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 The leaves were just turning the wonderful shades of yellow, orange and red on the trees of Mundelein, Illinois. This provided an amazing backdrop for the triennial Carmelite Schools Colloquium. Representatives from all six of our Province’s schools, Mount Carmel High School, Chicago; Joliet Catholic Academy, Joliet; Carmel Catholic High School, Mundelein; Salpointe Catholic High School, Tucson; Crespi Carmelite High School, Los Angeles; and Nuestra Senora del Carmen School in Peru, gathered at the Center for Development in Ministry on the campus of the University of Saint Mary of the Lake in Mundelein, from October 11-14, 2008. The Secondary Education Commission asked Fathers Joe Atcher, O.Carm., Tom Schrader, O.Carm., and Jeff Smialek, O.Carm., to take the lead in planning and organizing this event. The main theme for this meeting was to discuss the future of sponsorship for our schools.
The attendees were able to hear from four outstanding speakers to shed some light on how to proceed in looking at models of sponsorship. Father Leopold Glueckert, O.Carm., gave a short history of the Carmelites with a particular focus on our involvement in education and how each of our schools was founded. Dr. Carole Goodwin, the chair of the Board of Directors of the National Association of Catholic Youth Ministers, spoke on the current state of adolescents and their religious beliefs and participation in the Catholic Church. Alice Hession, the National Director of Xaverian Brothers-Sponsored Schools, spoke in depth on the process of sponsorship and in particular how the Xaverian Brothers went about setting up their structures of school sponsorship. The final speaker of the Colloquium was Father Joe Atcher, the Provincial coordinator of sponsorship, who led us through some brainstorming sessions on what sponsorship might look like for Carmelites. The event culminated with a wonderful banquet hosted by Carmel Catholic High School in Mundelein.
The Schools Colloquium was an excellent opportunity to get the Province’s secondary educators looking at how we can start planning and preparing for the day when there will be no Carmelites actively involved in the daily administrations of our schools. There are some models that we can follow that will allow us to retain these institutions as Carmelite schools. There is much more work that needs to be done, but this Colloquium laid the groundwork and got all our educators thinking about how to take our schools into the future.
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