Farewell to St Chad's: the Rector's Last Supper

This is my last Rector's Feast after eight years in this office. It's a time for farewells and above all, for saying thank you.

 

What I want to say comes from the heart. You've made me so welcome here in this wonderful college community. As Rector, I've wanted to be a good friend and champion of St Chad's in the University, the city, the church and beyond. It's been a huge privilege. But more than that, it's been enormous fun. As I often say, in this honorary role you get all the nice bits to do while the Principal, governors and staff bear the burden and the heart of the day. They deserve our recognition.

Jenny and I have loved being part of the College for almost the whole of our time in Durham, first as Visitor, then as Rector and, to my surprise when Joe Cassidy thrust a college hood over my head on his last College Day, as a Fellow. I'm so grateful that the green St Chad's hood means that I can continue to enjoy this precious relationship with St Chad's after today when I become superannuated.

Being a friend means sharing dark times as well as light. All of us who knew and loved Father Joe still miss his loss very keenly. It was Joe who invited me to become the College's first Rector. He gave everything he had to this college that he loved. He was to all of us an inspiration, a truly transformative leader who took the long view and worked incredibly hard to make it a reality. We could not have wished for a better successor in Dr Margaret Masson who prized the aims and values for which St Chad's has stood in recent times, but who has put her own imprint on them as we move into the future. I loved working with Joe and I've loved working with Margaret. I've loved working with their colleagues, both staff and governors, people of exceptional ability and calibre.

And I've loved getting to know students too. Sadly, not enough of you, and not as deeply as I'd have wanted, though I was always heartened to get many a cheery wave when we passed one another in the Bailey. This college has always emphasised the importance of being a good community that prizes friendship. I've always felt that I was among friends in this college, and that means more than I can say. Your excellence not only academically but also in the arts, sport, volunteering and promoting social justice in the wider community has been truly inspiring. Durham University is rightly proud of you. We all are.

I'd like to wish Dean Andrew Tremlett well as he follows me in this role. It's good to know that as my successor at Durham Cathedral, he now has his feet well installed under the table with so many exciting developments to celebrate, not least the completion of the cloister project Open Treasure which I hope you will visit when the treasures of St Cuthbert are installed in their final resting place next month. I hope Andrew enjoys being Rector of St Chad's as much as I have.

So I shall follow the fortunes of the College from across the hills, in the Tyne Valley where we now live. It goes without saying that we shall miss our regular trips to Durham. However, we shall be back from time to time, knowing that behind the green front door on the Bailey, there is warmth and friendship and the stimulus of good conversation and a generosity of spirit that has no equal in Durham. Thank you for all of it.

Finally, let me anticipate and congratulate you on the dazzling results I'm sure St Chad's will have achieved** in final exams this year. Indeed, congratulations on all the success you have enjoyed as members of this college. If you are coming back in October, or your work is keeping you here, have a very good summer. And if this summer is a time for farewells, well, you and I have that much in common. There's no denying that it's poignant to say goodbye. So go with my very best wishes and prayers for the future, wherever it will take you. You and I know that we shall always prize the fact that we belong to the St Chad's family.

 

This isn't the parting of friends, but an opportunity to discover how friendship enters a new dimension; not adieu but au revoir. Thank you again. God bless you. God bless St Chad's.

**Abundantly fulfilled when the results were published the following week, the best ever for St Chad's.

In Memory of 'Papa Joe' 1954-2015

The full text of my address in memory of Dr Joe Cassidy, Principal of St Chad's College. It was given in a shortened version.

I am honoured to give this sermon in memory of Joe Cassidy. I was among the many, the very many, who loved him. I still can’t take it in that he has gone from us, taken, I want to say, cruelly out of time when he had so much life to live, so much wisdom to impart, so many gifts to offer with which our lives would have been lit up in years to come. His family, Gillian, Emmeline, Marianne and Benedict whom he loved with a fierce and wonderful devotion, are in all our thoughts and prayers.

When I came to Durham twelve years ago, Joe was one of the first to welcome me. The Cathedral is St Chad’s nearest neighbour on The Bailey. He invited me to be its Visitor, and then its first Rector. He believed that a lively partnership between these two great Durham institutions could only be good for both. I have loved my roles in the College, thanks not only to its warm, generous hospitality but also to Joe’s personal kindness and gift for friendship.

Joe had been a distinguished Catholic philosophical theologian and ethicist whose fine mind was already recognised in awards and prizes gained in undergraduate and postgraduate days. His specialism was the thought of the twentieth century Jesuit theologian and fellow Canadian Bernard Lonergan. He joined the Society of Jesus and was deeply shaped by the clarity and focus of the Jesuit way. He became a gifted and much valued retreat conductor and spiritual director. Accompanying others on their spiritual journeys was close to his heart all his life.

