The Uses of Catholic School

A few years back, I was chatting on the phone with an old friend from high school. We had attended a Catholic boys' academy in northern New Jersey together from 1972 to 1976. It was a very small school -- my graduating class was only 46 -- and very intellectual, neither of which facts conspired to make it a long-lived school. It opened doors as a "minor seminary" in 1965, converted to a boys' prep school soon thereafter, began accepting girls during my junior year, and shut down for good in 1990 -- a mere 25-year run. But despite its lack of success by certain measures, it was a lovely school, and more of an educational community than any other school I've ever attended. As I've written before, since the Catholic Church in the era of John XXIII and Paul VI was in a less autocratic, more ecumenical phase than before or since, if there was ever a time to be associated with a Catholic institution, that was it.

My friend noted that our Catholic education, if seriously absorbed, ill-equipped us for the "real world." This is not a question of doctrine. I long ago rejected the doctrines of the Catholic Church (as I believe my friend did also), and I can scarcely remember many of them. But the bedrock of the education was distinct from doctrine. The real lesson that the priests, nun, and lay teachers at the school worked hard to impart, successfully in my view, was that of the moral compass. One should not make decisions in any sphere of action without asking the hard ethical and moral questions of oneself, and basing one's actions on the answers.

I claim no special virtue for myself when I say this, but that lesson certainly "took." I also make no claims for the value of a "moral compass" per se -- it can be based on faulty assumptions and lead to questionable results. But as a basis for decision-making, it is unquestionably a different standard than that of the "real world," the business world, where dollars drive all. Money had no place in the ethical system I was taught; in fact, it was clearly a false god -- Jesus had been quite explicit about that -- and the places where money entered into decision-making, as sometimes could not be helped, were always to be viewed with suspicion.

I lost my belief in the supernaturalism of the Catholic Jesus almost before I left high school, in part because questioning was part of the religious milieu in those days, and I knew that priests whom I respected had had "crises of faith." But Jesus as a philosopher, I had no need to reject or desire to reject. I took his words with me, and I took the values of my schooling -- that moral worthiness and intellectual substance were the yardsticks that adult action had to be based on. (This was completely consistent with what my mother taught me, as well. )

It took my friend's pointing it out for me to see it, but a lot of the difficulties he and I have gotten into over the years have to do with the fact that the world we operate in is based on expediency, not ethics. In business, in politics, even too often in personal life, across the spectrum of activities, that is the way things are. Again, I'm not claiming some special "goodness" (Lord knows). I am however suggesting that I was schooled not to compartmentalize whatever values I do have into a "Sunday" box, or a "church" box, or a "family" box, or any other compartment of convenience, but specifically trained to give them the fullest possible rein. The training worked; they are ever-present. Whereas from what I have observed of the business and political worlds, for many people compartmentalization is not only a snap, but goes on at an automatic, sub-conscious level. Morality is all well and good for proclamation, but we've got to sell some widgets here.

Even during the period of my life when I pushed myself hardest to be a total businessman, my commercial real estate years, I was always reaching for projects that were "worthy" and "interesting," such as downtown re-development in small cities -- but these projects generally were not profitable (or even feasible, often). Quite a number of people whom I encountered thought my attitudes were refreshing, which they probably were (commercial brokers are a hard lot), but they were also not calculated to keep me afloat. I made some money because I worked awfully hard, but the "nose for the dollar" was not really there -- and one reason it wasn't is that I was always complicating matters by trying to be so darned holistic. Those who have the nose for the dollar, and for power, don't gum themselves up with a lot of extraneous goody-goody considerations; they are not too burdened by conscience. At an Andrew-Fastow-of-Enron extreme, they can wind up in prison because of that; at the usual position somewhat short of the extreme, they might simply wind up wealthy and influential. In any case, they probably didn't attend the like of my high school.