Catholic Education: Celebrating gold and silver anniversaries

By CHRISTIE L. CHICOINE
CS&T Staff Writer

For 50 and 25 years, respectively, educators John B. Mooney and Regina Smith Tanghe have reported to their jobs at archdiocesan Catholic schools, yet neither says the destination was “work.”
Mooney, 69, and Smith Tanghe, 48, were among Catholic educators honored at a Feb. 8 Mass Cardinal Justin Rigali celebrated at the Cathedral Basilica of SS. Peter and Paul for teachers and administrators completing 25 and 50 years of service in Catholic education.
“Actually, I hate to say it was a job,” said Mooney, assistant principal for student affairs and athletic director at Msgr. Bonner High School in Drexel Hill.
“As the years went by, I never said, ‘I’m going to work.’ I always said, ‘I’m going to school.’ I never really grew up. When baseball rolled around, no matter how old I was, I always became 16 again,” added Mooney, who was the varsity baseball coach while serving at the now-closed St. James Catholic High School for Boys in Chester, for 39 years.
“I’m thankful I was able to do this,” said Mooney, who plans to retire at year’s end. “People tell me I’m crazy for things I do and I tell them God’s kept His hand on my shoulder for when I climb ladders to the ceiling of the gym, or I’m out on the roof pushing water off, shoveling snow, cutting the grass or breaking up fights at the trolley stop.”
Smith Tanghe, a 1969 St. Anne alumna and the school’s vice principal, considers her occupation “the extension of my family, just continuing the day. I never considered educating children as a job.”
Instead, she said, it is her way of helping youngsters build a solid future.
She started at St. Anne’s as a third grade instructor and later taught second grade and kindergarten. “It’s just part of me — there was no other way to go,” she said of her career choice.
In his homily, Cardinal Rigali said the words Jesus addressed to Peter, “‘Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men,’” from Luke, 5:1-11, was applicable to the assembly of Catholic educators.
“You, jubilarian teachers, have been fishers of young people. Whether you teach math, science, business, English, history or religion, you all teach in the Church and bring our students closer to the Jesus whom they desire to know and for whom they search in their lives. ...”
The Cardinal said that Catholic educators contribute greatly to building up the Church for generations to come.
“You, as teachers, are missionaries of God’s Word from the daily interaction of the classroom to the endless nightly preparations and research. The classroom becomes the marketplace wherein Christ dwells.”
The Cardinal acknowledged the sacrifices the educators make to cultivate the moral and religious character of a generation of young Catholic people. “It is within this context that we are proud to call you ‘teachers,’” he said.
“Today, we remember with respect and affection your freely chosen response to a calling to collaborate in the Church’s divine mission of education exercised through schools which are linked to my predecessor, St. John Neumann, and which extol the family, this great nation and the human dignity of each person,” added the Cardinal.
Celebrating their silver anniversaries in archdiocesan schools are 52 elementary teachers/administrators as well as 11 secondary teachers/administrators.
Commemorating their golden anniversaries are two secondary teachers/administrators.

Contact Christie L. Chicoine at 215-587-2468 or cchicoin@adphila.org.