It’s not unknown for Jesuit priests to become Anglican, A catholic Benedictine who makes the same journey finds, I think, a natural home in this church so influenced by the Benedictine ideal and, of course, with its own Benedictine communities. There are no Jesuit communities in the Church of England, probably because the Order was explicitly founded as a Counter-Reformation organisation. Many Anglicans today practise the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius guided by directors trained in the Jesuit tradition. Joe and I often talked about these things at College high table. I mention this because Joe brought spiritual insights into Anglicanism that as a temperamental Benedictine myself, I found stimulating and refreshing. In some ways he never stopped being a Jesuit in his energetic outward-facing openness to the world, his attention to the interior life, his mentoring and spiritual guidance, and the spiritual, social and intellectual vision he brought to St Chad’s.

As an Anglican, Joe contributed significantly to the councils of the Church of England, including the General Synod where he and I would sit in the back row and commiserate about the Byzantine processes of ecclesiastical decision-making. He championed theological education and formation in the national church where he looked for seriousness, rigour, Christian wisdom and well-earthed familiarity with ordinary human life. I wonder if his own intellectual acuity as a theologian was sufficiently realised. In 1997 he came to Durham as Principal of St Chad’s. If he thought that being head of house in a Durham college would allow lots of time for leisured literary and scholarly output, reality quickly set in. Running a college  nowadays is an all-consuming enterprise. It is to Joe’s enormous credit that he succeeded in stabilising St Chad's which was then going through demanding times. His prodigious energy always in the fast lane, his practicality, his capacity to solve problems, his sheer appetite for hard work were all important aspects of his leadership.

It was a joy to watch the college flourish. It’s true that the fortunes of any institution are not simply down to the person who leads it. Next weekend I say farewell to Durham Cathedral after twelve years as Dean. I am profoundly aware that whatever our achievements, the right pronoun to use is not ‘I’ but ‘we’. You can’t be a leader in the church or higher education unless you understand that every institution these days is an organisation of consent. Collaboration and teamwork are fundamental; old-fashioned command-control techniques won’t work and aren’t respected any more. Joe would be the first to ascribe St Chad’s successes to the teams he led and was justly proud of. But leaders identify directions, inculcate values, set the tone, are influential in aligning and shaping their communities. Joe never wavered in his energetic pursuit of these goals. For him they were an act not just of duty but of love.

If you ask Chad’s students and alumni what they will remember ‘Papa Joe’ for, they will tell you about his wisdom, his warmth, his quick-witted love of repartee and his intellectual liveliness. He thought and spoke fast: you had to keep up. You will also hear about his belief that a higher education institution like a Durham college should – indeed, must – be a living community of human beings in which people care about one another and about the world they are part of so that everyone can flourish. This was the kind of college he set out to shape at St Chad’s: a humane society in which wisdom, truth and social justice are cherished. In this, he was brilliantly successful.

I last sat with Joe at the Domus Dinner in March. For some strange yet providential reason that only made sense after Joe had died, a number of us there, students, staff, alumni, wanted to pay special tribute to Joe’s leadership. Some of us decided we would get up and say something that evening. I’m so glad that just before he died Joe was able to hear these tributes expressed publicly on that lovely occasion and that he could know how much he was honoured and loved. In his modesty, he did not want to make too much of it. Self-deprecation was more his style, arising out of his genuine humility, always a beautiful quality but especially in those who lead.

Joe belonged to this Cathedral Foundation as a member of its College of Canons and Council. He loved this place and valued his own as well as the College’s connection with it. He could challenge as well as affirm us, but you always listened to what he said, whether it was to do with the Cathedral’s values statement, the Open Treasure project or arising out of his close scrutiny of the annual accounts. When Chad’s were here for the College Day service in March, at the end, he suddenly produced from nowhere a green College hood and invested me with it, saying that the Council had resolved to make me a life-fellow as a sign of the importance it attached to its relationship with the Cathedral. ‘Now this relationship is for life’ he said and gave me a fond embrace. Looking back, how moving that was for me personally, and how poignant.  

Si monumentum requiris, circumspice. ‘If you want a monument, look around you.’ So runs Christopher Wren’s famous memorial in St Paul’s Cathedral. What will Joe’s monument be? Talk to Chadsians across the world; or look into the life of this remarkable community for yourself. It’s written on the hearts and lives of the men and women he served so devotedly – and loved. And I believe this is because of what he fundamentally believed about God and about humanity. His beloved Lonergan wrote about what it means to be created in the image of God. Such a person practises ‘total surrender to the demands of the human spirit’ – others’ and his own. ‘Be attentive’ he said, ‘be intelligent, be reasonable, be responsible, be in love.’ And always cherish and honour the mystery at the core of human life for, as Pascal said, the great thinker to whom Lonergan owed so much, ‘the heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.’ This was Joe.

‘Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.’ St John’s grasp of the central insight about human life, how everything is transformed by our capacity to be loved and to love lies, I think, close to the centre of Joe’s view of things. It inspired him to be as he was. It inspired us who saw it in him. You knew that his God was as St John says he is: ‘God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.’ This was his way, his truth, his life.

