Christian Brothers Research Articles

A School on a Mission. 140 Years of CBC On Wakefield St by Lingard Goulding (review)

will take great thinkers, generous pragmatists, principled planners, with formidable powers of sensitivity capable of developing a credible model of real inclusion and true equality. There are existing wells of thinking to draw from and one of them was dug by Arthur Griffith. Is he truly ‘the father of us all’? That is a debate well worth having, but only after reading the book! Dr Mary McAleese was President of Ireland, 1997–2011. A School on a Mission. 140 Years of CBC On Wakefield St, Lingard Goulding (Adelaide: Christian Brothers College, 2018), xiv+338 pages. In the foreword to A School on a Mission, Giles Fitzherbert comments that ‘thereismoretothisbookthanisatfirsthandapparent.Readers,payattention’. What at first appears as a volume to celebrate the life and achievements of CBC on Wakefield Street – a Catholic school in the Christian Brother tradition – becomes in part a story of Catholic Ireland in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and an account of the extraordinary missionary activity of a band of brothers in faraway Australia. The story, told with great affection and good humour by Lingard Goulding, is all the more interesting in that it is by an ‘outsider’(‘I am not a practitioner of the Roman Catholic faith’), but who, as a distinguished educator himself, has a great understanding of school life and of the challenges that founding and sustaining a school over a period of 140 years presents. His story, therefore, is of Ireland and its missionary zeal in education, of resourceful and determined religious men who, against all the odds, gave an education to the sons ‘of labourers, squatters or small time farmers’in the young state of South Australia, and about the remarkable development of a school from humble beginnings to being an inclusive and innovative centre of learning in the heart of Adelaide. Lingard begins his account by looking at the life of Edmund Rice, the founder of the Christian Brothers, whose contribution to Irish education is unparalleled, if (currently) somewhat under-appreciated. He then looks at the life and work of Br Ambrose Treacy, by any assessment a remarkable person. A man of deep faith, true entrepreneurial spirit and steely determination, he led the first wave of Brothers to Australia and established ten schools in as many years, the last of which was CBC on Wakefield. Studies • volume 109 • number 434 240 Summer 2020: Book Reviews This feat is not to be casually passed over. Enjoying neither the financial support of the bishop for even a residence – ‘I have not a rap for you. Throw yourselves on the people and they will provide for you’ – and determined to cater for the poor (as Rice had done in Ireland) without any support from the State, the brothers literally had to beg not only for their subsistence but for the means to teach the children in their care. All the buildings, facilities, resources that we take so readily for granted had to be fund-raised for from a community of Catholics who were relatively poor and on the lower rungs of Australian society. The achievement is staggering and Lingard recites the various initiatives and developments taken by the different headmasters over the decades of the school’s life. The picture is one of a school moving into a place of educational prominence, whilst remaining faithful to its founding mission and of an emerging Catholic population that stands proudly with the other Christian traditions. The added appeal of the book lies in its humour and in the personality of its author, who cannot help but reveal himself. Two examples will illustrate. There is an amusing account of a faux pas by Br Hughes, who refused to allow the boys sing the national anthem on the occasion of a visit by the Governor of the Colony. Having listened to some of Moore’s melodies and religious hymns ‘sweetly sung by the school choir’, the Governor asked for a rendition of ‘God Save the Queen’. Br Hughes sullenly replied, ‘The boys are not taught to sing that anthem’. The issue reflected the latent anti-English feeling of the (predominantly Irish) community of Brothers. A related issue reared its head when it came to the order of toasts...

Declan J Meagher

Declan J Meagher was a most influential figure in Irish obstetrics and gynaecology during the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, making huge contributions to maternal and infant welfare. He was born...

