Brothers
The order of Marianist Brothers celebrates 125 years of educating young men at Saint Louis School, and of supporting all people in their ‘journey of faith’. Pictured on the cover left to right: Brother Jim Dods, Father Tim Eden and Brother Luis Gamboa in the Mystical Rose Chapel
By Chad Pata
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As the Marianists celebrate the 125th anniversary of their arrival in the Islands and taking of the helm at Saint Louis School, they look back fondly on the accomplishments they have made and cautiously at what their future might hold.
For as much good as they have brought to the children of Hawaii, their order is attracting fewer and fewer brothers, and according to a release from Brother Mike O’Grady, who serves as the assistant for Religious Life for the Marianists, they have had to close three parishes in recent years largely because of concerns about the age of the parish ministers.
Locally, one need look no further than a recent photograph of the Hawaii Marianists - of the 20 men pictured, only one still has a full head of dark hair, Brother Luis Gamboa.
“We are happy people are coming into the brothers, that’s a blessing,” says Gamboa, who teaches Spanish and serves as a liaison to international students at Chaminade University. “But if no one becomes a brother, that’s fine. We are not here to have a reputation and become famous, that is not the point. The point is to bring God into this world. If it is God’s will, then it will die. A beginning has to have an end, but if it’s God’s will, we will continue regardless of what happens.”
For the Marianists, it is more about service than perpetuation, and this dates back to their roots that grew out of the upheaval of the French Revolution. William Chaminade was a priest at the onset of the revolution, and while the legendary revolution eventually forced him to flee his native land, the principles that the rebellion espoused helped shape the order he founded in 1816 known as the Society of Mary.
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Chaminade envisioned a unique movement where citizens of all classes, men and women, priests and laypeople evangelized not by preaching, but by example.
“Our founder Chaminade wanted the brothers to work mainly with laypeople to Christianize the world,” says Gamboa. “Through laypeople they can do more than a brother, sister or priest can because they are fully in the real world, so they can Christianize easier than a priest. The point here is not to baptize everyone in the Catholic Church, but to help them maintain their faith and support them on their journey of faith.”
In the Marianists, Chaminade did away with the former tiered system, leveling the field within the order in much the same way the revolution did away with the monarchy.
“What I like is that unlike other Catholic orders, or even the diocese, there is a sense of egalitarianism within the order,” says Ray Abregano, dean of faculty at Saint Louis School and former Marianist brother. “The priests are not held at a higher place than the brothers - everybody works. So the laity have a huge role in carrying on the culture, but you don’t have to carry on all the vows that they do in the brotherhood.”
Chaminade envisioned education as the key to reintroducing Catholic values to modern, secular France, reaching out to the youth and showing by example how one should live.
This vision has spread to six continents and 40 countries, coming to Hawaii on Sept. 3, 1883, aboard the S.S. Mariposa. The ship carried eight Marianist brothers, who had been requested by Father Leonor Fouesnel, the vice-provincial of the Sacred Hearts Mission, when they realized that the running of a school was too big a burden for the mission.
The brothers took over the school, known as “Kamakela” at the time, in its new location along the Nuuanu Stream across from Chinatown. The school had a population of 70 boys, and five of the brothers began the task of retooling the school, headed by Brother Bertram Bellinghausen, while the other three headed to Saint Anthony’s on Maui to do the same.
Under Brother Bertram the school grew to 700 students by 1905, and all the while he cultivated a relationship with King Kalakaua that led to Kalakaua using the Saint Louis Band for official occasions, as well as having the king attend school plays and performances.
In addition, Bertram was an avid photographer, capturing much of how rural Honolulu looked at the time as well as documenting the historic Chinatown fire. Many of these photos are currently on display in the Lyman Museum in Hilo.
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In 1923, they purchased 205 acres in Kaimuki, where the school is currently situated, for $62,000, and the school thrived there until that dark day in December 1941. The school was turned into the 147th General Hospital for the Army, treating the wounded from the war in the Pacific. Desks were moved out and gurneys were moved in, and the brothers took on many of the essential but menial tasks such as janitorial services.
The elementary kids moved in with St. Patrick School, and the high schoolers shared a campus with McKinley, leading to fierce rivalries, as you can imagine. To ease some of the tension, Saint Louis football coach Neal Blaisdell created the “poi pounder trophy,” to go to the winner of the Saint Louis/McKinley football game.
Once the school was returned after the war, the brothers began working to open a college in the name of their founder, and Chaminade opened its doors to its first students in 1955, its campus adjacent to Saint Louis School.
Many know of the school for its accomplishments on the field - ask anyone locally to name famous Saint Louis grads, and names like Jim Nicholson, Timmy Chang, Jason Gesser and Benny Agbayani will likely spill out.
But sports stars are not all Saint Louis creates. Politicians such as Lt. Gov. Duke Aiona and late Gov. John Burns learned their craft on the Kalaepohaku campus. Local music legends George Helm, Dean Pitchford and Daniel Ho honed their musical skills at the school.
Even the first Hawaiian-born three-star general, Lt. Gen. Joseph Peterson, came from the Kaimuki campus.
“Saint Louis High School was about teaching me to be a leader, a leader of soldiers, a leader of men,” says Peterson, who graduated in 1968. “A leader of not just the military but also their families. Chaminade taught me how to be a great business manager. So if you put those two together, Saint Louis gave me the foundation of leadership and balance. Chaminade taught me to understand the more technical side of life.”
Yet with all these names, none really brings to mind the pious Marianist way of life. This is because of the much more open approach to differing views that the Marianists foster. Unlike many Catholic orders, for whom the term dogmatic was created, the brothers encourage a vigorous discussion of opposing ideals.
“It’s world religion - the values we instill in the kids are pretty universal, things of adaptation and change, family spirit,” says Timothy Los Banos, the academic dean of Saint Louis School. “It goes down into the nitty-gritty in the classroom, regardless of the family’s religious affiliation. It’s character development, character building that really separates us from other independent schools on the island because we use that as a grounding basis for our curriculum.”
Much has changed for the Marianists over the
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