Before this semester ends, the year 2010 will be upon us – the year when we shall mark seventy years of Ateneo de Naga University.  We are now a relatively large university of six colleges, a graduate school, a thriving high school, institutionally and program accredited by PAASCU in our colleges and high school, recognized and respected in Bikol, the Philippines and the Asian region.   Today we employ 375 members of various faculties and 226  auxiliary staff members.  We have some 6,422 students today, with our enrolment for this semester still incomplete. We are happy that recently, with your cooperation under the leadership of Dr. Fred Fabay – and despite the fiesta - we regained our Philippine Council for NGO Certification (PCNC)  accreditation.  And we are even happier that in recent Board exams we not only outstripped the national passing average in the ECE and CPA , but entered the coveted list of placers.  In the ECE Board exam we achieved 36 percent passing, while the national passing average was 26 percent; in CPA Board exam we achieved 54 percent passing, while the national passing average was 41.67 percent.  Our graduate, Leo Angelo A. Rull was 5th placer in ECE;  Paul Robert V. Morata was 10th placer in CPA.

 

The Ateneo de Naga Story

In taking stock of all of this, it is fascinating to recall how it all began.  For this purpose I have been allowed a peek into the yet unfinished manuscript of Prof. Danny Gerona, who is writing  “The Ateneo de Naga Story” in celebration of our seventy years of service in Bicol. 

Ateneo de Naga was not a Jesuit initiative, nor did the early Jesuits in Naga begin our school from scratch.  It was not founded with the express mission of poverty alleviation in Bicol.  The training of expert accountants, electronic communications engineers, civil engineers, professional teachers , computer programmers, digital illustrators and animators, philosophers and theologians were not among its original vision. 

When Bishop Pedro Santos was consecrated bishop in 1938 for the Diocese of Nueva Caceres, one of his immediate concerns was the potentially adverse effect of the sanguine proselytizing Protestant activity of Silliman University, which had recently set up a branch in Legazpi.  Against this incursion into Catholic Bicol, he considered the Catholic response too weak, too lethargic, too unprepared.  His conviction was that it could only be through good Catholic education that this challenge might be met.   His diocese, however, lacked Catholic schools.

After the Jesuit suppression, when the Jesuits returned to the Philippines in 1859, the Dominicans returned San Jose Seminary to them.  Bishop Santos, originally from Pampanga, was one of the early products of the restored San Jose Seminary. As a Josefino, he was himself a beneficiary of Jesuit formation.  He emulated the Jesuits, and appreciated their involvement in education. He admired how the Jesuits had been entrusted in 1859 with the public school in Manila, the Escuela Municipal, and how this was expanded to become the Ateneo Municipal de Manila, then later privatized to become the Ateneo de Manila.  He knew that from there, the Jesuits had started Ateneos in Zamboanga, Cagayan de Oro and Tuguegarao.  He appreciated that among the many apostolic fields of endeavor of the Church, “The Jesuits [had] dedicated themselves to a very great extent to the Church’s educational needs”, and desired that Naga be included in this endeavor.

Coming from San Jose Seminary, Bishop Santos hoped that he could leverage his “Jesuit connections” to convince the Jesuits to come to Naga.  In writing to Fr. John Hurley, S.J., who was the Mission Superior in the Philippines but also his padrino during his episcopal ordination, he mentioned the 1,360,00 souls for which he was responsible, the merely three educational centers for girls, run by sisters, and the two academies for boys, run by laypersons, the latter in a manner that was “far from perfect.”  Bishop Santos’ proposal to the Jesuits was that they take over one of these academies, the Camarines Sur Catholic Academy.  This had been founded in 1935 by Fr. Lis Dimarumba, and was located right in the convent, within the patio of the Cathedral.  Today, this is the site of Naga Parochial.  He wrote: “The Diocese at present does not possess much in the way of financial means, but gives the land necessary for the school and whatever personal help Your Reverence may hope to expect from a former student under the fathers of the Society of Jesus.”

The Jesuits responded cautiously to the Bishop’s offer.  Talks between Frs. John Hurley and the Bishop began as early as August, 1939. In October, Frs. Hurly and Henry Green, a mission consultor, visited the Bishop in Albay and Naga.  There was another visit of Hurley to Santos in November. 