Bethlehem University: a Catholic educational innovation in the Holy Land

Bethlehem University in Palestine is something of a miracle. It was the first university to be registered in Palestine and the first, and still the only, Catholic/Christian University in the Holy Land. Its mission is to serve the Palestinian people through education, with clear and explicit values that derive from the Catholic Church. It has survived for almost fifty years despite the range and nature of the challenges during those turbulent times!. It was established, and continues, as a joint venture between the Holy See and the De La Salle Christian Brothers and is, therefore, embedded in the work of the Church in the Holy Land and must be responsive to the mission of the Church there. It is, indeed, a Catholic institution in the Holy Land.

Visualizing the Transfers of Abusers in the 2009 Ryan Report

Visualizing the Transfers of Abusers in the 2009 Ryan Report Emilie Pine (bio), Susan Leavy (bio), and Mark T. Keane (bio) The 2009 publication of the Report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse (the Ryan report) marked the conclusion of a nine-year, state-funded, licensed investigation into residential care for Irish children at institutions managed by the Catholic church.1 It comprises five volumes, totaling more than 2,600 pages, including testimony from 1,712 witnesses. As Mary Raftery put it, the Ryan report "painstakingly charted the vast scale of abuse of tens of thousands of children within institutions." It established once and for all the systemic nature of abuse in Irish institutions, "giv[ing] us a compelling vision of the hell to which so many children were consigned."2 The presentation of these conditions includes analysis of the Catholic congregations' repeated response to allegations of abuse. For example, the report states in regard to the Christian Brothers, "The records of the congregation show that on a number of occasions individuals who were accused of sexual abuse were transferred to other [End Page 247] residential or day schools."3 Transferring an abuser became one way to protect the reputation of the institution and the order by minimizing conflict and the potential for public awareness and scandal: In some cases brothers who had been sexually abusing children were, in their later careers, appointed to senior positions within the province. When asked at the phase I hearing for Letterfrack how this had happened, Br. Gibson explained that because the leadership in the congregation changed every twelve years, there was no memory within the organisation of offences committed before that. He acknowledged that there was a personal file for each brother and concluded that these files were not consulted in making appointments.4 Gibson blamed an amnesiac system for the promotion of abusers; the cause, however, was not amnesia. As Marie Keenan argues, "an unusually consistent pattern has emerged in the handling of abuse complaints by Catholic church leaders."5 This pattern includes denial, cover-up, and in the case of staff employed at residential institutions, the transfer of abusers from one institution to another in the wake of allegations of abuse. The congregational response to abuse—to transfer, to pretend to forget, to avoid public knowledge—was not limited to a few occasions or solely to the Christian Brothers. The report notes the repeated transfer of one priest, Father Santino of the Rosminian Order: With the knowledge that the order possessed about his past history and attitudes, they must have been aware of the likelihood that he would sexually abuse boys in this institution. It follows that the order was prepared to put boys at risk in order to find a place for somebody who might cause public scandal if he were to be located elsewhere.6 Again, the report contends that "transferring abusers to other institutions where they would be in contact with children put those children [End Page 248] at risk."7 It also notes the transfer of problematic nuns in and out of the Sisters of Mercy institution at Cappoquin. The Ryan report's authors conclude, "When confronted with evidence of sexual abuse, the response of the religious authorities was to transfer the offender to another location where in many instances he was free to abuse again…. The safety of children in general was not a consideration."8 Despite this evidence, no consistent analysis of transfers as a system-wide pattern of response to abuse is offered, for the Ryan report is structured as an in-depth narrative focusing on one institution at a time. This organization generates a thorough story about each institution and certain individuals singled out for analysis; however, it also means that if readers seek to understand systemic congregational responses to allegations of abuse in more than one institution at a time, they must be familiar with the entirety of the document. Missing in the report is a section that specifically analyses the series of events that lead to and follow the transfer of staff between institutions. Such an analysis of organizational responses to abuse would not only indicate how congregations...

Peter Oliver Behan

Peter Oliver Behan was from a humble background in Athy, County Kildare, Ireland. He was educated by the Christian Brothers and qualified from Leeds medical school in 1964. After house...

