Peter Sutherland: A Jesuit Boy

Abstract

Peter Sutherland: A Jesuit Boy Noel Barber SJ I am writing on Peter Sutherland as a ‘Jesuit boy’ not to insinuate that his place in history is due to his old school and the religious order that founded it. It is rather to describe, as best I can, the environment in which he developed his admiration of and loyalty to Gonzaga College and the Jesuits, and the consequences of the ‘Jesuit influence’. Gonzaga and the Jesuits Peter Sutherland’s contact with the Jesuits began when he entered Gonzaga College at the age of eight in 1954. The school itself was in its infancy, having opened in 1951. Many reasons have been given for its founding, but the most likely seems to have been the perceived need for another Catholic school on the south side of the city. It was small and perhaps a little precious as it attempted to forge a distinctive educational philosophy. It thought of itself as different: it was not to take the Department of Education examinations and so did not follow the Department’s courses and was free to create and follow its own curriculum. The only public examination taken was the National University matriculation in the penultimate year, and in that examination a mere five lowly passes opened all university doors. The final year was devoted to a broad pre-university course with no final examination. The school’s liberal philosophy shunned a narrow utilitarian view of education geared to the passing of examinations. It saw the purpose of education in the educational activity itself, which developed skills and attitudes that had value in themselves independent of their utility. It was predominately a literary education that enshrined the skills of writing and speaking at the heart of the curriculum. Excellent though Gonzaga’s educational philosophy was, it was narrow. It gave limited scope to science and initiation into science is a central element of a liberal education; neither music nor art found a prominent place, much less the technical and practical subjects. It overstated the intellectual and cognitive and underestimated the aesthetic, the scientific, the practical and the technical. It viewed the person as a knower and hardly at all as a doer and a maker. Studies • volume 109 • number 434 141 The school was blessed in its first Prefect of Studies, Fr William White, in whom the absence of ego indicated the presence of real sanctity. I remember, when the Provincial asked me in my first year in Gonzaga as a scholastic how I got on with the Prefect of Studies, that I replied that living in the same community as Fr White was like reading the life of a saint. Not that he was without faults. In many ways he was totally disorganised, but he could put order on chaos when that was called for. His extraordinary selflessness was apparent in every aspect of his life. If ever there was a Man for Others, it was he. Indeed, I believe that the success of those early years was due far more to him than is usually acknowledged. He had a unique relationship with staff, parents and students. With the staff, his support, encouragement and enthusiasm brought the best out of talented people, enabling the creative ones to blossom and the average to attain above their ability. His relationships with pupils was characterised not merely by keen discipline, but much more by his extraordinary concern for each and every one of the boys and his no less extraordinary knowledge of them and of their family backgrounds. His personal qualities shaped the ethos of the school. Next to Fr White in importance in the early years was its first Rector, Fr Charles O’Conor (the O’Conor Don), who could trace his lineage back to the last High King of Ireland. Highly intelligent but not an intellectual, he was gracious, elegant and holy, with rather grand mannerisms which went with a genuine humility and simplicity of life. He strove with much success to imbue the school with a familial rather than an institutional ethos. This characteristic, so well established, proved to have an enduring quality. In short, these two men in their way of life...