Thank you Joe for everything you gave us. May you rest in peace, and rise in glory.

Durham Cathedral, 19 September 2015 (1 John 4.7-16; John 14.1-7)

A Toast to St Chad's: the Rector's Feast

The first thing I want to do tonight is to pay tribute to Dr Margaret Masson for her outstanding leadership of this college following the death of our Principal. We all owe her and her colleagues whom she has already paid tribute to a huge debt of thanks. Her wise, steady and inspirational presence are exactly what is needed at this demanding time. Margaret: we salute you. 

The last time I got up and spoke at a dinner in St Chad’s was at the Domus Dinner in March. I was sitting next to Joe Cassidy. The conversation was lively as it has always been at countless formals here. We talked quite about retirement, and he tried to persuade me to stay on as Rector here for a while after leaving the Cathedral. I laughed and said that this would be to break the rule of a lifetime. When you leave a place, you leave, I said. I also told him how much I liked his new portrait in this hall – one of the best, I think. I think he was proud of it.  

On my other side was an alumnus of the college who has been remarkably successful in his chosen profession. Nothing unusual in that, of course – it’s what we expect of Chadsians. We got talking about the college as it was in his day, and as it is now. He was full of praise for the way Chads has been led during the past decade and more. We agreed that Papa Joe needed to hear this. So we both paid tribute to him and the warm applause that followed showed that we had accurately judged the mood in the hall. Not long after that, he was dead. I shall always be glad that he lived long enough to hear not just the praise and admiration of all who were in the room but, I hope, the real affection of all whom we represented, that is to say, every generation of Chadsmen and women who owe so much to the way he touched our lives. I don’t often say that someone was ‘much-loved’ but it was true of Joe and continues to be.

This was coming through yesterday when I was privileged to join in part of the College Council’s strategy day. We had a fascinating discussion about what make this college what it is, what we cherish about it, what makes it distinctive among Durham’s colleges - the best indeed! - and what we believe its central purposes and values are. It’s important to do this work thoroughly as we think about what we look for in our next Principal. But it was clear yesterday how deeply Papa Joe had influenced the shape and character of this college. His name frequently came up in our discussions, not because we should or could look for another Joe, but because we wanted to distil from his era an enduring legacy as we look to the future. 

I have to say that I am full of admiration for the way St Chad’s has come together and forged ahead during this past term. Yes, of course the college has been grieving deeply in a time of sharp loss, and grief can’t be put away in a matter of a few days. There’s a Jewish saying about this. As you know, one of the marks of grief in Judaism was to rend your clothes as a sign that in some deep way, life has been torn apart. Someone asked a Rabbi whether, after a period of mourning, it was permitted to sow them up again and carry on wearing them. Yes, said the Rabbi, but the sown-up tear must always show. You mustn’t pretend it isn’t there, because even though life must go on, it’s never the same when someone you care about dies. 

St Chad’s has handled this really well. You have supported one another marvellously during a dark time. Life has gone on, the college is flourishing, our exam results are the best ever, and as I've said that’s a tribute not only to Joe's achievement but also to Dr Masson and her colleagues, all who share the leadership of the college. I want to include in that the three common rooms and their leaders. What I saw yesterday was a college that is in excellent spirits, vibrant, forward-looking, embracing a future that is filled with possibility and promise. I have been privileged to be a small part of that.

‘Have been…’ When Joe died, the Chair of the Council asked if I would stay on as Rector for a year even though I shall have left Durham. So this is not my final Rector’s Feast that I thought it would be. I am looking forward to being back during the coming year and to seeing you all again.  

Let me finally say three things. 

First, a thank you. Thank you for all that you put into this College.  Thank you if you are leaving, and thank you if you aren’t just yet. You receive so much from Chad’s because you give so much.  There is a wonderful loyalty among Chads people past and present. It has moved me to hear you speak about your love for this place and its community. It’s right to recognise it and applaud it.

Secondly, a thought for those of you whose days at Durham are drawing to a close. I hope you don’t dwell on the word ‘leaving’. What you have been given here is just a part of a journey: your learning, your personal development, the way your citizenship and your values have been shaped, maybe too, faith and friendships that will last a lifetime.  St Chad’s will always be a permanent part of that journey. You can take people out of Chad’s, but you can never take Chad’s out of the men and women who make up its worldwide family.  I hope you’re as proud as I am to belong to this great extended family.  I know you are. 

Thirdly, an invitation. Come back often: you will always be welcome. Stay connected as alumni.  Let me wish you the very best for the future, wherever life leads you.  And because this is a Christian foundation and we are allowed to speak in these ways, I am going to add, may God bless you and keep  you always.

Here’s to your future.  Here’s to the College’s future.  The toast is: ‘St Chad’s’. 

18 June 2015