In his report to his provincial superior in New York, Fr. James Sweeny, Fr. Hurley speaks of the positive local support for the school and says:  “The site of the proposed school would be in Naga, being the cultural center of Bikolandia as well as the center of the six provinces comprising the diocese of Nueva Caceres.”  The result was a visit by two Jesuits, Fr.John Macarron, S.J. and Fr. Francis Burns, in February 1940, for a preliminary survey.

On March 13, 1940, after a decision was made for the financing of a new building for the school, Fr. Hurley finally accepted the Bishop’s offer to take over the Catholic Academy and Fr. Burns was named Vice-Rector of the school still administered by the Diocese.  On May 12, 1940, the first Jesuit community arrived, and stayed in the house of the bishop.  They were six:  Fr. Francis Burns and Schols. Greg Horgan, Albert Grau, Nicolas Kunkel, and Hilario Lim.  By the end of the year, Kunkel and Lim were transferred.  Added to their number were Bernhard Lochbuehller, Saturnino Monzon, John Nicholson, and Richard McSorley.  It was in November of 1941 that Bro Serge Adriatico arrived. 

Our “Ateneo de Naga” began with the opening of classes on the feast of St. Peter and Paul, June 5, 1940, just ten months after the first conversations between Bisoph santos and Fr Hurley.  On invitation of Fr. Burns, Bishop Santos was the main celebrant at the solemn benediction rites in the Cathedral;  it was on this occasion that for the first time in his life, he delivered a sermon in English.   Meanwhile, Fr. Burns said Mass for the Grade School.  After the Catholic Academy was turned over to the Jesuits, the 5 pioneering  Jesuits and 20 lay persons formerly of the Catholic Academy, welcomed the 650 students.  There were five sections in first year, three in second, two in third, and two in fourth.

For me it is fascinating to read what the driving values were at that time.  What were the Jesuits and their partner teachers trying to do?  Dr. Gerona quotes some of the promotional advertisements released in September 1941 which might be compared with our Profile of an AdN Graduate:

Ateneo’s graduates are spiritually, physically, and emotionally mature.  Ateneo sends them out into the world as young men of sound judgment, of acute and trained intellect, and of upright and manly character.

But how was the Ateneo de Naga to achieve this?  When asked what the specific educational policy of the school was, Fr. Burns replied:

First and foremost, the Ateneo is a school of Catholic action. To teach religion everyday to foster devotion to our Blessed Mother by means of the Sodality of Our Lady, to place a rosary in the hand of every Atenean and a crucifix in every classroom, to have weekly confession and holy communion, with a special Mass and Communion of reparation in honor of the Sacred Heart on the First Friday of each month, to have during the entire month of October daily devotions to May during which in the presence of the entire school students will give talks extolling Mary’s virtues, to have an annual retreat for the students, to encourage daily visits to the Blessed Sacrament in the school chapel, to have a library filled with Catholic pamphlets and Catholic books – in a word, to introduce the students to a Catholic way of life and to have them after four or seven or eight years of Ateneo training leave the school with an intelligent understanding of their Catholic faith and strong habits of Catholic practices firmly rooted in their characters – this is the aim of the Ateneo de Naga.

 

Fr. Burns was once asked why the Jesuits wanted to put up the Ateneo de Naga.  His reply was:

The Jesuit Fathers realized that Manila was not the entire Philippines.  If the Catholic youth of the land was to receive a Catholic education, the Society of Jesus would have to go out into the provinces and start schools.  It is the policy of Jesuit schools to train leaders, but obviously in a land of eighteen million people all the leaders are not concentrated in one city.  On the contrary, it is a fact that many of our public officials were trained in the provinces, and for lack of Catholic schools they received their education in the public school system.  They are now products of that system.  To meet his challenge, to insure our future leaders a thorough Catholic education, to qualify those leaders for future posts of responsibility, the Jesuits have followed in the footsteps of St. Francis Xavier and have blazed educational trails through strategic parts of the Philippines … Davao, Zamboanga, Cagayan, Tuguegarao, San Pablo, Manila  and Naga.

We cannot go through the entire history of the Ateneo de Naga this afternoon.  For that, we will wait until Dr. Gerona’s book is finished.  But just some important milestones:

• When WW II broke out in the Far East, the Japanese invaded the Philippines.  Naga was not spared. Fr. Burns and the other Jesuit priests were arrested and imprisoned.  The new building of the Ateneo de Naga was taken over by the Japanese and made into a regional headquarters and a concentration camp for Filipino opponents to Japanese rule.  Here, many of our countrymen suffered and died.  During this time Bro. Serge Adriatico was the caretaker.
  
