Christopher Jamison OSB

The first International Conference on Benedictine Education was held at Worth Abbey in October 1999, where Dom Christopher Jamison in Headmaster.

Disagreement in the 20th Century

Should benedictine monks, nuns and sisters run schools? The question itself was not so much a challenge as an embarrassment to many monastics for much of the 20th Century. The answers were diverse, usually lacking any common focus within each

Congregation and even within each monastery. An example from England illustrates what was a global phenomenon. The monastic reform movement led by Dom David Knowles of Downside Abbey, England in the 1930s openly stated that monks should not run schools, while within his own house other monks willingly invested their time and energy in establishing Downside as what was ar guably England's leading Catholic school. With no Jesuit ratio studiorum and with no Salesian mission to educate the poor, Benedictines in the 20th century found themselves the owners of schools whose raison d'être had become increasingly unclear.

Local Initiatives

The 1960s saw dramatic changes in all schools throughout the world, the events of Paris in 1968 symbolising the need to reassess

all education. At the same time, the Church itself experienced the upheavals of the Second Vatican Council. So in the aftermath of this secular and ecclesiastical turmoil, monastic schools struggled to adapt and survive throughout the 1970s. Yet the local autonomy of benedictine schools meant that there was at first little dialogue about the future within Congregations and even less between Congregations. Gradually, however, the dialogue expanded and a landmark Colloquium on benedictine schools was held at Maredsous Abbey, Belgium in 1981. Local groups also began to meet and by the 1990s there were regional meetings of benedictine and cistercian schools in the British Isles, in North America and in German speaking Europe, the latter group organising a Europe-wide meeting at Pannonhalma Abbey, Hungary in 1996. Schools in less developed countries proved quicker to adapt their sense of mission. They are often in more centralised Congregations and this helped them work together in their search to re-express the purpose of their schools. The Benedictine Missionary Sisters in the Philippines, for example, have 12 schools and in 1975 they made a definite thrust for social justice, which they rooted in their reading of the Rule.

The First International Conference on Benedictine Education

These disconnected regional initiatives finally came together at the First International Conference on Benedictine Education (ICBE) held at Worth Abbey, England, in October 1999. From 15 countries in every continent came over 100 benedictine monks, nuns, sisters and lay people. For four days they explored the current condition and sought to discern the future of the Church's oldest tradition of education. Imagine the creative shock when the Swiss headmasters (all monks) from communities that are 1,000 years old met the married Chilean principal of a benedictine school movement that is 25 years old. It was evident that working in monastic schools had left many dedicated people feeling isolated and the Conference was like a dam burst, as people poured out their hopes and their fears. Local autonomy is good but in a time of rapid change we need all the friends we can find. The Worth Conference was an experience of pentecostal dimensions, leading the debate about monastic schools onto a global platform.

The Challenge for the 21st Century: Listen

The Conference highlighted the fundamental task for benedictine schools today: the task of helping people to listen. 'Listen carefully, my child, to the words of the master': these opening words of Benedict's Rule ran like a leitmotif through the whole conference. Dr Eamon Duffy, Reader in Church History at Cambridge University, outlined the 'quick fix' tendencies now so common even in the church: 'they are the opposite of the ruminative, meditative work of the monastic liturgy, and the practice of lectio divina, the slow, reflective brooding over the tradition, which must surely underlie the education offered in monastic schools. The Church has never needed so urgently this sort of deep grounding in its inherited wisdom, seen not as a straightjacket but as a resource-pack.'

The Filipinos took the conference by storm with a presentation in forming us that they run 14 benedictine schools with some 40,000 students. Dr Cecile Gutierrez, Principal of St Scholastica's College, Manila, described how their schools have a special commitment to educating girls for a new role in Filipino society, seeing in the Rule of Benedict a new vision of liberated women. The third world's benedictine schools are on fire with commitment.

So, too, those from the second world, the former communist countries. In Hungary, following the suppression of their monasteries, many Cistercians went underground and ran an illegal noviciate; Fr Elod Akos described how not even his mother knew he was a novice. The restoration of Zirc Abbey and of the cistercian school at Pecs reminded us of the bravery demanded of some people in order to live and teach the benedictine way.

Fr Aidan Bellinger of Downside traced the outlines of benedictine schools over the centuries and asked: how is the Rule compatible with the schools which monks run today? For example, can monks run such schools in a Church with an option for the poor? Is the information revolution compatible with lectio divina?

The story of St Benedict's School, Newark, in one of America's poorest ghettos offered another response: listen to the poor. Fr Edwin Leaby, the Headmaster, described how his school literally died under the impact of race riots in the 1960s and yet managed to reopen in a new format: 'I don't know how, but somehow. 'Among the poor of Chile, José Manuel Eguiguren, a married layman, found himself asking a benedictine monk to offer him spiritual guidance. This monk simply invited him to read scripture slowly, listening to Christ. In this way, Jose Manuel discovered lectio divina, a practice that now lies at the heart of daily life in the three benedictine schools that he founded in Santiago.

