On April 3, Fr. Tony Ricard told teachers with the Dufferin- Peel Catholic District School Board that they play a vital role in Catholic education.
“I focused on why parents send their children into Catholic schools,” said the development director and director of campus ministry at St. Augustine High School in New Orleans in an interview with The Catholic Register.
“It’s mainly because they want their child to be in an environment where they’re surrounded by faith. Their child is able to express their faith, they’re able to hear adults expressing their faith and they don’t have to feel ashamed because they want to be in a presence where Christ is the overwhelming feeling.
“So I reminded teachers of the fact that when parents put their child in a Catholic school they want their child to be able to be in an environment where they are free to express their love for God.”
According to Ricard, even though many students in Ontario’s Catholic schools aren’t Catholic, or even Christian, the majority of their parents send them to Catholic school for the environment of free faith-expression.
Ricard, who’s given talks in Canada more than 20 times since being ordained in 1995, spoke at St. Edmund Campion Secondary School. Originally his talk was to be directed towards parents but when the turnout proved to be dominated by educators he shifted his focus slightly to address the responsibility of teachers.
“God has put those teachers in those classrooms for a very specific reason,” he said. “If we stand aside and knowingly allow someone to hurt the faith development of a child because they are dealing with their own issues I fully believe that we are going to have to account for that when we get to the kingdom of heaven.”
Ricard says harm to faith development occurs through oppression of expression, lack of engagement and the rejection of exploratory questions. He said the root cause of this is fear of straying from what is considered politically correct by the secular masses.
“The biggest threat is a lack of courageous teachers, …. faith- filled courageous teachers that are willing to stand up on behalf of the children and say what needs to be said,” Ricard said.
“We are all so worried about everybody’s feelings that sometimes they’re afraid to just say what they need to say.”
Ricard did sympathize with today’s teachers, especially those here in Ontario, who are constantly under tighter restrictions and burdened with greater expectations from school boards, government and parents.
This was echoed by Mary Connor-Brooks, a 32-year Catholic educator and current chaplaincy leader at St. Edmund Campion, who welcomed Ricard’s blunt reminder.
“Any of our roles in life, whether it is parenting or teaching or whatever our role is, I think we need a little bit of a reminder every once in a while, a little bit of a shake up, because we get very caught up in our day- to-day expectations of ourselves and the kids we work with,” said Connor-Brooks. “We have to remind ourselves that aside from the curriculum, we have a very different role in education in Catholic schools. He certainly very very bluntly reminds us of that message.”
She also noted that while some may think Ricard himself is only adding additional expectations onto teachers, Connor-Brooks feels that he doesn’t expect anything of Catholic teachers that he doesn’t expect of himself.
And if you are a Catholic school teacher unwilling or unable to meet those expectations Ricard has the solution for you — get out.
“If they’re teaching in a Catholic school then they need to want to teach in a Catholic school,” he said. “If a teacher doesn’t want to do that then literally I say get the hell out of our school because you are not focusing on Jesus. You are bringing about the power of the devil and what is the devil but the power of hell, so get the hell out of our schools.”