From the Principal

Given our College is a Loreto Associated school, I was privileged to participate in the Loreto Pilgrimage, Walking in the Footsteps of Mary Ward, recently. My involvement in the pilgrimage strengthened my own spiritual formation and proved to be a particularly humbling experience for which I am most grateful.  Given the recent merging of the IBVM and CJ Sisters, the pilgrimage was the first undertaken since the re-structured governance. Pilgrims were predominately Loreto Principals, Chairs of Boards of Australian Loreto schools and the new Loreto governing body or ‘stewards’. Led by Sr Sandra Perrett, who was a former teacher at the College in the 1980s before becoming an IBVM sister, the pilgrimage commenced in Mary Ward’s birthplace, York, England and concluded in Rome.

This week, the Secondary School celebrated Loreto House Day and today the Primary School celebrated Primary House Day. Both celebrations provided students with opportunities to reflect on the important influence our College Founders have had on our John XXIII community. There was, of course, lots of fun to be had, too, and I extend my thanks to all Loreto House staff, ably led by Mr Gallagher, and to all the Primary School staff for what were excellent House Day celebrations.

Reflecting on the Loreto Pilgrimage and our House Day celebrations this week, I was reminded of reading Mary Ward being described as a ‘Dangerous Innovator’. This description has always resonated with me. What does it mean that one of our Founders was dangerous? How was Mary Ward an innovator? At a simplistic level, the answers to these two questions are quite clear. Firstly, Mary Ward was considered dangerous by the Catholic Church at the time because of her counter-cultural advocacy of a radical new way of life for women, based on St Ignatius’ model to educate in and for society, and not apart from it. This new way of life was a significant cultural departure from the enclosed religious orders of the time and, therefore, threatened the status quo. But was that really so dangerous?

As well as being a threat to the status quo, Mary Ward was also an innovator, given the theologians of the time were still wondering whether women had souls capable of comprehending God. Notwithstanding the societal view of the time, scores of young women risked their lives to join Mary Ward’s Institute, drawn by her gravitas and deep faith.

One of the most important and dangerous aspects of her spirituality, though, was her emphasis on serving God through love.

‘I will do these things in love and freedom or leave them alone.’

This emphasis was particularly dangerous in the age in which she lived, the late 16th and early 17th Centuries, when the dominant motive in society was fear. People were taught to fear hell and to fear punishment as a means of bringing them closer to God. Considering this, Mary Ward’s approach was significantly counter-cultural and dangerous to those who used fear to control and influence and ultimately benefit from the associated wealth and power.

Courageous, resilient and determined, Mary Ward was also one of the great female travellers of the 17th century, journeying on foot over the Swiss Alps a number of times amid the Thirty Years War to meet Pope Gregory XV and Urban VIII in Rome and answer the Church’s criticisms of her Institute.

Ultimately, though, those in the hierarchy who wanted to rid the Church of these ‘Jesuitesses’ were successful as a Papal Bull of Suppression was imposed on Mary Ward and her Institute in 1631, resulting in her jailing by the Inquisition as a ‘heretic, rebel and schismatic’. Some years later, with her life’s work in ruins, she died as the English Civil War raged around her in York in 1645.

No doubt many of those in power within the Church would have concluded that Mary Ward’s death would spell the ultimate defeat of her courageous counter-cultural movement to educate Catholic daughters while the Jesuits educated Catholic sons, and yet three centuries later, one of her followers, Mother Teresa of Calcutta said she was 'God’s gift to the Church and society', while Pope Pius XII described her as 'that incomparable woman, whom England, in her darkest and most sanguinary hour, gave to the Church' and Pope John Paul II praised her in his encyclical on women, Mulieris Dignitatem.

Interestingly, while establishing her Institute, Mary Ward described her ministry as ‘care of the faith and other works congruous of the times.’ The drive to ‘…. do these things in love and freedom or leave them alone’ still strongly resonates today and is particularly congruous of our times, I would suggest. Perhaps it is the lived experience of this understanding that truly defines a John XXIII education. Dangerous innovator indeed!

Lastly, I extend my thanks to everyone involved in today’s Secondary School Cross-Country Carnival and look forward to the attendance of as many mums and mother figures as possible during our Mothers’ Day Mass next Friday 10 May.

Daniel Mahon

Principal