Gala Remarks, 2015

These are my remarks at the 2015 Gala, my last at JPII:

In a higher world it is otherwise, but here below to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often." (John Henry Newman, “Development of Doctrine”)

As we honor one of our founding members tonight, Dr. Carolyn Baker, who chaired the search committee for our first headmaster, Mr. Hans Broekman, as I prepare to leave JPII, and as we prepare to welcome our school’s new headmaster, Mr. Mike Deely, I am reminded of this tract from Newman. He asks: Is an idea, a doctrine or an institution “purer” or more “real” in its infancy or as it develops over time? His answer--like the history of a river which slowly develops its “character” as it moves downstream, making essays which sometime fail, interacting with the soil on its banks, deepening and broadening its base as its current chisels out new paths--is that institutions become more fully themselves, more “real,” as they gradually change to address new realities and those whom they serve.

I am proud of the fact that the trajectory established by our founders remains arched toward excellence here, even as we address the ever-changing needs of our students and families in this, our thirteenth year. Though perhaps different in "form", with faculty, staff and headmasters coming and going, in "essence" we remain rooted to our founding ideals: to cooperate with God’s grace in the life of our students, helping them “reach beyond” themselves to become the magnificent persons God has destined them to be, re-created in mind, body and soul. This place changes kids’ lives! 

I, too, have been greatly changed by this place. Its high aspirations, the ownership our faculty feels for it, our challenges and our successes, have elevated my sense of what is possible for a school.  I’ve been blessed to work with wonderful students, whose honesty, wit and curiosity have kept my life interesting and ever new.

“To be perfect is to have changed often.”  May it always be said of us that we have the courage to follow God’s will, wherever He may lead us!    

SAINT John Paul II

Blessed Pope John Paul II and Blessed Pope John XXIII are named "saints" by Pope Francis and the Catholic Church on April 27, 2014.

In 2010, George Weigel, JPII's  principal biographer in Witness to Hope, came to JPII as part of our "Distinguished Lecturer" series on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of JPII's death. Weigel discussed what he believed were the ten enduring achievements of Karole Wojyla's life. Here's a summary of that talk, which seems appropriate to revisit in light of this canonization just four years later. 

Two Governors

I’ve personally attended only two lectures by governors in my life. The second time was this week, when Governor Haslam of Tennessee came to JPII as part of our “Distinguished Lecturer” series. The first time was in 1984, as a senior at Notre Dame, when I attended a lecture by Governor Cuomo of New York. Coincidentally, both talks were about the same topic: How should one’s Christian faith inform one’s political leadership? They gave strikingly different answers to that question.

Cuomo’s speech centered on abortion and was hailed in the press as an example of enlightened tolerance. As a Catholic, he said he fully respected the authority of the bishops that abortion was wrong. He would uphold that view, he said, for his wife and children. But as governor of a state that was predominantly pro-abortion, he did not believe it was proper to impose his religious belief upon his constituency. In a pluralistic society, one cannot govern by one’s faith, lest others’ freedoms be infringed upon in the name of his religious belief. This “personally opposed but cannot impose” position became the foundational position of a generation of politicians since that time.

Haslam, a Presbyterian, reasoned differently, drawing on the ideas of Pope John Paul II. Freedom, as the pope understood it, must be linked to the truth, or else it ends up being a pretense for tyranny, as the stronger person asserts his “freedom” over the rights of the weaker party. The pope was an unapologetic defender of the truth, known for directly challenging the assumptions of socialism and the excesses of capitalism with great vigor.

Did that make him boorish and judgmental, as we often regard people who claim to know “truth”? No, said Haslam. In fact, he was recognized as a model of Christian civility, admired by even those who disagreed with him. That was possible because John Paul II understood his Christian faith as a “gift, not a club.” Instead of using the truth of one’s faith to club people over the head, as we are often tempted to do, we should speak the truth while manifesting the gifts of our faith, namely, temperance, forgiveness, patience and kindness, to name a few. Haslam said that Christian politicians should never waiver from the convictions of their faith but must live out that faith in a manner that is charitable and befitting of their Christian vocation.

It is ironic that between the two governors, one Catholic, the other Presbyterian, the Presbyterian makes the more “Catholic” argument. Democracy in the Catholic tradition is a means and not the end, as Cuomo assumes. The end is the “common good,” whereby human dignity is protected and thrives. All laws must serve that common good. Exalting the notion of individual freedom to the extent that we cannot “impose” a value system on someone, even when that person uses his freedom to trample on the freedom of others, is self-contradicting. Further, it strips us of the ability to make any laws premised on a moral assumption. If we believe rape is wrong, can we not “impose” laws which punish rapists? Thieves? Murderers? Or should we merely be "personally opposed" to these things?

