From the Principal

Fit for purpose

Traditionally, schools have been regarded as being part of the ‘not for profit sector’. Our Business Manager, John Cumming, uses a much more appropriate phrase of the College being ‘for purpose’. The theme of Mission (or purpose) resonated at a recent Jesuit Schools’ conference I attended with Mrs Bouwman (Deputy Principal) and Ms Murphy (Director of Faith and Mission).

One of the presenters posed some pertinent questions to the Jesuit and Companion School attendees:

• Why were we founded?
• What is our Mission?
• Are our children safe?
• What voices are missing?
• What might unravel us?

We were asked to discern our responses to those questions. Discernment was beautifully described as where prayer and action meet. The questions are particularly relevant to our College at a time when we are strategically planning for the next decade. We require a coherence between our vision for learning and teaching ensuring that the essence of our Catholicity is maintained and enhanced.

With a Plenary Council to be conducted in Australia in 2020 the words of Pope Francis are particularly heartening:

‘The thing the Church needs today is the ability to heal wounds and to warm the hearts of the faithful; it needs nearness, proximity.

I see the Church as a field hospital after battle. It is useless to ask a seriously injured person if they have high cholesterol and about the level of blood sugars. You have to heal their wounds. Then we can talk about everything else.

Heal the wounds, heal the wounds... And you have to start from the ground up.’

Welcome to the College

Best wishes to three new students joining the College for the first time, welcome back to Ms Wing Chi Chan from parental leave and to Mr Jerram Gibson our new secondary teacher and Rowing Coordinator.

Robert Henderson

Principal