SMU Magazine Winter 2001 - Saint Mary's University of Minnesota

Contact Program members Tim Gossen ’01 (back left) and Aaron Kual ’00 (back row, third from left)
supervised inner-city children on an outing to the Saint Louis arch.
Keeping the flame alive
through ‘Contact’
On June 2, 2000, the De La Salle
Christian Brothers met in
Rome, Italy, to elect the 26th
successor to their founder, Saint John
Baptist de La Salle. The new Superior
General, Brother Alvaro Rodriquez
Echeverria, exhorted the gathered
assembly, “Brothers, let us keep alive
the flame that was ours at the birth of
the Institute.”
Four months and an ocean away, the
director of the Contact Program at Saint
Mary’s University
of Minnesota,
Brother Pat Conway
’75, is seeking
to do just that.
Statistically,
the number of
Christian Brothers
worldwide has
Brother Pat Conway
been in a steady
FSC ’75
decline since at
least the early
1990s. In the Midwest Region of the
United States, there are 228 Christian
Brothers, representing the largest group
of their order in the United
States/Toronto Region. Ten years ago,
that number was about 300. Throughout
the region, there are approximately 1,040
Christian Brothers.
With these declines, there are fewer
Brothers to carry on the Lasallian traditions
of education and service to the
poor. Through the Contact Program at
Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota and
Lewis University in Romeoville, Illinois,
however, the Christian Brothers are
introducing a whole new generation to
the Lasallian charism.
The Contact Program brings
together young men who are seeking to
know God’s will in their lives and to gain
a better understanding of what it means
to be a Christian Brother in society
today. The young men study the life and
vision of Saint John Baptist de La Salle
and the various ministries of modern
Christian Brothers.
At Saint Mary’s University, the faculty
and staff identify prospective Contacts.
Brother Pat sends a
letter in the spring
describing the program
and asking for recommendations.
“Because there
are so few Brothers in the
classroom,” he explains,
“we rely on this method to
identify students.”
“There are no Brothers
from Generation X,”
Brother Pat says, referring
to the young men born between the early
1960s to late 1970s. “We lost them.” This
may have been caused by the closing of
Saint Yon’s, the Christian Brothers’ novitiate
at Saint Mary’s University during
the 1960s. “We didn’t know how to
engage this generation, what to invite
them to,” he insists. “Now that they see
we’re getting closer to our roots, they are
more interested.”
This year, there are 11 young men
participating in the Contact Program at
Saint Mary’s University. They range from
all class years and list majors as diverse
as computer science and biology. Like the
24 Christian Brothers who currently live
or work at Saint Mary’s, these Contacts
would most likely choose to teach in their
chosen field should they decide to join
the Christian Brothers. “Most say they
won’t teach until they are old,” Brother
Pat says with a smile. “Like age 30.”
“They want to respond to Saint John
Baptist de La Salle more radically,”
Brother Pat emphasizes. The Founder’s
charge to reach out to the poor strikes a
chord with young men today. Brother
Pat pulls out several packets of photographs
from recent Contact Program
trips to the inner city regions of Minneapolis
and Saint Louis, Mo. The photos
show an imposing Victorian house
from the Twin Cities’ Phillips neighborhood
— a “crack house” — that the
young men renovated. Other snapshots
show the Contacts teaching and going
on field trips with children from the
inner city of Saint Louis.
This year, the Contacts will visit the
Christian Brothers’ San Miguel School in
Minneapolis. Doug Werner, a junior from
White Bear Lake, spoke to the August
Assembly of the Brothers of the Midwest
District about his experiences at the
school. “In this service, I began to more
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