It gives me great pleasure to be present here today at the annual Prize Giving of your College. I say so, for more than one reason.

Firstly, this is the first time I preside at a school function here in Jaffna.

Secondly, that first opportunity is connected with a school I have known, and very much admire.

Thirdly, we in the South owe so much to St. Patrick’s and this event gives me an opportunity to express deep gratitude to the College for the yeoman service rendered throughout this illustrious institution’s 153 years of existence. Let me also use this occasion to thank St. Patrick’s College for educating students from the South, and especially, from Anuradhapura and other parts of the North Central Province. Many stalwarts in the field of leadership have been products of St. Patrick’s, and it is with deep gratitude that they always spoke of Fr. Long and the other Rectors of this College. If I may add a personal note, almost all my Tamil friends from Jaffna – reminding us of the old play “He comes from Jaffna” -- have been Old Patricians. Additionally, my revered spiritual director in the Major Seminary was one of your most beloved and admired Rectors –- Fr. Charles Soubry Mathews. Hence, it is with a sense of great personal joy and nostalgic memory that I thank the Rector and his staff for inviting me to preside at this function.
 
St. Patrick’s is certainly among the oldest existing Catholic schools in our island. With the more benign policy of the British who took over from the Dutch in 1796, Catholics could open schools in the maritime provinces.  But, battered after the Dutch persecution and ill-supplied with personnel at the time, the Catholic Church remained long paralyzed. In fact, the Church had only 16 missionaries to serve some 80,000 Catholics throughout the entire country.
 
With the entire island coming under British rule by 1815, those missionary groups which had the patronage of the British became ardent apostles of English education. Thus we see the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge coming here as early as 1801, the Baptist Missionaries coming in 1812, the Wesleyan Missionaries coming in 1815 and the American Board of Commissions arriving in 1816. Many of them arrived initially in Colombo but quickly moved northward thus making the entire western belt a hive of educational activity.

Therefore it is a matter of great pride that, in such circumstances, this school could commence as early as 1850.

One of the most outstanding personalities in the field of education at the time, not only here but in all of Sri Lanka was Bishop (later Archbishop) Christopher Bonjean. His activity was three pronged. First he fought for the rights of the Catholic community to have their own schools financed justly and fairly as the other communities in the island. Secondly, he established a large number of Catholic schools and provided the necessary facilities for Catholic parents to send their children to Church-run schools. And thirdly, he formulated policy for the Catholic schools in the context of the local situation in the country having due respect for the local culture and environment.
 
Having been a missionary in Jaffna for 12 years, with a previous nine-year experience in India, and then Vicar Apostolic of Jaffna for 15 years, he left for the South to be the Vicar Apostolic and, later, the first Archbishop until his death on 3rd August 1892. His zeal for education never waned and in Colombo he remained equally devoted. In fact, his experience in Jaffna stood him in good stead in Colombo.

The Archbishop stated clearly in a Pastoral Letter dated 6th January 1892 – “It is now forty years since we endeavored …..to arouse the Catholics of Ceylon to a sense of their duties in the matter of the education of their children, and we showed how the Catholic Church was averse to no intellectual advance, so long as it was not divorced from Religion, and we vindicated her claim as the chief promoter of knowledge.” The Bishop adds “progress in education consists not in the mere multiplication of schools and scholars, but in the improved nature of the education imparted.” The Bishop says “The goal we have ever aimed at is simply this: To place our Catholic Educational Institutions in the matter of secular training upon a level with the best non-Catholic Institutions in the land.”

One hundred and eleven years later we have to repeat much of the same where Catholic education is concerned. And we need today that same vision in education to begin anew. Those who misrepresented our honest motivation in education have destroyed almost totally, the great structure that we, and all other religious denominations genuinely dedicated to education, built up for nearly a century. Our opponents wrongly interpreted that we were against Free Education. The stalwarts in the field of education like Fr. Peter A. Pillai, at that time, did not oppose the education of poor children. Rather, they were aware that the state was going beyond its means, and only proposed a more rational system that could be contained within our economy. Such a pragmatic system could have been of better service to the country and to the poor. Even in the matter of Swabasha, the policy enunciated by Catholic educationists was a policy of go-slow and balance, and not abolition. Swabasha had to be given its place - but not at the cost of putting us into a ghetto in a world that was fast to shrink into a Global Village. As for the nationalization of schools – we were certainly against it. The reason was not to preserve lands and property, but to safeguard our children’s religious and cultural formation.

