustices in the world – and of the responsibility each one of us has to make the world a better place, the responsibility to make a difference. Very few of us can do that in a big way – but each one of us has a responsibility to change the little bits of the world we live in. So we sponsor orphans, collect for the food bank, support the St Vincent de Paul Society, and do what we can to help the victims of war, natural disaster and injustice.
We try to make our schools life-giving-and as educators we try to help our students develop a sense of responsibility for building a better community, and to be people who will fight injustice wherever they see it.
As one graduate of Catholic schooling, Robert Kennedy, put it – “Many people see things as they are, and ask why. I see things as they never were, and ask why not.”