Thomas More, in Robert Bolt’s famous play “Man for All Seasons, ” confronts the same issue that both governors addressed. Though he is opposed in conscience to the divorce and remarriage of King Henry VIII, should he assent to the divorce out of loyalty to the king and in the interest of the peace and unity of England? More is unequivocal:

“I believe, when statesmen forsake their own private conscience for the sake of their public duties, they lead their country by a short route to chaos.”

The vetting of candidates during an election cycle serves an important public purpose: Candidates should make known their moral positions, and where they are evasive, we should pin them down. In my view, once elected, we should then expect them to govern according to the convictions of their conscience and their faith. If we don't approve of what that turns out to mean, we vote them out of office in the next election cycle.

Waiting

Today is the first Sunday of Advent. The word “advent” means “coming,” and of course, it’s a reference to the coming of Christ at Christmas. So over the next four weeks, we await the coming of Christ.

We’re not very good at waiting. We want everything immediately! Think about it: The fast food industry has grown exponentially in the last twenty years because people want their food quickly, and don’t have the time or patience to cook it at home. We have fast food drive-through lines because it’s way too much work to park the car, walk several feet and stand in line to order. And even with drive-through lines, if you’re like me, you become impatient if the line is not moving quickly enough! The Internet now provides us with information instantaneously, which is fantastic on one level, but dangerous on another, as it’s too easy to send off an email when we’re angry at someone before we’ve given ourselves a chance to cool down and say things we regret later or post things on a blog that are hurtful to others. We have overnight printing, overnight mailing, instant food, microwave ovens—all things that allow us to get what we want now, without waiting. If we want something and can’t afford it, no need to wait and save for it—we have credit cards! The average American adult has an alarming nine open credit card accounts and carries an average debt on those cards of $8,000. Financial experts agree it’s the worst kind of debt, too, because the average interest rate is 15%, unlike owing money on a house, where one can get loans for as low as 4% right now.

So it’s hard for us to wait for Christmas—we hardly wait for anything else. Retailers are already in the full court press mode, pushing us to get all our Christmas shopping done. I was in a local store in October, before Halloween, and they were already playing Christmas carols over their speakers! So in Church we’re singing “O Come O Come Emmanuel” but everywhere we go we’re hearing “Joy to the World, the Lord has Come. “

I want to suggest two simple things we can all do that may help us step back from the helter-skelter world of the instant, the “now” that we all live in—two things that might help us better focus on the event we will celebrate on December 25 and thus help us have a better Advent.

The first is this: Nothing helps us tune into the true “reason for the season” better than helping other people. Unless you are WAY AHEAD OF THE CURVE, many of you have lots of Christian service hours left. There’s not a better time to do it. If you’re working at an elderly home, the Christmas season is a very lonely time for many elderly, as they miss their spouses who have died, or perhaps their children who don’t visit them enough. You can be there for them. Organizations who work with the poor need lots of volunteers to serve meals, deliver presents, and work soup lines. You can be there to help. You know, it’s pretty common that we, too, can get depressed or start feeling blue at this time of year, and our tendency is to say to ourselves, “I need some time for myself”, some “me time” but that’s exactly backwards. The best way to get us out of our funk is to focus on the needs of others, to make others happy. This is a great time of year to do it.

My second suggestion to get us ready for Christmas, to help us more fully appreciate this Advent season, is to spend about 10-15 minutes/day in prayer, asking God to lead you, bringing your worries before him, seeking him for guidance on decisions you must make about college, friends, personal situations. To pray doesn’t mean we must isolate ourselves and burn incense somewhere! Maybe it just means when we’re driving to school or home from school, we turn off the radio and cell phone and have a conversation with God and bring our worries before him. We don’t lean enough on God—but unless we lean, we cannot feel him pushing back, holding us up. And so we put all this pressure on ourselves to make good grades, go to the right schools, have the right relationships, instead of sharing those worries with God and asking him to help us.

If we go outside of ourselves to help others, if we pray and lean on God during these next few weeks, I think we’ll find this Advent season, this time of waiting, will help prepare us more fully for the most important event in human history. May we use this time well.

Pots, pans and belonging

This is Mr. Weber's address to the student body on Monday, April 20, 2009.

What a weekend--the Taylor Swift "You Belong with Me" video, ball games, pre-Prom dinners, the Prom itself, post-Prom parties, and the Societas induction ceremony on Sunday! All of us, I suspect, are a little tired this morning. I’d like to publicly thank Ms. Champlin for working so hard to make Prom a success, all the teachers who volunteered for duty on Friday night to help the video go smoothly, Dr. Caron for organizing the induction ceremony, and all of the JPII student body for making the weekend worth the effort. At 11:30 on Friday night, having worked with you for over 8 hours, the director of the video told me, “This is an awesome student body. We definitely chose the right school to make this video. They’re first class, all the way.” I told him I agreed with him—you’re amazing!

One final note about the weekend: They told me it would take in the neighborhood of 3 weeks or so to finish the editing and release the video. If that occurs before we’re out of school, I asked them if we could watch the video here at JPII in a school assembly the day it’s released, and they agreed. Let’s hope that happens. It will be fun to watch it together.

