Living the Call. Michael Novak
a meeting with a local pastor in an effort to recruit more students from the African-American churches, “and he said, ‘Well, why don’t you come preach?’” So she said yes. What is she planning to say? “I am going to talk about family and children first. I will quote Scripture about family and children and connect with them on that level. I am going to talk about why it’s important for his congregation to think of this school as a very viable option for their kids.”
It is more than a viable option. Despite the depressing statistics about the neighborhood environment, 94 percent of Paterson Catholic graduates go on to college. As much as Mary is a believer in Catholic education because of the results it produces (at a cost much lower than that of public schools, she is quick to add), it is the faith in Paterson Catholic High School that makes it distinctive and so successful.
“This is not a job; it’s a ministry,” she says more than once during our conversation. “You have to be passionate about your faith as well as the field of education. You have to understand mission. Because there’s a need to be here. You have to understand that need. It’s challenging. It’s rewarding. It’s about the children and doing God’s work for the children.”
In fact, she’s often doing the work not just of God, but of parents. Many of her students live with only one parent, and some have been left with members of their extended family and no parents at all. Not having a “family unit,” Mary believes, makes building a foundation for the kids even more difficult. Too often, the role falls to her teachers and administrators. “You have them for more hours than their own parents have them,” Mary observes. And so it’s all the more important to be in an environment that emphasizes core values. “To not be able to say to someone, ‘God bless you.’ ‘Let’s pray.’ With all the destruction that goes on in the world every day, that we can’t come together in prayer and face it. To be void of saying, ‘Thank you, God.’ ‘God help us.’ I mean, that’s not something I could deal with.”
In one way, Mary Baier ended up right back where she started—in Catholic schools. But the contrast between the schools Mary attended and the ones she leads today could not be starker. For instance, she can’t even remember having a layperson for a teacher until she was in high school. Today, Paterson Catholic has a single priest chaplain and one nun who teaches math. The rest of the faculty and administration consists of laypeople.
Back when Mary was growing up, the surrounding community shared the values of the school. Today, that’s not always the case. When they walk through the doors of her school, says Mary of her students, they have safety and security and a faith-filled environment. “But we still send them back out there. And it’s not a faith-filled environment. And it’s not safe and it’s not secure. It’s survival mode when they leave our doors.” A look of deep concern spreads over Mary’s face as she describes what she sees as her students’ “double lives.”
The challenges of leading an inner-city Catholic school are not just the result of outside influences. Mary sometimes has parents and guardians in her office complaining about the way she and her teachers have handled a problem student. She recalls an incident earlier in the year in which a student was repeatedly getting in trouble. The parents’ response, she says, was, “We pay tuition, so we’re entitled to tell you this is what you want.” She had several meetings with them but felt they were talking in circles. After careful consideration and prayer, she said to the parents, “We seem to be almost confrontational. But I want what’s right for your daughter, and you want what’s right for your daughter.” So the three adults turned to the young woman and finally got her to talk about what was behind her behavior. Together, they found out she was being bullied and helped her to fix the problem.
Mary reflects on the incident. “I would have just loved to have said, ‘You know what? This is just not the school for you. I just think you need to go.’ That would have been easier.” In another position, in another environment, she says, she might have been dismissive. It’s so much harder to work at these problems, “but that’s what real leadership is.” Now she regularly sees those parents, and they are very friendly with Mary after realizing what they have in common: the children.
Someone with Mary Baier’s schedule, someone faced with the kinds of problems she faces—well, it would be easy to understand a certain kind of dismissiveness. Indeed, it could just seem like a necessary sort of efficiency. But Mary is committed to thinking and praying over her decisions.
“It’s how we react to different situations that our leadership is seen first and foremost. You can go either way with a situation.” But that is where her Catholicism has affected her. “It’s because of your faith that you know what you need to do, in spite of what you might want to do.”
Becoming the head of an urban Catholic school has made Mary’s faith “stronger.” It has made her “more understanding, more accepting, more respecting of the things in your life.” She takes less for granted now. “I am thankful for the gifts and blessings God has given me. My family first, my faith, my friends.”
Mary is a very upbeat person, very energetic, but she can slow down to reflect too. Her journey has not always been a smooth one, she laments. After 28 years of marriage, her husband and she divorced. “I am not married anymore,” she says with profound sadness. “Does it break my heart? Yes. Do I believe in marriage? Absolutely.”
While many people may throw themselves into a job in order to get over the pain of emotional loss, Mary doesn’t seem to be running away from anything. Her ministry, she says, has even helped her to remain faithful. She says that she can’t let circumstances change her or make her more negative. “It’s much harder to stand up, to be forgiving of myself and of my sons’ father and to get on with life and want him to be happy. It’s hard to turn the other cheek. But you need to do it.” Mary readily admits that she is no saint. But she prays every day. “I pray for forgiveness, I pray for adoration, I pray for thanksgiving.” And she tells me that the positions she has taken in Catholic education have helped her be a good model to her sons.
It is clear that the satisfaction she derives from her position comes from the love of her students. “The kids are so worth it. They have a lot of attitude, but they’ve got heart and soul.”
She tells me that one of her students, a senior by the name of China, came in to talk to her one day. “I’m like a jelly bean,” she told Mary, “I’m hard on the outside but gushy and mushy on the inside.” Maybe China’s on her way to becoming a Catholic school principal too.
POSTSCRIPT
In the months since we spoke with Mary, Patterson Catholic was closed down by the Diocese of Paterson. We shared Mary’s story because we think it’s still important in helping others find their vocation, but this sad development is symbolic of the crisis in Catholic education.
CHAPTER 5
Passing by Injustice—and Then Stopping to Do Something about It
Peter Flanigan