  
• After the war, the Ateneo property was restored to the Jesuits.  Fr. Francis Burns returned to continue the work of the school.  In 1947 the college operation of Ateneo de Naga commenced with a course on education, prompted again by the presence of Silliman University in Legazpi.  It was a move where the Jesuit Vice-Provincial, Leo Cullum, had apparently to sacrifice his initial misgivings about the project to the insistence of Bishop Santos and Fr. Burns that such was necessary for Bicol.  With the success of the college education courses, Pre-Law, the Associate in Arts and Commerce followed.
   
• The collegiate department became coeducational in the first semester of 1953-54.  The pioneering coeds were:  Jovita Go, Susana Lee, and Lourdes Cabiles from Naga, Salvacion Fuentbella of Sagñay, and Vicenta Satuito of Polangui.
  
  
• Student activism began at the Ateneo de Naga on the evening of August 6, 1965 when some 4,000 students burned a pot-bellied congressman in effigy protesting the congressmen’s proposed increased allowances. The activism reached well into the 80s when Naga and millions of people throughout the land protested against the hubris of the Marcos government.

• We know, AdNU was almost closed by the Philippine Province in the late 80s. This was however reversed through the dynamic leadership of Fr. Raul Bonoan. Instead of closing the Ateneo de Naga, he raised it to the status of a university.

The rest is a story fairly familiar to us.  It is a story which brings us to a separate campus in Pacol for the high school, six different colleges and a graduate school in Bagumbayan, and institutional autonomy.  It is a story in which you and I are involved in many cases with the commitment of our lives.

In summary, Ateneo de Naga was founded on the initiative of Msgr. Pedro Santos.  In the context of Protestant proselytizing through Silliman University, he saw the need for more Catholic schools in his diocese, which was at that time the whole of Bicol.  He asked the Jesuits to come.  He wooed them with promises of land, financial assistance and personal support.  He leveraged his “Jesuit connections” through his having been at San Jose Seminary and his having the Jesuit Mission Superior, Fr. Hurley, as a patron during his episcopal ordination. 

Fr. Hurley, then mission superior in the Philippines under the New York Province, managed the Jesuit response.  His yes to Bishop Santos was a yes of the Jesuits in general to Catholic education in the world and in the Philippines. This educational commitment they were now glad to bring to Bikol.  The Jesuit yes was not just about anti-Protestantism.  It was, as Fr Burns expressed, also about making Catholic education available where for many of the Philippine’s leaders there was only public education.  It was about forming leaders in the country who would live according to Catholic values.

 

Invitation to Reflect on Constitutive Finalities

On the threshold of the celebration of our seventieth anniversary, we might reflect on these constitutive finalities of our founding fathers.  Today we might ask ourselves whether the development of the Ateneo de Naga University – with its substantial development in academic and formative programs – is faithful to the original inspiration of our founding fathers, or alienated from it.  Even as we say we are committed today to integral human formation through quality education that is Filipino, Catholic and Jesuit, how is this commitment manifested in the outcomes of our service?  How is this commitment manifested in the prior commitments of our lives?

Many of you know Sr. Joan Clare Chin-Loy.  Recently I was talking with her and attempting to share with her something of the complexities of our relationship with the Catholic Educational Association of the Philippines.  While some of you may know of the work of Sr. Joan Clare with the Missionaries of the Poor, now the Compassionate Franciscan Sisters of the Poor, few of you may know that Sr. Joan Clare came to the Philippines after a full career as an educator and high school principal in a Catholic school of the Allegheny Franciscans of Jamaica; for her service there a papal awardee pro ecclesia et pontifice had been awarded her. In a recent conversation which I had with her, where I was trying to share what we were doing to re-invent the Catholic Educational Association of the Philippines, she said in so many words, “Father, what you have to do in Catholic education is teach the young people the difference between right and wrong.”  It seemed so simple when she said it.  And I almost said, “Of course we do that, Sister!”