So, we’re back to the ordinary again, but that’s a good thing. Many people go through their lives a thrill at a time, always looking forward to the “next big thing”, while not paying enough attention to their daily lives, which, in the case of a high school means attending class, studying, and appreciating our friends.

St. Teresa of Avila once said: “God dwells among the pots and pans”. She means that people too often look for God in lofty places—in grand cathedrals, perhaps, or some deeply moving religious service—and fail to notice that God speaks to us more often within the routine of our lives—through our friends, our teachers, our family and through the ordinary.

We have about a month of school left. As we complete our year together, let us remember the words of St. Teresa, so that we can appreciate all the ways in which God daily speaks to us and blesses us. We are attracted to so many things, but he wants us, ultimately to be close to him. The message of this Easter season is that despite our deepest pessimism about the human condition, ultimately, God’s love reigns. We may veer away, we may sin, we may forget who we are, but ultimately, God tells us something we know deep down in our hearts. He tells us: “You belong with me.”

Windows, not Mirrors

This is Mr. Weber's address to Our Lady of Lake CCD students on Wednesday, November 20, 2008.

I have something of a brainteaser for you.

There’s a true story of a corporation in Dallas that spent several 100 million dollars building a new corporate headquarters—a 50 story building featuring all the amenities. Besides giving their employees more room, the leaders of the corporation hoped that moving into this new building would improve corporate morale.

However, when the big day came for the employees to move in, they realized they had made a terrible mistake. Apparently, the elevator system they installed was too slow, such that all their employees began to complain. It got to the point after several weeks that the leadership began to think the new building was actually hurting morale, and were on the verge of ripping out the brand new elevator system to put in a faster one, which would have cost the company over 10 million dollars.

But before they made that decision, they decided to hire an industrial psychologist to study the problem. The psychologist came to the new building, rode up and down the elevators with employees several times, walked into corporate headquarters and made a suggestion that would only cost the company about $1,000. The company took his advice and from the moment they did, complaining almost completely stopped. The original elevator system is still in use today.

Q. What did the expert suggest?

A. Install mirrors inside the elevators. Once the mirrors were installed, the employees spent so much time primping and inspecting themselves, they forgot all about the slow elevators.

That’s a true story, but there is a kind of parable-like quality to it in terms of what it says about us. It is reminiscent, I believe, of the story of Narcissus from Greek and Roman mythology. You remember the story. Narcissus (Nar-SIS-us) became thirsty and went to drink from a stream. When he saw his reflection in the water, he fell in love with it, not knowing that it was himself. As he bent down to kiss it, it seemed to "run away" and he was heart broken. He grew thirstier but he wouldn't touch the water for fear of damaging his reflection, so he eventually died of thirst and self love, staring at his own reflection.

There is within us, I think, a certain amount “narcissism” –vanity and self-centeredness--that makes us unaware of our surroundings, and certainly unaware of the needs and struggle of others. The “mirror” becomes a kind of symbol of that, and perhaps even a symbol of our society today. We don’t need more mirrors. Instead, we need windows that help us look outside ourselves and see the needs of others.

My prayer is that the Christian Service internship is an opportunity for you to create windows in your life. May you see through those windows clearly and have the compassion and courage to act on what you see.

Go Make a Difference

This is Mr. Weber's address to the JPII student body on November 11, 2008.

We sing a song at our school masses occasionally, called “Go Make a Difference”. The lyrics are very simple: “Go make a difference, you can make a difference. Go make a difference in this world”.

Well, if you lean to the slightly cynical, as I do from time to time, you’re thinking: In the face of massive poverty, war, starvation in some parts of the world, and the all pervasive influence of sin, can we REALLY make a difference, or is this just polly-annish Christian do-goodism?

A thought experiment:

According to the World Data Base, as on June of this year, the world’s population was 6,673,286,767 and growing at an annual rate of 1.17%.

Suppose, by some catastrophic world event that shattered the faith of everyone in the world except for you, that you ended up the world’s only Christian. Since you believe it’s very important--most important, in fact-- you try and convert people back to the Christian faith.

Suppose a modest estimate is that you bring back only 2 people into the faith each year, and that these new Christians bring back 2 new Christians each year. So after year there are 3 of you, after year two there are 9, after year 3 there are 27, etc.

How many years would it take before the entire world became Christian, at that rate?

Just 21 years—the whole world could be Christian in just one generation.

But that’s starting from just one. Though estimates vary, there are approximately 2 billion Christians in the world today, or just less than 1/3 of the world. If we took our faith seriously, what kind of difference could Christians make in this world?

You may have seen those very effective Liberty Mutual commercials on TV, in which a good deed, done in kindness, causes others to do good deeds through-out the day. We forget, I think, the power we each have to make a difference in our families, in our school, and in this community—simply by going out of our way to be kind to one another.

Go, make a difference.