Remembrance of a Christian Brothers’ Education

This study describes the experiences of a group of individuals who attended a southern California Catholic boys’ high school, and the men who taught them. The goal of this study was to relate a narrative that explained how an education, steeped in the Christian Brothers’ mission provided a quality education for the poor, and shaped the lives, perspectives, and values of the graduates. The narrative, reported through a social perspective inspired by Catholic Social Teaching (CST), the philosophical writings of Jacques Maritain and Alisdair MacIntyre, showed how the graduates received a quality education from the Brothers, and absorbed a strong sense of Catholic virtue, including a commitment toward social justice, an understanding of role of building and sustaining community, and an appreciation for giving back to society. Cathedral High, a small Catholic high school in Los Angeles, is an embodiment of MacIntyre’s belief that small communities, dedicated to upholding moral virtue and civility offer the possibility of reforming a society currently mired in individualistic and materialistic pursuits. A further implication is that Catholic schools, with their well-documented record for providing effective education for the poor, should remain an educational option for inner-city families.

PASTOR EYO NKUNE OKPO ENE (1895 – 1973): THE FORGOTTEN HERO OF THE APOSTOLIC CHURCH, NIGERIA

This brief article is a legacy of the authors twenty-five year teaching experience of Nigerian Church History in three Nigerian Universities between May 25, 1987 and May 31, 2012 and his ministerial duties and lecture on Church history in the Lutheran Seminary in Nigeria and the various interaction with other Christian brethren, especially in relationship with Christian students of The Apostolic Church, Nigeria. In this article, the researchers have tried to describe the early history of the Apostolic Church in Cross River State of Nigeria, West Africa, through a brief biographical stetch of Pastor Eyo Nkune Okpo Ene of Ambo Family, Mbaraokom, Creek Town (Obio Oko), who lived between 22nd November, 1895 and 1st February, 1973 (78years). This work is a paragon or model of other similar ones: like those of Garrick Idakatima Sokari Braide, Samuel Ajayi Crowther, Essien Ukpabio, Jonathan Udo Ekong and others.

Sexual Crime, Religion and Masculinity in Fin-de-siècle France: The Flamidien Affair by Timothy Verhoeven

