Blessing & Opening Of New Buildings

BLESSING & OPENING OF NEW BUILDINGS
St. Christopher’s Primary School, Panania, Feast of St Mary MacKillop, 8 August 2018

Fr Maurice Thompson, Parish Priest, with parish staff, Sisters of Saint Joseph, and parishioners
Principal Jamie Wahab, with Assistant Principal Patrick Morrison, staff, parents and students
Dr Dan White, Executive Director of Sydney Catholic Schools, with Vicki Lavorato, Peggy Saab and SCS Officers, and local Catholic school principals,
Federal Member Hon. David Coleman MP, State Member Glenn Brookes MP, Mayor Khal Asfour, with other civic leaders
Leaders and staff of our architects and builders:

Let me begin by wishing you all a very happy and holy Feast of St Mary of the Cross MacKillop, our home-grown saint, Patron of the Catholic School System here in Australia, and a special favourite in this Joey school and parish.

Our word ‘education’ comes from the Latin word e-ducatio, which means ‘bringing up’, ‘drawing out’ and ‘leading forth’ our children or other students. Family, school, parish and community all have some part to play in bringing children up from infancy to adulthood, from ignorance to knowledge, making major learning gains along the way and preparing them for citizenship. Family, school, parish and society also play a part in drawing children out, identifying gifts and weaknesses, extracting the best from them, cultivating their individuality and character and especially the range of virtues in place of selfishness. And school, family, parish and nation all have a part in leading children forth from a vulnerable and docile childhood to an engaged, critical, creative adulthood in their life beyond school, from a life with at most implicit faith and ideals to one in which faith and ideals are appropriated for themselves and lived with passion. Of all these goals St Mary MacKillop is our local inspiration and exemplar, and we turn to her in these challenging times to intercede on behalf of our whole Catholic system of schools.

Mary MacKillop would marvel at what has been achieved in the Catholic parishes and schools of Australia. Today over 5.2 million people self-identify as Catholics in this country, gathered into 1400 parishes, with just under a million, led by generous clergy, at Mass on any particular Sunday. Many more Catholics serve in parishes, schools, hospitals, aged care and charities, making our church by far the largest charity and non-government care-provider in our country. Parishioners serve also in politics, industry, the professions and the community more broadly.

Those same parishes and parishioners own, sponsor, feed and otherwise relate to 1700 Catholic schools and a growing number of pre-schools and OOSHs, serving well over 700,000 students and their families, and employing 70,000 teachers and staff, making us also by far the largest non-government educator and employer. The development of the low-fee Catholic school system in every town and suburb of Australia has allowed people of all faith and financial backgrounds real choice in educating their children, has relieved the state of significant burdens, and has provided some healthy competition which has helped advance our state schools too. While much of this is to be put down to the pastors, consecrated religious and faithful of our Church, we must also recognise the contributions of ‘state aid’ since the time of Menzies, Whitlam and Howard. We ask our Federal and State Members to relay our thanks for the contributions of government to recurrent and sometimes even capital funding for our schools.

Grateful we are and must be, but not complacent. The current policy of the Commonwealth is to increase, step by step, over the next decade, the already existing gap between the government funds that a Catholic school child attracts to their system and the already-greater funds that a state school child attracts to the public system. Though all systems will receive more funding, the increases of the independent schools will be greater and the increases for the state schools greater again in the decade ahead: the Catholic system will become less and less competitive. Deep structural flaws in the government’s funding mechanism may mean 300 or more Catholic schools could become unviable. Were they to close the impost on government would be enormous, as would be the dislocation and educational disadvantage to those children and their families. Everyone loses when even one of our children is educationally disadvantaged, let alone a hundred thousand children; we all want (or should want) the best of educations for every child.

I am determined to do all we can to ensure no school closes: indeed, we must aim to open more schools, and improve existing schools, if we are to bear our share of the burden of educating our growing population. We must keep improving our facilities as we have done here at St Christopher’s over the past two decades and more. And so I stand ready to work with or federal and state government partners in education, on both sides of the two parliaments, to ensure this will be the case. I am confident that with good will all round a way forward will be found.

St Mary MacKillop showed extraordinary confidence in divine providence and in human ingenuity as she embarked on building her network of schools and orphanages for the most disadvantaged Australians. In her day there was no state aid. By the time I attended a Josephite school in the 1960s, many Catholic schools had class sizes of 50, 60, 80 or more, and substandard facilities, lacking even the most basic amenities. Eventually our community was shamed into correcting that inequity. We must never return to that. With MacKillop’s inspiration and intercession we want to keep building on our heritage, building on our facilities, building on our faith and ideals as we have here at Panania. Congratulations St Christopher’s!

AFTER THE SPEECHES AND VOTES OF THANKS
St. Christopher’s Primary School, Panania, Feast of St Mary MacKillop, 8 August 2018

I gratefully acknowledge all those who have made today’s opening and blessing possible: from government, Church and education, from parishioners, school families and staff, from architects, builders and staff. Above all we thank Almighty God for His wonderful creation; we thank his Son, Jesus Christ, who is our Chief Teacher and Wisdom itself; and we thank the Holy Spirit who inspired the building of this school, including its latest additions, and will inspire the spiritual building that is each one of its students in the years ahead. God bless you all. St Mary MacKillop: pray for us.