My Last Best Hope For Belonging

"A Catholic education is an advantage for life."  I've seen this slogan in various church bulletins over the years but how accurate is the statement and does it reflect a Christ-like view?  It all depends on your perspective.

Attending a pubic elementary school in the early and mid-1980s was a struggle for me academically but those years were also filled with great friendships and fond memories.  I even finished my last two years with good grades thanks to a couple of wonderful teachers.  Pubic middle school on the other hand would be a rude awakening.

In 5th grade, my friends and I were still carrying lunchboxes and playing with Transformers and G. I. Joes because back then kids were still kids.  Yet after a mere three months of summer vacation, we were suddenly expected to put all this stuff away because according to some unwritten rule it just wasn't acceptable in the 6th grade.  We quickly discovered our middle school was filled with cliques of jocks and toughs who had come from other elementary schools and soon I found myself on the receiving end of their bullying.  You'd get teased for wearing the "wrong" style jacket, failing to catch a football in gym class, watching cartoons or just about anything else they could think of.  Asking the faculty for help did little to alleviate the problem and on a couple of occasions, blame was shifted back to me when some of them wondered what I might be doing to not fit in.  I was well on my way to becoming a black sheep and throughout middle school my grades took a nosedive despite a few really great teachers who stood out from the crowd.

The thought of attending the public high school with my bullies wasn't very appealing given the place's bad reputation for fights.  I had taken a summer typing class there and the desks were covered in graffiti.  What really appealed to me was going to a Catholic high school...or at least what I thought a Catholic high school would be.  I envisioned a nurturing environment where teachers and students took their faith seriously and treated each other with kindness and respect.

My older brother attended St. John's Prep. in Danvers but my grades weren't good enough to get past their admissions department.  That suited me just fine because I really didn't like the idea of spending my high school years at an all boys' school.  I felt males and females could learn a lot from each other and in the right environments, their perspectives were complimentary.  I also hoped to find a girlfriend at some point.  Bishop Fenwick High School in Peabody, MA seemed like my best option since it was just a 15 minute drive away.  Admissions accepted my application despite the lack-luster grades and soon I was turning the page on a new chapter in my life where great possibilities awaited.

One of the school's orientation events took place at St. Mary's in Salem and included a church service with Bishop Fenwick's chaplain Fr. Jim Nyhan.  In his sermon he encouraged mutual respect and using a colorful analogy, he said whenever we treated others badly, we only disgraced ourselves.  During another orientation event, students put on a short skit where some of the kids pretended to be nerds while others were jocks but they all stood up for each other and became friends.  This sounded too good to be true.  In many ways it was.

We had been told "Fenwick is family" but during my years at the school, I would discover initial appearances weren’t just inaccurate, at times they could be downright deceptive.  The place did have its fair share of bullies and cliques along with an undercurrent of elitism.  From my perspective, the slogan "A Catholic education is an advantage for life" sounded an awful lot like bragging.