Most Jesuits I know are tired of being reminded that any selection of Messrs Abbott, Hockey, Pine, Joyce, and Shorten went to Jesuit schools. And tired, too, of the intense gaze and fearless investigative questions that follow the reminder: 'Are you happy with them? Why won't you take responsibility for their evil-doing? When will you and the offending school publicly dissociate yourselves from them?' (Not from all of them, of course, but after a division on party lines.)
There are various strategies to deal with these questions. Ever the coward, I mildly respond with another question, 'Yes, but did you know that we Jesuits also educated Robert Mugabe, Fidel Castro, Gordon Liddy and Chuck Fleetwood-Smith?' In the puzzled pause that follows, as my interrogator wonders how these gratuitous facts may be relevant, I make my escape.
But the fact that these questions are more often asked about Jesuit than other kinds of schools suggests Jesuit education has a mystique. It is enshrined in the dictum, 'Give me a child till the age of seven and I will show you the man', attributed to Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuits. This is taken as testimony to the power of Jesuit education to mould the character and beliefs of its students, and consequently as grounding the demand that Jesuits take responsibility for the way in which their students later behave.
There are two problems with the conclusions drawn from this aphorism. First, Ignatius did not say it — he disapproved of Jesuits teaching young children. But, more to the point, it is daft. No school up to, or after, the age of seven has that kind of power.
My own experience may be illuminating, if only because it ought to support the myth. I was educated at a Jesuit school and was very happy there. I liked, admired and was inspired by some of my teachers, Jesuit and lay, enough to become and to live happily as a Jesuit. So I was clearly influenced by the values and beliefs articulated and embodied in the school.
But the reason I was open to influence was that the values and faith of the school were coherent with those of my family and of the broader Catholic culture of the time. Were they not so I would have resisted what the school imparted, as many did.
The power of the school to shape me according to its values was also limited