Reviewed by: Sexual Crime, Religion and Masculinity in Fin-de-siècle France: The Flamidien Affair by Timothy Verhoeven Aaron Freundschuh Timothy Verhoeven, Sexual Crime, Religion and Masculinity in Fin-de-siècle France: The Flamidien Affair. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. In February 1899, Gaston Foveaux, age 12, was abducted, sexually assaulted, and murdered at Lille’s Notre Dame de Treille school, where he regularly participated in a youth club. After more than two days, his body was found on the school grounds, a space supervised by the Lasallian Frères des Écoles Chrétiennes. Gaston’s belongings, including a coat and cap, turned up elsewhere in the school. When questioned by investigators, the concierge (who had been situated near the walled entrance) said that he had been been paying especially close attention to all comings and goings during the likely timeframe of Gaston’s disappearance, and that the boy had not left the school. The culprit, in a ploy to throw investigators off the scent, left a faux apology next to Gaston Foveaux’s body, signed “an ardent socialist” (2). Soon enough, one of the members of the teaching congregation of Christian brothers at the school, Frère Flamidien, age 35, was named the prime suspect. Placed under arrest, Flamidien was questioned for several weeks. Swift and awful was his public humiliation, yet he stood his ground. The so-called Flamidien affair ended abruptly when the case against him was thrown out on procedural grounds. Frère Flamidien was released, and the Foveaux case went cold. In this slim volume, Timothy Verhoeven, Senior Lecturer at Monash University, takes the view that the Flamidien affair was a “key moment in driving even deeper the wedge between republicans and Catholics” in finde-siècle France (6). Over the course of seven brisk chapters, Verhoeven sustains a discussion of the major contextual elements of the scandal. These include the ideological battle over public education, and the competing norms of masculinity that set the celibacy of the Christian brothers against the republican ideal based on marriage and procreation. When he was forced to stand before the corpse of Gaston Foveaux in a common mise-en-scène known as la confrontation, Flamidien was overcome with tearful emotion, a reaction that set him apart from his brethren within the school’s teaching congregation. To investigators, who typically relied on [End Page 201] pseudo-scientific techniques to decipher guilt on the faces of the accused, Flamidien had given himself away. Another flimsy investigative method, graphology, was used to pressure Flamidien into confessing. According to Verhoeven, Flamidien’s steadfastness inspired his defenders to refashion the retiring brother as the “Catholic vision of masculinity” and a “Christian model of heroism” (69). It is on these themes, especially as they are explored in connection with the disputed practice of celibacy, that this microhistory stakes its strongest claim for the historical relevance of the Flamidien affair. The local Catholic press organ, La Croix du Nord, rejected republicanism’s insistence on narrowly prescribed norms of gender, and since the teaching congregants took vows of celibacy, this point of contention could not be kept separate from the “school wars” that divided republicans and Catholics in the early decades of the Third Republic. Having watched the Church stand in reactionary opposition to the very idea of democracy in the century after the Great Revolution, republicans in Lille were irate to find the city’s Catholics uncooperative in this murder investigation. Crowds assembled in the public square after Flamidien was apprehended. A Lille street poster denounced Flamidien as a “product of his milieu” and cautioned those who mistook clerics for the moral guides they pretended to be (81). At certain points in this study, the long-simmering inter-generational conflicts between Catholics and republicans completely eclipse the specific evidence presented by the Foveaux crime scene, and along with it the individuals who participated in the investigation. The result is an uncritical emphasis on the themes of anticlericalism and Catholic victimhood. The author supposes, for example, that the “anticlerical mind” (35), haunted by visions of clerical pedophilia, drove investigators to suspect the Christian brothers at Foveaux’s school. But the material clues detected at...

Maurice KH Yap: academic, administrator, innovator in myopia research and public health

Maurice KH Yap1 was born in Sabah, East Malaysia and went to school in Jessleton (now Kota Kinabalu). After attending an English‐medium Christian Brothers’ secondary school, he entered the Universi...

Wax Lips

Wax Lips Karyna McGlynn (bio) Not the Live Oak, or stump of it.Not the old Chevy in the back lot— chassis thrumming with yellow jackets.Not the grand façade's slice-of-cake smile, rugs rolled up & propped.Not the criminal fireplace, black-jawed, singe feathering the flocked wallpaper.Not the labial pink davenport unsprung— your hand deep in its ticking:Nothing doing. Nothing plump. Not the stair landing where your head stuck between ballusterswhere you kneeled for—was it years?— on the cocoa carpetas Maw-maw buttered your neck, your ears. Not where your aunt saw a ghost—the shade of Prim Lady rocking in her chair, but Up There:the final flight of stairs, where your uncle lived & failed to live.The steep flight, no light, the pitched ceiling, the single bed stillbornon its iron frame—its mattress stripped & striped like nightshirts. No, you must move this aside & grow low & pry the plywoodout like a rotted tooth. You must put your hand where you can't:down the maw of the doll-sized crawl space. You must siltyour hand & feel for the shine:fleck your hand in the pink fiberglass field to know [End Page 108] the plump thing, the plaything— & fetch it out. You must put the piece in your mouth— the soft cherry chew, the cartoonyou—you must find a mirror, undrape it, make the drop cloth plume, makethe mum pout speak: Come hither, you. Grotesque You. EventuallyYou—You must chew on it. [End Page 109] Karyna McGlynn Karyna McGlynn is the author of Hothouse (Sarabande, 2017), The 9-Day Queen Gets Lost on Her Way to the Execution (Willow Springs, 2016), and I Have to Go Back to 1994 and Kill a Girl (Sarabande, 2009). Her poems have recently appeared in Kenyon Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Ninth Letter, Georgia Review, Witness, and 32 Poems. She earned her PhD in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Houston and was recently the Diane Middlebrook Fellow in Poetry at the University of Wisconsin. She is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Christian Brothers University in Memphis. Copyright © 2018 Middlebury College Publications

