John Baptist De La Salle, Patron of Teachers

When Pope Pius XII named John Baptist De La Salle patron of teachers in 1950, there were three saints already designated to fill this role: Saint Ursula, Saint Catherine of Alexandria and Pope Gregory the Great. When we think of education: the traditional orders immediately come to mind: the Benedictines, the Dominicans and the Society of Jesus, all of which are noted for the excellence of their schools and colleges. But education is not their primary mission. The Benedictines only gradually acquired schools as a suitable ministry, growing out of their emphasis on lectio divina and scholarship with the scriptorium and the library as means of providing for the prayer of the community. The Dominicans were founded to promote the faith through preachers, combating heresy (especially that of the Albigenses of Southern France which sprang up in the thirteenth century) and building centers of theology at the universities to qualify the friars for their missionary tasks. The Jesuits were formed by Saint Ignatius of Loyola in response to the need for defense against the attacks on the Church by the Protestant reformers of the sixteenth century, offering their services to the Pope to be used in whatever ways he thought fit. Their schools became one of the most effective weapons in the Counter-Reformation and remain to this day a major force in the life of the Church.
Why then was there a need for yet another patron, and why not from the Jesuits or the Dominicans? (The Benedictines can claim Gregory the Great as one of their own, since he was a monk, the founder of monasteries and the Pope who sent Saint Augustine with a band of monks to begin the conversion of England.)
The selection of John Baptist De La Salle is significant for a number of reasons. First, the primary purpose in his founding a Christian Brotherhood was to provide educational opportunities for the underprivileged, a class which had, in this area, hitherto been sadly neglected by the Church and ignored by the State as irrelevant. Secondly, he recognized the importance of the laity in providing the teachers, and these in turn had to be trained in a systematic way. Priests, therefore, would be excluded from the formation of the teachers and in the staffing of the schools. Thirdly, the instruction had to be practical and stress the fundamentals, since the students would be from the working class, without the need or time for a more sophisticated course of studies. Only the vernacular, therefore, would be used for the conduct of classes, with Latin strictly banned. The Superior must always be a brother, not a priest, once his own tenure was completed. Independence from clerical control with governance in the hands of lay religious and the emphasis on courses which would be useful for ordinary living: such progressive views as these were regarded as revolutionary in De La Salle’s time, smacking of the Protestant reformers, and hence led to bitter opposition from the ecclesiastical and academic establishment. His works on spirituality and pedagogy as well as the hundreds of letters to his disciples are proof of his orthodoxy and sanctity. But in the world of the ancien regime it was natural to consider him an obstinate, opinionated upstart, with too little regard for tradition and the past.
De La Salle came from a privileged background and from his earliest years he was destined by his family for the Church, having received the tonsure when he was only nine and then named a canon of Rheims Cathedral before he was 16, a sinecure that brought with it a considerable income. At St. Sulpice in Paris, where he studied for the priesthood, he underwent a conversion, embracing wholeheartedly the spirituality of Pere Olier, found of the Sulpicians, whose mission was to establish seminaries advocating the reforms of the Council of Trent. De La Salle’s exposure to the disciplined life in a community was to provide him with the basis for his most valuable contribution to the development of modern educational practice: the need for special colleges (which he always referred to as “seminaries”) for the training of teachers so that they could instruct in a controlled, disciplined, and highly structured environment, with definite goals in an orderly, efficient progression of classes. This allowed for many pupils to be treated simultaneously instead of by the traditional, impractical tutorial method which dealt with the individual at the expense of the needs of the majority.
Prayer, Christian ethical practice, proper behavior and courtesy, with exposure to theology based on Scripture: these were the background for the students as they learned the fundamentals of the three “R”s taught by men of strict principles dedicated to their profession. These Christian Brothers he referred to as ambassadors of Christ, since it was their mission to elevate through the classroom the unprivileged classes of society: the poor, the delinquent, the disadvantaged, to whom education had been denied. The first group of men eventually grew into what is now known as the Order of Christian Brothers. They began by living in common under the direction of De La Salle, learning his techniques, sharing his ideals, and willing to undergo the sacrifices demanded by a life practicing the evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity and obedience. The Brotherhood spread throughout the world and continues to be important in the mission of the Church.
Here in Rhode Island their methods for dealing with delinquent boys have been so effective that the State has turned to their house in Narragansett for dealing with problems regarded as insoluble. La Salle Academy, a leading high school in Providence, provides affordable education and has produced many of the State’s leaders. Among its alumni is Br. Francis Crowley, who has been able, with great success, to incorporate into the Benedictine tradition much of the De La Salle spirituality and educational philosophy. Dom Hugh Diman, too, Portsmouth’s Founder, felt the same concern as De La Salle for the class of society which was denied by birth and economics the opportunity for a practical education. To address this, while still Headmaster of St. George’s, Fr. Hugh was instrumental in founding what came to known as Diman Vocational School in Fall River. De La Salle would certainly have applauded such a foundation and have recognized at Portsmouth many of the features which characterize his own schools.

Transcribed from an article in Portsmouth Abbey School: Summer Bulletin 2007.