austraLasia #2283
School Ethos and
Chaplaincy - David O'Malley SDB
BOLTON UK: 6th November 2008 -- It's not often you find a book
prefaced by two prelates, but School Ethos and Chaplaincy is
one such. Not that one measures the quality of a work by the number of
episcopal endorsements it has! But in the case of this packed little
publication on chaplaincy, the endorsement of the current
ecclesiastical assistant for the World Union of Catholic Teachers
counts for something, as do the pithy comments of the Bishop of
Shrewsbury (+ Luc.Van Looy and + Brian Noble respectively).
After reading the whole book through, my advice to
the reader would be to read (other than the aforesaid forewords) David
O'Malley's introduction and then his personal postscript. Between them
one gets a sense of the complex relationship between the role played by
a minister of the Gospel, who may or may not be ordained, and the
formal educational structure we know as school, with a strong emphasis
on the person in both. David wears his heart on his sleeve, especially
on his 'postscript', and this is the strength of the book at one level.
At another level, it is quite a little gem for any
number of reasons. Maybe you are not sure at the end if it is a
handbook for the chaplain, the school principal and other school
leaders or even a ground-breaking exploration into the role of
something that is approaching a profession in today's world and not
only in education. But it doesn't matter if the reader can't quite work
out which it is, the reality being that it is all of them, presented in
the style that readers of Fr David O'Malley SDB have now become
accustomed to as he has moved from 'Prayers to Start the Day' to 'Trust
the Road' and 'Via Lucis'. Prayer: 'For the chaplain this area of
human experience is a core concern', he says. If he was tempted to
choose a subtitle for this most recent effort it might have been 'Via
Crucis', not that he is saying that school chaplaincy is necessarily a
difficult or crucifying task, but that it may well be a call to embrace
failure. It is another way of putting the fact that the chaplain's task
involves absolute dependence on God, or it becomes something quite
other than chaplaincy.
There is so much of practical value in the book that
one can dip in anywhere and come up with something, be it the
intriguing 'history' of chaplaincy which David claims goes back to St
Martin of Tours - he leads the reader through a fascinating etymology
of 'chaplain' - or the oft-repeated notion that a school chaplain
is not just about the tough, rough or downtrodden, but about being
chaplain for the whole school.
Although there are any number of references to UK
situations, this in no way limits the application of the book. Having
myself been a principal in a school that sees itself as very much a
part of a collection of parishes, I could say that David's distilling
of personal experience is applicable anywhere where the Catholic school
is endeavouring to be Church and to fit in with churches, with the
sometimes lively tensions that result.
School Ethos & Chaplaincy, David
O'Malley SDB, 120 pp.
Don Bosco Publications 2008
(www.don-bosco-publications.co.uk ) - and DBP always tries to help with
discounts for Salesian buyers!
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Title: australasia 2283
Subject and key words: SDB General, School Ethos and Chaplaincy
Date (year): 2008
ID: 2000-2099|2283