Honesty: The Stinging Fly on the Rump of Free State Respectability

Abstract. This essay will examine expose of realities regarding poverty, immorality and sexual crime in Irish Free State by radical journal Honesty (1925-1931). Honesty was edited by socialist republican James W. Upton, a man with a longstanding commitment to rights of women and poor. Upton was by instinct anti-establishment in an era when country's religio-political leadership was insecure and keen to manage Free State's news agenda. Something they attempted in service of projecting what was viewed as an ideologically acceptable image of life in Free Sate, to both domestic and foreign audiences. Upton viewed this policy as a manifestation of social and political cant favoured by Free State's leadership, which was aided and abetted by, and gave succour to, hypocrisy of wider bourgeois Free State society. A coalition of forces, Upton reasoned, that damaged interests of most vulnerable sections of Irish society, in particular, nation's women and children living on or below breadline. However, notwithstanding it radicalism and reputation in Free State, Honesty has been largely lost to history of Irish journalism. Key Words. Irish Free State, Prostitution, Journalism, Sexual Crime, Women, Illegitimacy, Child Abuse, Poverty. Resumen. En este trabajo se examina como la revista Honesty (1925-1931) desvelo las verdades incomodas sobre pobreza, inmoralidad y delitos sexuales en los primeros anos del Estado Libre de Irlanda. El editor de la revista, James W. Upton, era un republicano de ideologia socialista en cuya trayectoria destacaba un firme compromiso con los derechos de las mujeres y de los menos favorecidos. Upton era por instinto antisistema, en una epoca en la que el liderazgo del pais adolecia de serias deficiencias. La clase dirigente mostraba un desmedido interes por controlar las noticias relacionadas con Irlanda y por proyectar, tanto a nivel nacional como internacional, imagenes amables y positivas sobre el nuevo estado. Para Upton, esta actitud no era sino una muestra mas de la hipocresia reinante entre las elites del Estado Libre de Irlanda, las cuales encontraban un necesario apoyo entre un amplio sector de la burguesia. Para Upton, esta coalition de fuerzas actuaba en detrimento de los sectores mas debiles de la sociedad, especialmente aquellos que vivian por debajo del umbral de la pobreza. A pesar de su actitud critica con el poder y de la importante repercusion que tuvo en su epoca, Honesty apenas es tenida en cuenta en la historia del periodismo en Irlanda. Palabras clave. Estado Libre de Irlanda, prostitution, periodismo, delitos sexuales, mujeres, hijos ilegitimos, abusos a menores, pobreza. On 28th of February 1925 journal Honesty. A Weekly Journal of Independent Criticism commenced publishing and was to continue publication until 28th of February 1931. Edited by socialist-republican, James W. Upton, journal claimed lineage from a pre-Easter Rising publication of same name, which had published from October of 1915 to 25 April 1916. Upton's republican credentials were immaculate. A friend and commrade of many leading republicans of day, he was in possession of what Eithne MacDermott described as the ultimate legitimising symbol in republican gallery of iconography (1998: 1), having taken part in Easter Rising of 1916. This afforded Upton with a significant store of social and political capital which he was to deploy in service of marginalised, up until point that Honesty was forced to close. Honesty's closure resulted from undermining of its readership by his old commrade, Eamon de Valera's Fianna Fail party machine, when Upton and Honesty were percieved as threatening de Valera's political ambition (Keating 2015: 92). Upton was born in Waterford in 1872 and came under influence of Fenian James O'Connor whilst a student at Mount Sion Christian Brothers school, where he also developed a lifelong passion for Gaelic Games. …

Judging W.T. Cosgrave by Michael Laffan (review)