There was once an economically challenged student here with whom I worked closely.  He was one of our scholars.  He was even one of our dormers.  Bro. Xave Olin even told me he was material for the Society of Jesus.  In my conversations with him, he hoped one day at least to be one of our faculty members.  But even as he studied here at the Ateneo de Naga, he carried the burden of his impoverished family on his shoulder.  He worried about his     brother, who couldn’t get into college and couldn’t get a job.  He worried about his parents, who would lose their lands to creditors.  As help could be extended help was extended not only to him personally but to his family.  After he graduated, a new scholarship was worked for him in one of the best universities in Manila.  He was provided with books, a laptop, regular allowance.  He did well in his graduate studies in the first year.  But in the second, he floundered.    Soon, there was news that he had given up his studies.  Suddenly his world had changed.  His girlfriend was on the family way.  He could not not take responsibility.  All of a sudden, he could not be worried about his parents, their land, his brother, his career.  Now he had to address a new pressing concern.

Of course we would rather not judge this.  Life is life, and life’s not easy.  Most of us know of the horrible clash between what is known to be right and what is actually done in a moment of passion; we know of the cleavage between what is expected of the educated and properly formed and what is suddenly manifested, of the chasm that separates rules of proper conduct and the manner in which one’s temper is ventilated, or one’s frustration is expressed, or one’s despair is bludgeoned on another in order ironically to preserve oneself in an unhappy existence.  Most of us know of the wrongness of misusing another’s property, of abusing a student’s dependency on us, of breaching contracts in order to advance one’s career;  we know that friends – especially friends – are not to be abused, that actions done in the name of love are sacred, since God is love.  Most of us know that when we fall morally or behave badly, it is easier to deny truth publicly than accept it, to obfuscate shame with haughtiness, to parry loss of face with aggression.  As academicians we know of right and wrong… But a merely conceptual knowledge of right and wrong is idle, especially for purposes of formation, unless accompanied by courageous personal commitment to the right.

So do we teach our students the difference between right and wrong – based on our own commitment to the right?  Do we give the students a genuine framework for Catholic living – as we ourselves struggle with this? Do we introduce them to the Living God and challenge them towards sanctity – as we have ourselves despaired of sanctity in our experienced vulnerability, and can conceive sanctity now only in his mercy?  That was what Fr. Burns, our founder, was giving his students through what he called Catholic action.  Catholicism was not just about knowledge, it was about translating knowledge into life, into action – where the focus was on the translation.  Therefore his precept to teach religion daily, his insistence on weekly confession and Holy Communion, on First Friday reparation to the Sacred Heart, on October devotions to our Lady, on daily visits to the Blessed Sacrament.  Can we say that after three or four years of contact with our students they shall have been introduced to “a Catholic way of life” and have, as Fr. Burns said, ”an intelligent understanding of their Catholic faith and strong habits of Catholic practices firmly rooted in their character?”  If today as we try to translate knowledge into practice we do not insist on what then Fr. Burns insisted on, what do we insist on?

How goes it with each of us?  Nemo dat quod non habet. No one can give what he or she does not first have.  Do we give of our richness?  Or, of our poverty?

 

Frontier Challenges from Fr. General

Shortly after our last Faculty General Assembly, when I announced and explained this year’s multiple Sesquicentennial Celebration of the return of the Jesuits to the Philippines, of the founding of the Ateneo de Manila, and therefore of 150 years of Jesuit education in the Philippines, Fr. Adolfo Nicolas, the Jesuit superior general, shared his thoughts at a convocation of educational leaders from all the Jesuit schools in the Philippines. Some of you were there.  They were very low key, very modest. He paid tribute to the “amazing growth “ in the educational apostolate in the Philippines. But also acknowledged that the gathering was there not only to look forward and outward, but to look inward.  He posed questions whose answers were not easily available.  But he was confident that in posing questions, the walls of our defenses could be undermined to allow the Spirit in.

Recalling that one of the favorite words of GC 35 was frontiers, since the Pope had challenged the Jesuits and their co-workers to continue working on the frontiers, he asked, “What might the frontiers mean for you, most of whom have to go day after day, to the same campus, the same office, to the same classrooms?” What are the frontiers for a well established, successful, respected Jesuit educational system as in the Philippines?  150 years ago, the frontier was the acceptance by the Spanish Jesuits of the Ateneo Municipal – a work that seemed far away from their original mission to labor for the Kingdom of God in Mindanao.  Seventy years ago, the frontier was the acceptance by Fr. Hurley of the Cam Sur Catholic Academy, and the pioneering work of Fr. Burns that transformed this into the Ateneo de Naga High School and College.  Today, however, the question we may all wish to ask is what are the frontiers for the Ateneo de Naga University?

Fr. General proposed two possible frontiers.  First, the frontier of depth.  Second, the frontier of universality. 

