It can be risky for headteachers to continue teaching pupils occasional lessons, after having long ceased to deliver examination curricula. You can quickly become rusty, out of touch with new classroom techniques and thematically repetitive, giving voice to themes previously aired in assemblies or speech days. So it is with some trepidation that I approach weekly classes, embracing Benedictine humility, as appropriate in my context, and expecting an element of critical debate.
At present every member of the sixth form at Downside has to suffer through some classes with the headmaster within the General Religious Studies programme. So there is a class on “Dante in 30 minutes” (where we treat The Divine Comedy as a computer game while reading extracts). There are two classes on faith and modern poetry (one on Siegfried Sassoon and another focusing on contemporary poetry) and then there is a class on “celebrity worship syndrome”.
Nothing could be more relevant to the politics of now than the last of these, although it is the hardest lesson to teach. Why? Because in the lesson we end up focusing on what the Church teaches about the saints, and young people nowadays often find it hard to relate to the idea of sainthood, even in a school that is overwhelmingly Catholic and largely prayerful.
The teaching path is oblique: the lesson begins with a reflection on personal role models. Then we discuss modern celebrity worship, looking at the craving for celebrity in popular culture, as reinforced through reality TV. After scrutinising articles on how this affects British and American society, we reflect on which celebrities we revere and why.
Obviously, the election of President Trump provides peculiar grist to the mill. Who, we wonder, will be next to obtain a position of political authority? The ability of the media to project people into positions of power seems irresistible at times.
In this disorientating arena, the saints are offered as an alternative. Benedict XVI’s speech to students in Catholic schools in Britain in 2010 spelt it out. “I hope that among those of you listening to me today there are some of the future saints of the 21st century,” he said. “What God wants most of all for each one of you is that you should become holy. He loves you much more than you could ever begin to imagine, and he wants the very best for you. And by far the best thing for you is to grow in holiness.”
The message is simple and true, but the young need specific examples to follow, so focusing on particular figures whom they can relate to can be helpful. My favourite saint for this currently is St Damien of Molokai, patron saint of lepers and HIV sufferers. His heroic self-sacrifice while battling Church indifference speaks strongly to the young.
So do the words of Barack Obama, when he appeals to our collective conscience: “In our own time, as millions around the world suffer from disease, especially the pandemic of HIV/Aids, we should draw on the example of Fr Damien’s resolve in answering the urgent call to heal and care for the sick.”
St Teresa of Calcutta also provides a strong example for many, so after reflection on what more we could do to support service in the school, we have set up a service community in the sixth form in her name, dedicated to caring for others.
Yet sainthood seems just impossible for so many of us, young and old alike, especially in a world of challenges and difficulty. It is too easy for self-promotion and advancement to take precedence over goodness. And the young know that they need to make their way in the world, which means being practical.
The recent Martin Scorsese film Silence shows Jesuit missionary attempts at holiness becoming by steps problematic, with a tension arising between caring for others and heroic martyrdom. It provides an ambiguous gloss on Roland Joffé’s film about the Jesuits, The Mission, which by contrast offered up heroic example as a path to follow, in a world of mercenary, competing interests.
In a world that sees attempts at sainthood as wrong-headed or dangerous, tragedy can seem all-consuming. Yet Holocaust remembrance can enable us to see meaning at the heart of horror, when we look at the witness of saints such as Maximilian Kolbe or Edith Stein.
In essence, holiness doesn’t come exclusively through striving but through God’s grace, even in a situation of what may seem like passive suffering.
Next time I teach my lesson on sainthood versus celebrity culture, highlighting the commonplace egoism that pursues self above service in a mercenary world, I will conclude emphatically with the words of the French writer Léon Bloy, yet with a sense of my own tragic denouement: “There is only one tragedy in the end: not to have been a saint.”
Dr James Whitehead is the headmaster of Downside School
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