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The Mission

Fr. Dennis Gallagher, A.A. '69, Vice President for Mission

Catholic Education: Getting Their Attention (Summer 2002)

As color commentator for the fine Celtics teams of the 1980s, Bob Cousy, long-time neighbor of the College, had a favorite saying when opponents were making a run on the Green: “That should get their attention,” he’d say. Sufficiently challenged, Larry and Kevin and the Chief would almost always find some way of restoring order.

I have been thinking about Cousy’s expression in the wake of the events of 9/11 and the scandals that have beset the business world and the Catholic Church in recent months. These events point to a tendency, rooted in our fallen nature, to take things for granted and to lapse into a state of inattention. This tendency is hardly an exhaustive explanation for all that underlies these disturbing events, but a salutary effect of the resulting shock is to heighten our attentiveness in a number of different ways.

One of the principal benefits of a Catholic liberal education is that it prepares you to stand poised before the mystery which lies at the heart of human existence. The cultivation of the intellectual and moral virtues is the best protection against being dragged down into a thoughtless and superficial way of life. Keeping alive this high purpose of education itself requires uncommon vigilance, especially at a time when the nobler aspirations of the human heart have difficulty finding an expression worthy of them.

Speaking to our graduating students at this year’s commencement, I called to mind an old beer commercial—one stoops to conquer—which asserted that “you only go round once in this life and you have to grab all the gusto you can get. ”There was a good bit of popular philosophy in that pitch for Schlitz, one that more than ever finds support in our culture. In opposition to this close-fisted approach to life, an Assumption education at its best proposes an alternative; an open-handedness which derives from the conviction that most everything truly important in our lives is given to us, which we receive without asking, and often enough, without deserving.

What matters most is that we be awake, alive, attentive to the mystery, both divine and human, which is far greater and far lovelier than the world of our own making or doing.

A Catholic education, then, is very much about getting their attention. This is the enduring source of the deep, deep hope which it seeks to engender in the minds and hearts of those who give themselves to it.