Book Reviews Judging W.T. Cosgrave, Michael Laffan (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 2014), 340 pages. Introducing this well-researched, sympathetic but fair-minded biography of W T Cosgrave, Michael Laffan describes the Irish Free State’s founding father as ‘one of the forgotten figures of Irish history’. A search on the Royal Irish Academy’s Irish History Online supports this claim, despite Cosgrave’s tenure as one of the longest-serving heads of government in inter-war Europe.1 The bibliographical website lists only eighteen titles on Cosgrave as a historical subject; these include three biographical studies but – strikingly – no full-length academic biography. In contrast, it lists 238 works on Éamon de Valera and, despite his short career, 139 publications on Michael Collins. Cosgrave has also left a light imprint on the public consciousness. Laffan sees, as symbolic of his neglect, the recent discovery of a lost Seán Keating portrait of the politician among a roll of forgotten paintings. While Laffan regrets the overshadowing of a figure central to the history of the independent Irish State, his study illuminates many of the reasons for Cosgrave’s fate, including his unassuming persona, lack of charisma, intellectual and political limitations, and now-unfashionable social and ideological outlook. Indeed, some of these limitations can be discerned from Keating’s undistinguished portrait, particularly when juxtaposed with his contemporaneous heroic portrayal of firemen, hurlers and Aran islanders. Keating’s biographer, Éimear O’Connor, suggests that the artist’s depiction of Cosgrave epitomised ‘his dissatisfaction with those that he felt didn’t even have the pretence of being interested in culture’, as well as his wider disappointment at the failure of the Irish revolution to produce a more progressive society.2 Cosgrave’s modesty, even temperament and solid leadership style also counted against him, provoking little of the divisiveness or passions which de Valera’s name still conjures. An accidental leader, he had none of the will to power or self-aggrandising preoccupation with his place in posterity that renders de Valera such a tricky but compelling biographical subject. Unlike his more successful nemesis (who was aged ninety and blind when he finally departed Áras an Uachtaráin as the world’s oldest head of the state), Cosgrave appearedsanguinewhendepartingpubliclifein1944.Heturneddownappeals to run for the presidency in favour of an unpretentious retirement consisting Studies • volume 106 • number 421 113 Spring 2017: Book Reviews of simple pleasures such as reading the Irish Independent, breeding cows, equestrian pursuits and religious devotions as an altar server and member of the Legion of Mary. Born into a comfortable Dublin family in 1890, Cosgrave shared much in common with other members of the radical minority who came to form the revolutionary generation. Considered a ‘good steady boy’ at the Christian Brothers’ school where he boarded, his first display of militant nationalism came in 1900 when he opposed Queen Victoria’s visit to Dublin. A serial-joiner of nationalist bodies, and early supporter of Sinn Féin, he was elected to Dublin Corporation in 1908. Conscientious and pragmatic, Cosgrave succeeded in forging connections with the (publican and landlorddominated ) Redmondite majority in the corporation despite his advanced nationalist politics. His reputation for efficiency and integrity saw him retain a prominent role as chair of its influential finance committee following the collapse of electoral support for Sinn Féin by 1915. He was therefore unusual among the revolutionaries of the first Dáil in having considerable experience of elected office and public administration. Joining the Irish Volunteers – but not the IRB – Cosgrave fought bravely with Éamonn Ceannt at the South Dublin Union, despite personally considering the Easter Rising an act of ‘madness’. After 1916, he would pursue a political (rather than military) path to independence, even if, at political meetings in later life, he enjoyed forcing republican hecklers to admit that they had never fired a gun for Irish freedom. Reprieved from a sentence of death, he was released from prison in June 1917, and elected a Sinn Féin MP for Kilkenny City following a by-election two months later. As Minister for Local Government during the War of Independence, when he strived to reform local government and Poor Law administration, he...

