Bishop Robert J. Banks

A lifetime of education - for who?

My vacation last week was taken up with reading two books given me by Bishop Morneau. It was part of his continuing campaign to enable me to hold a conversation with him on long drives, when he asks the inevitable question, "What have you been reading lately?"

The first book was a classic from the early part of the last century, The Education of Henry Adams. Basically it is an autobiography by the great grandson of our second president, John Adams. Presidents ran in that family. John Quincy Adams, John's son, also became president.

Henry never got into the business of politics, though he served as private secretary to his father, the ambassador to England during our Civil War. Most of his life was spent as a professor at Harvard and as a well-known author.

I am not sure why Bishop Morneau decided to read this classic from the 1920's. Perhaps it was because Henry Adams was a Bostonian, and Bishop Morneau, for some reason, has become interested in finding out what makes even former Bostonians act the way they do.

In any case, it was an interesting read, though I must admit I skimmed the last few chapters, when the author seemed to get lost in some abstract philosophizing. I liked Adam's way of seeing his life basically as an education. He wrote that he got nothing out of his years of formal schooling, even at Harvard or the German universities. He saw life and the world as his real school, and also described the rare special insights that seemed to come to him out of the blue.

His approach made me look back at my own life to appreciate how it too has really been an education. I also recalled special moments of insight - of grace - that have made a significant difference in the way I react to situations and people. In other words, reading about Adams' education made me grateful for my own education in life. I think most people would have the same experience if they looked back on their lives as ways in which life and the world - and God - have educated them for the better.

The problem with Adam's approach, however, was that he made it seem that the whole world existed just to educate him. All during the terrible carnage of the Civil War, his main concern, serving as personal secretary to his father in London, seemed to be whether he was liked and welcomed when he went to parties. There was little reflection on what was happening to his country and to his friends on the front lines.

Also, religion had practically no role in most of his life. That might have changed toward the end, but that's where I started skimming the book. He did become interested in the French cathedrals of the Middle Ages and also in Mary. The one line that stuck out for me was his reflection, referring to the new power of the railway train, "All the steam in the world could not, like the Virgin, build Chartres."

The second book Bishop Morneau leant me was totally different. Entitled, Testimony of Hope, it was the series of spiritual talks given in a retreat for our Holy Father and the Roman Curia by Abp. Francis Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan of Vietnam. Abp. Van Thuan was imprisoned by the Vietnamese government for 13 years and then "released" to house arrest. In 1991 the government expelled him from Vietnam, and he now serves on the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace in Rome. That's the same council that our own Msgr. Frank Dewane serves as Secretary.

The whole tone of Testimony of Hope is so different from Adams' book. Yes, life and the world definitely educated Abp. Van Thuan during his time in Vietnam, but the archbishop does not see himself as a spectator to what is happening in the world. He is deeply involved in the tragedy of Vietnam. Nor does his writing make it sound as if his education was the only purpose for all that was happening. For him, God's purposes are central.

Listen as he begins his conferences to the Pope and the cardinals of the Roman offices: "I, Francis, servant of Jesus Christ, the least of the successors of the Apostles, here before you, do not believe that I know many things except Jesus Christ crucified."

He was definitely not a spectator to what happened in Vietnam. "During my long nine-year ordeal of solitary confinement, I was in a cell without windows. For days at a time the electric lights were left on both day and night; and then for days at a time there was complete darkness. I felt as though I were suffocating from the heat and humidity to the point of insanity ..."

His learnings and his insights from this horrendous experience were always not so much about himself but about God. He says that imprisonment made him realize that the most important thing in his life as bishop was not the pastoral works that he might accomplish, but the total dedication of himself to God, whatever might be the circumstances of his life.

Abp. Van Thuan tells how Jesus' command to love our enemies became real for him. During the years of his imprisonment, he was always guarded by at least two policemen. He says that one night a thought came to him, "Francis, you are still very rich. You have the love of Christ in your heart; love them as Jesus loved you."

And so he took the initiative to be kind and friendly to his guards. The result was that occasionally they would become friendly. Once he asked the guard if he could be allowed to cut a little piece of wood to make a cross. The guard was afraid that both of them could be punished, since religious objects were forbidden, but he looked the other way. Abp. Van Thuan made the cross, hid it in a bar of soap during the years of his imprisonment, and it became the cross he now wears as a free bishop.

Now, what did Bishop Morneau think of these books? Well, he said I could keep the Adams book, but he asked me to return the Abp. Van Thuan book.