Depth.  Whatever our academic discipline, do we go deep enough?  For Fr. General, this was a better way of translating the Ignatian magis than through the world more.  More denotes too easily merely more of the same, more quantitatively, “more awards, higher rankings, more computers and sports facilities, more faculty members with higher degrees.” Ignatius was more concerned on the other hand with depth.  Non multa sed multum – not many but much, not quantity but depth, “what satisfies the soul”, “what really matters in the business of becoming human and Christian”.

“What then is the depth of the education we provide, and how might we be called to go deeper?”  How deeply do we respond to our students needs?  How do we respond to their deepest hungers?  How much from our own lives do we help our students to wrestle with God so that at graduation they not only stand tall with pride, but limp from their now-lived struggle with life and truth.  How deeply do we see out students?  How deeply do we invite them to think? How deeply do we form their inner persons, their commitments and convictions, their faith and their strength?  At the end of our education, have we produced persons who can “decide from the inside,” decide from within. 

How deeply do we teach our students to love their country when we are so plagued by corruption?  How deeply do we teach students to love and preserve democracy where in our country this is so flawed?  How deeply do we help our students to find Christ in the face of a poor person?  How deeply do we serve our students when we transfer to them our professional skills?

Universality.  For Fr. General, an educational frontier is that Jesuit education should be a “more universal education in the Ignatian sense of breadth of belonging and wideness of concern and responsibility.”  Briefly, we should move beyond the particularity of selfish concerns.  We should help our students gain a sense of belonging to a broader world where their personal sense of concern and responsibility is widened.  The opposite of this universality is narrowness of vision and stinginess of concern and responsibility, the pervasive inability to see beyond one’s particular interests and the narrow concerns of one’s world.  Again, universality translates the magis, the greater relatedness to a larger group.  But if this is Ignatian magis, it is not in the sense that relating to a wider group gives me a greater sense of my superiority over them – as we might belong to the BACS and regard ourselves superior to all the schools.  Fr. General points out the violence and suffering caused by a narrowing sense of belonging and by competitiveness – a greater fear of the Other, the one who is different, does not belong to my tribe or my race or my caste.  Universality spans diverse groups, diverse languages, cultures, nationalities and personalities to form one group.

In the Philippines then, Fr. General asks, do our students have a broader sense of belonging and responsibility than their own families, classes, and clans? Do we really form women and men for others.  Can we break out of our narrow sense of belonging to this particular school?  Can we serve those outside the Jesuit system in the Philippines and so help to improve other schools?  Can we open ourselves to the wider world of Asia, to China? East Timor? Myanmar? and Cambodia?  Can we in Catholic universities do something to arrest the diminishing credibility of the Church especially among intellectuals and among youth?

At Ateneo de Naga perhaps the frontier of universality is entered when efforts are made to work with colleagues from another department or another college.  Or to find shared positions between administrators, faculty, staff and students.  Or when through the Bicol Foundation for Higher Education we begin to relate with State Colleges and Universities and Local Universities and Colleges.  Or when through the CEAP we relate with COCOPEA to influence government policy. It is in the frontier of universality that we deal with persons of other faiths and cultures;  it is here that we actually relate with students from Germany, Korea, East Timor and from China, and have teachers today from China to help us learn Mandarin.  It is in the same frontier that we have a formal exchange program with the Friedrich Alexander Gymnasium in Neustadt an der Aisch. 

Or maybe the frontier of universality calls us to a totally different plane, where through today’s technology we begin to relate to persons and entities and institutions throughout the globe.  Old boarders are really being broken down by the internet and social networking in a way never imagined.  Working relations via internet are ongoing between an Australian university and an educational project in a refugee camp on the boarder of Thailand and Burma.  In fact, our actual participation is being solicited for an educational project in Malawi, Africa; volunteers are being asked to sign up.  Some may say, “But what have we to do with black people who speak, talk, think and feel differently on the forbidding continent of Africa?”  But this is precisely Fr. General’s challenge to the frontier of universality, isn’t it?  It is the frontier of being men and women for others.  Perhaps the impossible is already possible, and with new technology we have only just begun to enter a new framework for universality in the Ignatian sense. 

I hope these reflections have been helpful.  May you have a good second semester with greater depth and universality!  May you be filled with gratitude for all the Ateneo de Naga has been over the last 70 years, and all it promises to be in the next 70 years – if and only if you continue to make its “driving goals” and constitutive finalities real though your dedication and collaboration - seeking always first the Kingdom of God.