Opinion

Rite and Reason: A child cannot be reformed by lock and key and bars

Fr Edward Flanagan founded Boys Town in the US to help vulnerable young people to become mature and responsible citizens

Actor Mickey Rooney, who played the part of Whitey Marsh in Boys Town, a film about the establishment of Fr Edward Flanagan's boys home in Nebraska, speaking at a ceremony in Fr Flanagan's home town of Ballymoe, Co Roscommon. Photograph: Alan Betson

Kevin Doran
Mon Jul 31 2023 - 00:30

Whenever I visit St Croan’s Church, Ballymoe, I sense the presence of Edward Flanagan. I think of him, not so much as the saintly founder of Boys Town, but as a child of 10 who sat waiting in that church for the bishop to arrive for his Confirmation. Little did he know then what the Holy Spirit would do in his life. Chicago-based Spirit Juice Studios has produced a documentary movie on the life of Fr Flanagan which will go on general release later this year.

Born in 1886 on a small farm in Leabeg, Co Roscommon, Edward was a frail child who was not expected to survive. With great care, especially from his grandfather, he came through the crisis. Primary school was “across the border” in Galway, but much of his education, especially about Irish history, farming and faith, took place around the family home. As an adult, Fr Flanagan often talked about how he had learned from his father the fundamental rule of life of St Benedict – “pray and work”. It was a lesson he never forgot.

Having completed his secondary education at Summerhill College, Sligo, Edward emigrated to the United States, where he began his formation for the priesthood for the Archdiocese of Omaha, Nebraska. Poor health forced him twice to withdraw from the seminary. But he wasn’t that easily put off, and he completed his studies in the fresh mountain air of Innsbruck (Austria) and was ordained there on July 26th, 1912.

Part of the backdrop to the early ministry of Edward Flanagan in Omaha was the encyclical letter, Rerum Novarum, in which Pope Leo XIII had raised challenging questions about the rights of workers and the relationship between capital and labour. The young Fr Flanagan, seeing the crisis of homelessness and unemployment in Omaha, was motivated to respond.

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He came to realise that the only way to bring about real change was to work with vulnerable young people, helping them to become mature and responsible citizens. Out of this vision Boys Town, a home for boys, came into being in 1917, beginning in a single old house but moving very quickly to a farm just outside Omaha. At a time when racism and sectarianism were rampant in the United States, Boys Town welcomed children of all races and creeds. It is still in operation today, offering youth and healthcare services.

Edward Flanagan believed in the goodness of every person. He insisted that “there is no such thing as a born bad boy” and that love is the only effective tool for forming young minds and hearts. “I do not believe,” he wrote, “that a child can be reformed by lock and key and bars, or that fear can ever develop a child’s character.” This is not to say that he advocated a “soft approach”. Love must be honest and, quite often, challenging.

Following a visit to Ireland in 1946, Fr Flanagan criticised the inhumanity of the juvenile detention system and the prisons, and his comments were not well received. Modern society has still not solved the problem of juvenile delinquency. Vulnerable young people continue to be sucked into gangland criminality. Prisons tend to be occupied primarily by people coming from difficult backgrounds. In that respect the insights of Fr Flanagan remain relevant today.

The second World War provided a new focus for Fr Flanagan’s outreach to people who were at risk of exclusion. He advocated on behalf of thousands of Japanese residents, who were interned for security reasons. He got permission for many of them to live and work in Boys Town.

After the war, recognising the continuing human crisis, he visited the Philippines, Japan and Germany to support local communities in responding to the needs of children who had been displaced by war. It was on one such visit to Germany that he took ill and died.

Saints are people in whom the action of God is particularly visible. Men and women are canonised, because the church sees their potential to inspire others by their example of holiness and service. Fr Flanagan saw an immediate connection between personal goodness and good citizenship. Many people might have done the things he did.

As a Catholic and a priest, however, he bears witness to the motivating power of the love of God. He was convinced that the values of the Gospel contribute to the building of what Catholic social teaching calls “a civilisation of love”. For Edward Flanagan, faith was not a label by which we are defined, but a relationship by which we live. He saw education in faith as an integral part of the human formation of every person. He was ahead of his time in recognising that every person has to find his own path to God. “Every boy should pray,” he wrote, “but how he prays is up to him.”

Bishop Kevin Doran is Catholic Bishop of Elphin

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