From Christian brother to native: Claiming and rejecting Christianity, commerce, and civilization in early twentieth-century Natal

ABSTRACTThis article argues that, by the late nineteenth century, the growing population of African Christians created a difficult conundrum for colonial officials. For almost a century, justification for the colonial project rested in part on the premise that Christianization benefited local populations. However, as African evangelists and preachers experienced greater success, colonial states sought to undermine a growing Christian community whose existence threatened administrations that increasingly relied upon systemic violence. The egalitarian expectations of African Christians, in particular, were inimical to colonialism and created dissonance in its undergirding intellectual architecture. As this strain increased, many colonialists turned against the missions and their converts and embraced the pseudo-scientific racism gaining favor in European metropoles. In Natal, South Africa, this shift led the colony to reassert the “nativeness” of African Christians by taking away the privileges their faith had previously earned them and even, on several occasions, razing the churches in which they worshipped. Race, in early twentieth-century colonies, trumped religion.

What It Was My Father Came Here To Get Away From

What It Was My Father Came Here To Get Away From Thomas Larson (bio) 1/ As early as I can remember, my father hated Catholics. Actually, he despised all religious people. He called believers hypocrites; priests and pastors, pimps. He rarely spoke of this enmity or, for that matter, much else personal, including his years aboard a Pacific Ocean supply ship during the Second World War. “Hurry up and wait,” he told my brothers and me. That was the only combat he faced. No story bayoneting Japs ever emerged. Maybe, contrary to my comic-book idea of war then, there wasn’t any. So, when he unloaded on religion, I was piqued by the sibilant sounds of those scandalous words, hypocrites and pimps, and the frosty certainty with which he iced his dismissal. His disdain for God’s henchmen on earth began and ended with two betrayals—one, his body, the other, his soul, though he would have denied the latter had any substance left. Born in 1914, in Evanston, Illinois, he was given up at birth, probably by immigrants, a Bohemian mother and a Swedish father. That day, he was adopted by the childless Larsons, (another) Swedish father who was irascible and belt-prone and an English mother who cradled the baby to daily mass. They named him John Joseph Milton, the first two referencing Jesus, [End Page 57] the third an artistic aspiration. My mother said Dad figured out long before he asked them about his adoption that he wasn’t theirs—what gave it away was his swarthy skin and his inborn suspiciousness. At St. Mary’s, down the street, he was a student and an altar boy. Photos survive. In one, he wears a white surplice with a starched linen collar and large satin bow. A boy, maybe any boy, who loved God. In another, he’s all decked out: a woolen suit, knickers, black shoes and high socks, neck tie arched at the knot. A full head of combed-back black hair. It must be Confirmation, for nestled in his soft hands is a Catholic prayer book, a finger and a rosary marking a favorite page. He’s ten, the age of discretion; he’s chosen this religion for himself. Though unfazed or freighted (I can’t tell which) by years of catechism, he dresses the viewer (me) with an untroubled gaze. His fate feels staked. He may know what he doesn’t know. As a teen, my father attended St. George High School. He told me once that he blossomed there, often the first through the double doors, with the Christian Brothers’ tutelage: four years of athletics (baseball, swimming, and boxing) and scholastics (the physical sciences, history, literature, and art: he loved the medieval painters and was a talented drawer). He thrived in the dramatic society (my dad, acting on stage!) and the debating club where he persuaded the class that the US government had a moral duty to help the poor with food and shelter. The school uniform was black pants, white shirt, striped tie, and a serge blazer. Sewn onto the blazer’s pocket was a patch, the school emblem, a fire-breathing dragon. (His coat was one of the few things my dad saved, along with Navy memorabilia, in his sixty-one years.) The legend goes that in 302 CE, George, a Roman soldier and a Christian, travels from Palestine to Libya doing good deeds in Christ’s name. There, he finds the desert dwellers are trapped by a dragon; they’re hoping to appease the monster by tying a princess, a virginal sacrifice, to a tree. George unbinds the damsel and, with nimble twists and balletic leaps, he exhausts the dragon’s ire and, at last, thrusts his saber’s length into its belly. So bedazzled are the Libyan pagans—some fifteen thousand, the story says—that they shudder, drop to their knees, and convert to Christianity on the spot. The Church later canonized [End Page 58] George as the protector of men like him who defend the faith with arms. He became the patron saint of boy scouts and soldiers. In addition to the school’s namesake, my father...

