Send your thoughts to Letters to the Editor. Augustine High School in New Orleans have wielded an inch-long wooden paddle -- euphemistically called "the board of education" -- to administer corporal punishment to students for tardiness, sloppy uniform dress or other minor rules infractions.
When Archbishop Gregory M. Aymond and Josephite Father Edward Chiffriller, his order's superior general and head of the school's board of trustees, ordered the practice stopped following an intensive review process, their decision was met with outspoken opposition from parents, alumni, students, the school's board of directors, and both current and former administrators.
That disagreement played out during a three-hour, minute "disciplinary town-hall meeting" Feb. Augustine gym. About people attended. As Archbishop Aymond and members of the Josephites' board of trustees sat at a table and listened, speaker after speaker -- including Josephite Father John Raphael, St.
Augustine's president -- passionately explained why they supported the use of corporal punishment and asked that the moratorium be lifted. Augustine is the only Catholic school in the United States to have permitted corporal punishment as recently as Father Raphael shared historical references to the school's founding principal, Josephite Father Matthew O'Rourke, who instituted paddling in as a deterrent to unacceptable behavior. He even introduced his parents, who were sitting in the audience, and praised them for spanking him as a child as a way of instruction.
Father Raphael made a point of telling the crowd that Father Chiffriller, his religious superior, had given a speech at the 50th anniversary of the school in on the historic value of the paddle as a deterrent. When it was his turn to speak, Father Chiffriller said, "In light of the archbishop's concern and the Josephites' own internal concerns, the board of trustees reviewed the practice of corporal punishment and determined that its continued use is simply inconsistent with our Catholic ideals, ethics and principles.
