Corporal punishment in Catholic school; Archbishop says no

Corporal punishment at St. Aug is morally troubling, New Orleans archbishop says
Published: Sunday, February 27, 2011, 6:30 AM
By Bruce Nolan, The Times-Picayune

Forty-five years ago, as a student at Cor Jesu High School in the mid-1960s, young Greg Aymond occasionally saw an angry teacher suddenly cuff a student, or shove him hard in the chest. It never happened to him, Aymond said, nor does the memory of faculty discipline meted out to teen boys in those days particularly trouble the man who later became the archbishop of New Orleans.


'I do not believe the teachings of the Catholic Church as we interpret them in 2011 condone corporal punishment,' Archbishop Gregory Aymond says.
That said, as Archbishop Gregory Aymond, now 61, confronts Catholic schools' last vestige of formal physical punishment -- this at St. Augustine High School, one of the jewels of Catholic education, he is clear:

"I do not believe the teachings of the Catholic Church as we interpret them in 2011 condone corporal punishment.

"It's hard for me to imagine in any way, shape or form, Jesus using a paddle," he said.

Moreover, he said, the social research "is very, very clear: Violence fosters violence."

Aymond's concerns about corporal punishment at St. Augustine received a public airing Thursday in an extraordinary basketball-court meeting with the school's parents and alumni.

There, the alumni, in particular, urged the school to drop its temporary ban on paddling -- a ban put in place, Aymond disclosed Friday, as a result of his concerns quietly raised with school administrators months ago.

One after another, business and professional men, tradesmen and fathers recalled getting bent over and whacked by a lay teacher or a Josephite priest during their days at St. Aug.

With the distance of age, they told Aymond they appreciated the crack of the paddle for its ability to force a mid-course correction on a young man grown lazy, or disrespectful, or too full of himself.

A few recalled memorable collective punishment: a whole class getting caned, one by one, for substandard academic performance, or because one miscreant declined to come forward.

"I listened, genuinely," Aymond said. "The words I heard are that we are different. We are unique. It works for us. It's not a problem. This is the best way we can do discipline."

But still, he said Friday, physical punishment is expressly banned in all Catholic schools for reasons both theological and psychological.

And as to St. Augustine, "It saddens me that any school in the archdiocese uses corporal punishment."

Aymond said the concern about corporal punishment at St. Augustine dates back two years and is his -- not a parent's, nor a lawyer's.

"I'm not concerned primarily about liability," he said. "I am concerned about morality.

"In my mind, to strike another person in this day and age -- 40, 50, 60 years ago, it might have been OK -- but in this day and age, all the data says this is not an appropriate thing to do.

"It doesn't foster a positive self-image. I don't think it's what the Catholic Church should be doing. And it's not what Jesus would do."

The archbishop said he found the matter waiting for him when he arrived in New Orleans from Austin in the late summer of 2009.

Aymond said his early official readings contained an unusual letter forwarded to New Orleans by the national bishops' Office of Child and Youth Protection, the child-care department set up in the wake of the Catholic sex abuse scandal.

Aymond said the letter came from an activist he did not identify who wrote from Ireland, which is suffering through a sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church worse than the American experience in 2002.

Aymond said the Irish author singled out the continuing existence of physical punishment at St. Augustine High School in New Orleans and called it to the bishops' attention.

Aymond said he inquired and learned that despite archdiocesan prohibition, corporal punishment was and is expressly authorized in St. Augustine's handbook -- that it is administered with a piece of wood at the front of a class.

That makes it different from the discipline he saw as a student at Cor Jesu, Aymond said.

"I never witnessed, in all my years at school, a paddle. Never witnessed what I'd consider violence," he said.

And Aymond said he never saw a punishment meted out in public, as a public lesson.

He said he learned that the archdiocese occasionally received parental complaints, which were forwarded to St. Augustine for handling.

But Troy Henry, who chairs the local board that runs day-to-day operations at the school, said he was surprised to hear Aymond had received parental complaints. Henry said he had spoken to school officials, who maintain they have not heard any.

Aymond said in late 2009 the archdiocese hired Monica Applewhite, a national consultant on "safe environments" for minors, to review the environment at St. Augustine in conversations with administrators, teachers, parents and students.

Although he declined to discuss her report, he said it was her research underlying his remark Thursday night that St. Augustine is the last Catholic school in the country to use the wooden paddle.

Aymond said his conversations with the Josephites, the order of Catholic priests that runs St. Augustine, prompted them to call a temporary ban on corporal punishment. And it is against that backdrop that the public meeting, with its alumni defense of the paddle, convened Thursday.

As archbishop, Aymond is charged with generally ensuring that all Catholic institutions broadly reflect Catholic values.

More particularly, he said, "When a school chooses to be a part of the family of Catholic schools, they commit themselves to adhering to the rules that are set for the office of Catholic schools. And in this case, (St. Augustine) is not following the rules."

Aymond said he is "eager for further dialogue and conversation" with St. Augustine's constituents, preferably behind the scenes.

The archbishop said he wants to avoid a display of episcopal authority in a confrontation with St. Augustine and those who love it.

"I don't want to go there. I want to be persuasive, and I want to be influential, and I want to do this in as much a peaceful and reconciling way as possible," he said.

"I would never want to use the last resort."