New Initiatives

This Conference was simply a beginning and from it have flowed several important initiatives. Firstly, we now have a data base which seeks to keep accurate details of all the benedictine and cistercian schools in the world. When we began working on the International Conference we were shocked to discover that nobody had a list of such schools. As a devolved Order, we lack centrally held information and maintaining an accurate database is the first step in working together to help each other. This is now available on line at www. osb.org/icbe. Do please visit and ensure that the details of any school known to you are correct. The website itself is the second initiative, with the papers of the Worth conference available in several languages. Two other important initiatives flowing from the conference have been the International Benedictine Youth Congress held at Munsterschwarzach in July 2001, with students and staff from all over the world; once again, details are on the ICBE website. Finally, a long term project emerged led by the Manquehue movement from Chile.

Movimiento Apostolico Manquehue

The Manquehue Apostolic Movement began in Santiago de Chile in the 1980's. It is a movement of lay people, married and single, men and women, who all commit themselves to the way of the Rule of Benedict in so far as their situation allows. The Movement founded San Benito College in 1982 and now has two other schools with nearly 1,000 students in each. At the heart of the movement lie certain key values derived from the Rule and upon which they base their schools. Welcome and lectio divina are two of these principles to which they give life in their schools through particular programmes. For example, all students are taught lectio at age 12 and are invited to join Lectio groups after that; such groups also exist for parents. This movement's influence has affected other Benedictine schools around the world, in particular Colegio Santo Americo (São Paulo, Brazil), which invited members of the Movement to live with them and which has adopted similar programmes.

The Cunaco Group

At the end of the ICBE, the Manquehue Movement invited some 15 people from Chile, Brazil, the UK & the USA to continue the dialogue begun at Worth with an annual meeting, in order to prepare for the next ICBE in 2002. So the Cunaco Group was born. At its first meeting in May 2000, Abbot Thomas (St Louis, USA) identified the key challenge facing our schools when he asked: 'do we give the world what it wants or what it needs?'. This unease permeates the work of the Cunaco Group, yet the Group has taken the motto 'reasons for living and hoping'. We agreed that the purpose of the benedictine school is 'evangelisation in accordance with the tradition of St Benedict' but this needs concrete expression. The group is currently working on a formation programme for teachers in benedictine schools and as background to this recently received a highly original paper on the'Academic Life in Benedictine Schools'. This paper emphasises that the classroom is a primary place for living out the Rule, with students made welcome, enabled to listen and made aware of their vocation, all in a framework of learning. In other words, the pedagogy of our teachers is central to the mission of the school and we need to train our teachers in such pedagogy.

The Future

The work of the ICBE has revealed that there are about 150 benedictine and cistercian schools worldwide with a total of some 100,000 students. The question of these schools is no longer a monastic embarrassment, it is now a challenge. The Cunaco Group has reframed the question, so that we no longer ask: should monks and nuns run schools? The question we now face is: within the context of the benedictine tradition of living and learning, how can a school be an evangelical means of passing on reasons for living and hoping? Governments world-wide know that schools are vital places for promoting their agenda and their agenda is increasingly economic; in less developed and developed countries alike, schools are becoming tools of economic policy, whose goal is to produce economically ready operatives. Benedictine schools are vital places of resistance to this agenda. The holistic view of the Rule has never been so necessary as in education today and it is the practical expression of that holistic tradition that many around the world are now seeking. Pope Paul VI in Populorum Progressio sums up our task: 'Even more necessary still is the deep thought and reflection of people in search of a new humanism, one which will enable our contemporaries to enjoy the higher values of love and friendship, of prayer and contemplation, and thus find themselves.'

ICBE2

The second Conference (ICBE2) will be held in São Paulo, Brazil where Abbot Ernesto and the community of São Geraldo will welcome us to the Colegio Santo Americo from the morning of 30th October to the afternoon of 2nd November. The Abbot Primate will open the Conference and the Cunaco Group will present its formation programme. Preliminary information has been sent out to the Headteachers listed on the database. If you would like an invitation to attend, please contact:

Continental Europe : Heinz Plugge, Meschede h.plugge@web.de

North America : Gregory Mohrmann OSB, St Louis fr-gregory@priory.org

South America : Geraldo Gonzalez y Lima OSB, São Paulo ggosb@csasp.g12.br

UK, Ireland : Christopher Jamison OSB, Worth cjamison@worth.org.uk

Asia, Africa, Australia : Christopher Jamison OSB, Worth cjamison@worth.org.uk

Father ChristopherJamison OSB has been Headmaster of Worth since 1994. He is a member of the Academic Policy Committee of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference in the UK. He is the Co-ordinator of the International Conference on Benedictine Education.