Beck by Mal Peet and Meg Rosoff

Reviewed by: Beck by Mal Peet and Meg Rosoff Elizabeth Bush Peet, Mal Beck; by Mal Peet and Meg Rosoff. Candlewick, 2017 [272p] ISBN 978-0-7636-7842-5 $17.99 Reviewed from galleys Ad Gr. 10 up The illegitimate product of a one-night stand between his cash-strapped white mother and a black sailor in 1907 Liverpool, Beck is orphaned at eleven. He ends up at a Christian Brothers school in Ontario, where is he raped by one of the brothers, and he’s then shipped off to farm, whose owners overwork and under-feed him. Running away from the farm, he finds temporary respite with Bone, a black man who runs rum across the Canadian border into Detroit, and his woman Irma, who involve him in the illegal operation but also offer him a first glimpse of what a stable home and a loving relationship can look like. A deal gone deadly wrong, however, puts Beck back on the road headed toward Vancouver, only to be sidetracked by a prairie storm that ultimately leads him to Grace, a half-white, half-Blackfoot woman nearly twice his age. The two are undeniably attracted to each other and whether Beck and Grace can turn their sexual magnetism into a lifelong love becomes the focus of roughly the final third of this novel. Despite the intrinsic heat of the plotline, the book surveys Beck’s tribulations with a clinical eye. Some of the harshest episodes of Beck’s life are captured in passages of stunning grace, typical of the late Peet’s writing, but the cool distance between subject and reader makes empathy difficult to achieve. Readers familiar with both Peet and Rosoff may try to puzzle out whose work is whose, but with no solid hints in [End Page 376] closing notes from Rosoff and Peet’s wife, Elspeth, the pleasure of conjecture may be as satisfying as the tale itself. Copyright © 2017 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Contribuições de João Batista de La Salle para a constituição da escola moderna

The pedagogical contribution of Jean-Baptiste de la Salle to teachers´ formation and the comprehensiveness of primary education in the Western World are analyzed especially in the wake of few academic studies on the Christian Brothers´ pedagogical tradition in Brazil. Current paper is foregrounded on a critical reading of La Salle´s writings and contemporary comments on his pedagogical proposal and demonstrates the manner the French educator faced his countries´ educational issues between the 17 th and 18 th centuries and, consequently, his contribution towards the constitution of the modern school. The paper forwards suggestions for future research work which will surely overcome the ‘eloquent silence’ currently observed.

Jean-baptiste de La Salle´s contributions for the formation of the modern school

The pedagogical contribution of Jean-Baptiste de la Salle to teachers formation and the comprehensiveness of primary education in the Western World are analyzed especially in the wake of few academic studies on the Christian Brothers pedagogical tradition in Brazil. Current paper is foregrounded on a critical reading of La Salle s writings and contemporary comments on his pedagogical proposal and demonstrates the manner the French educator faced his countries educational issues between the 17 and 18 centuries and, consequently, his contribution towards the constitution of the modern school. The paper forwards suggestions for future research work which will surely overcome the ‘eloquent silence’ currently observed.

The Second Girl

The Second Girl

The Second Girl

The Second Girl

The Education of Gerald Ford. By HendrikBooraem V.Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2016. 251 pp.

Presidential Studies QuarterlyVolume 46, Issue 4 p. 951-952 BOOK REVIEW The Education of Gerald Ford. By Hendrik, Booraem V. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2016. 251 pp. Benjamin René Jordan, Benjamin René Jordan Christian Brothers UniversitySearch for more papers by this author Benjamin René Jordan, Benjamin René Jordan Christian Brothers UniversitySearch for more papers by this author First published: 08 September 2016 https://doi.org/10.1111/psq.12330Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume46, Issue4December 2016Pages 951-952 RelatedInformation