Page 57 - Gonzaga at 60
P. 57
AND THE
GIFT OF SPEECH
around which the whole of the Iliad turns, is a statement about reality. An awareness of human
dignity loods our being when a Hector or an Achilles keeps his appointment with death.
To see the Iliad as a religious poem was to think of Fr Joe Veale. Joe’s eighteen years as a
teacher in Gonzaga were dedicated to the idea that culture is the friend of religion. Any direct,
coherent search for truth, such as the poet of the Iliad undertook, is a right step. By contrast,
some of what is ofered in a dull curriculum may show evidence of religiosity, fundamentalism,
pre-cooked ideas –and being less than real may be of quesionable use to young minds.
“Musing there an hour alone” by Troy’s broken towers (and looking ahead to the wriing
of this small aricle) I remembered, as well as my school friends, several other teachers. I had
fond memories especially of Ray Kearns, who brought successive generaions of Gonzaga pupils
to a high level in maths without ever utering a harsh word or threatening punishment. But
what I want to capture here is how Gonzaga in the early years had a propheic sense of the
crisis the church would face in Ireland and how our teachers tried to counter this by a certain
quality of educaion. “Rhetorical” training was the concept iniially favoured by Joe Veale. Over
his last few years in the school Joe became very interested in the American psychologist Carl
Rogers, inventor of the term “non-direcive counselling.” The intenion throughout, shared by
all Gonzaga teachers, was to create an atmosphere of enquiry and in this good atmosphere to
counter the European-style erosion of our religious heritage.
In what did the emerging crisis of the church consist? One element of the crisis we might
term the “problem of the lawed map.” To borrow an image from Brian Friel’s Translaions, when
a map’s contours fail to match the landscape of fact it is a metaphor for a set of pracices that may
seem no longer adequate as an illuminaion of experience. Was there a sense in which Catholic
faith in Ireland, under the pressure of rapidly changing circumstances, amounted for many of
us to a “lawed map”, a “fossilised” formula? So that when church authority failed somehow to
stand in the way of the well-known sagas of corrupion, or disappointed us in other respects,
we were unable to grasp irst principles? And so were tempted, in investment terms, to hedge
against our membership of the church?
Because we held in our hands, as we suspected, not a pearl of great price but the withering
paper of a “lawed map”, we were inclined to doubt the relevance of “church rules” to what
was most important to us – our ambiions, our trials, the highest moments of our lives. Many
Catholics almost envied non-believers their freedom. Many writers saw doctrine as drab.
For historical reasons, we Catholic Irish have tended to acknowledge authority in what the
Indians call a “subaltern” spirit. The subaltern does not go to the roots of a quesion; he operates
duifully or cunningly or dishonestly within a framework set always by others. His reacion, if
GIFT OF SPEECH
around which the whole of the Iliad turns, is a statement about reality. An awareness of human
dignity loods our being when a Hector or an Achilles keeps his appointment with death.
To see the Iliad as a religious poem was to think of Fr Joe Veale. Joe’s eighteen years as a
teacher in Gonzaga were dedicated to the idea that culture is the friend of religion. Any direct,
coherent search for truth, such as the poet of the Iliad undertook, is a right step. By contrast,
some of what is ofered in a dull curriculum may show evidence of religiosity, fundamentalism,
pre-cooked ideas –and being less than real may be of quesionable use to young minds.
“Musing there an hour alone” by Troy’s broken towers (and looking ahead to the wriing
of this small aricle) I remembered, as well as my school friends, several other teachers. I had
fond memories especially of Ray Kearns, who brought successive generaions of Gonzaga pupils
to a high level in maths without ever utering a harsh word or threatening punishment. But
what I want to capture here is how Gonzaga in the early years had a propheic sense of the
crisis the church would face in Ireland and how our teachers tried to counter this by a certain
quality of educaion. “Rhetorical” training was the concept iniially favoured by Joe Veale. Over
his last few years in the school Joe became very interested in the American psychologist Carl
Rogers, inventor of the term “non-direcive counselling.” The intenion throughout, shared by
all Gonzaga teachers, was to create an atmosphere of enquiry and in this good atmosphere to
counter the European-style erosion of our religious heritage.
In what did the emerging crisis of the church consist? One element of the crisis we might
term the “problem of the lawed map.” To borrow an image from Brian Friel’s Translaions, when
a map’s contours fail to match the landscape of fact it is a metaphor for a set of pracices that may
seem no longer adequate as an illuminaion of experience. Was there a sense in which Catholic
faith in Ireland, under the pressure of rapidly changing circumstances, amounted for many of
us to a “lawed map”, a “fossilised” formula? So that when church authority failed somehow to
stand in the way of the well-known sagas of corrupion, or disappointed us in other respects,
we were unable to grasp irst principles? And so were tempted, in investment terms, to hedge
against our membership of the church?
Because we held in our hands, as we suspected, not a pearl of great price but the withering
paper of a “lawed map”, we were inclined to doubt the relevance of “church rules” to what
was most important to us – our ambiions, our trials, the highest moments of our lives. Many
Catholics almost envied non-believers their freedom. Many writers saw doctrine as drab.
For historical reasons, we Catholic Irish have tended to acknowledge authority in what the
Indians call a “subaltern” spirit. The subaltern does not go to the roots of a quesion; he operates
duifully or cunningly or dishonestly within a framework set always by others. His reacion, if
