It's long since I began
To call up to the eyes
This wise and simple man
–W. B. Yeats, 'The Fisherman'
He was the saintliest man I ever knew. He was a teaching brother and a success in the classroom, though less so at the sports coaching which was expected of every member of staff — anyone who trains a football team with an open and well-thumbed book of the rules in one hand is not likely to produce a winning combination.
He spent much of the second half of his working life in houses of formation, preparing the young brothers for their lives as religious. Those he trained told me that his own life was his greatest lesson.
Later, in the community in which I got to know him, he would annoy his confreres by clearing the table before anyone had a chance for seconds. His view was that we should always get up from a meal feeling that we could have eaten more. In hospital on one occasion, his superior had to call on the vow of obedience to persuade him to drink the certain black alcoholic beverage which a kindly nun had suggested to build up his fragile frame.
A biblical scholar, in his final years he was involved in a Christian-Jewish fellowship group and led small local prayer groups.
All of this is by way of saying that Brendan (not his real name) was a humble, saintly man. He is one I 'call up to the eyes' as counter to the members of religious orders involved in the awful things perpetrated on children in institutions in Ireland in the early and middle years of last century, as revealed in the recent Ryan Report.
Brendan thought orders of teaching brothers and nuns had long ago served their purpose and should be encouraged to fade quietly away. This opinion did not win favour among his confreres any more than his other belief that the Church should promote temporary vocations. His view was that teaching orders should have closed their books when the welfare state began taking seriously the responsibility to educate all children for free.
If we were to take a frame of European history bounded by the French Revolution and the 1829 granting of Catholic Emancipation in Britain and Ireland, we would be in the era of the foundation of many teaching orders. The Christian Brothers, Marists, Presentations and Patricians all come from those years; so