The enmity of our opponents destroyed not only our Catholic effort but also the effort of all of the country’s other religious groups who worked with genuine conviction to promote an education based on our ancient and noble concept that the arch of education is built on the two pillars of science and virtue which virtually coincides with your motto Fide et Labore. We consider education in a religious atmosphere as the source of inspiration and sustenance as well as the point of reference for all the educational activity in the school.
 
The undermining of this religious component in the school ruined our system of education. And the country did not take a decade to experience the disastrous consequences of this. The results of this folly continue to haunt us both in the South and in the North as we experience wave after wave of indiscipline, crime and violence even in educational institutions.
 
Therefore the time has come for us to re-think our entire system of education. It has been the tradition of every religious denomination in this country to base education on religious belief which relates a person in the final analysis to the eternal. There is no meaningful formation for a child unless he or she is brought up in a religious atmosphere rooted in a religious background. Thus they are not only taught things, but taught to live. It is not only a matter of loading a child’s mind with knowledge and information like feeding a computer. But it is a matter of forming the child to live – to be a human.

For us Catholics our philosophy of education is based on our understanding of the person. That understanding for us is the fruit of God’s revelation. Some aspects of our understanding of the human person are widely shared in society today, while other aspects are not. Since we share many perspectives and commitments with others it is imperative that we jointly try our best to restore a common concept of schooling in a religious atmosphere.

Catholic education is essentially the preparation of the child to life in the reality of his being as a creature of God. Thus there is the relationship to God, the relationship to society, and the relationship to the environment. As Fr. Rector very rightly referred to, education as we experience today is anything but in that context and background. Education has got so politicized that the school child too has become an instruments to achieve the political ambitions of various parties. Unfortunately we see ugly symptoms of this once again, especially in the South. 

Catholic education should try to impart to the candidates a sense of Truth, Justice, Solidarity and Freedom. No civilized society could prosper without these noble qualities. Today, for us in the Catholic school, be it in the North, South, East or West of our country, we have also a further grave obligation to educate our children to the path of peace. As Fr. Rector aptly referred to in his report “the ethnic war that had seemingly taken on a life of its own is no more. What we all Catholics and the people of goodwill yearned and prayed for has come true.” While I appreciate very much the sentiments of the Rector, we have all to remember that the Catholic school could be one of the primary agents to promote that peace. We of the Catholic community are privileged to have in our fold people of both ethnic groups and it is to our great consolation and credit that when the first outbursts of ethnic violence erupted in the Island, the Catholic community in their respective areas, maintained peace and calm. This noble behaviour was attributed to the education they had received.

Today we have once again to re-build that program for peace. We have to teach that peace is something we have to work for, and it is not achieved except through mutual cooperation, collaboration and compromise. St. Patrick’s as I mentioned earlier was a bridge between the north and the south. I hope St. Patrick’s will once again lead in bridge building for peace.

It would be most apposite for me to quote the words of your bishop of revered memory - Christopher Bonjean - mutatis mutandis, to conclude my speech. ‘May you of the present day be proud to attach your names to an effort the blessings of which are to go down to so many generations of your descendants: that fully alive to the dangers which threaten our society and the salvation of your children may you leave no stone unturned to avert those dangers that purely secular education imparts: and fight fearlessly to explore all the avenues available to restore that ingredient – namely, religion in education without which education is “non est.”

Finally, I congratulate the prize-winners of today. There are also the others who did try but did not succeed this time. I wish them success in the future.

To all of you my dear Boys, my message is – make the best of your stay here in College. This is the golden opportunity you have in your life. Do not miss it. As the poet says –

“Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, Old time is still a flying. And this same flower that blooms today, tomorrow may be dying.” 

So make the best of the time you have because this is the one and only time when you are in school. Do your best as your motto reads – Fide et Labore.

Thank you and God bless you.