Renewing Catholic Schools

If memory serves, it was the spring of 1988 when I approached Christendom College with the idea of offering a master’s degree in Catholic school administration. The reply was to float the notion by running a summer course along those lines; if a good response was forthcoming, my suggestion would gain traction. The course was a grand success, with about twenty lay folk and women Religious populating the class. (Among the students was Michael Van Hecke, who went on to found the Catholic Textbook Project.) For some unknown reason, a negative decision was made on the original idea, causing me to take up my own suggestion by founding the School of Catholic Education of Pontifex University many years later. 

So, it was with no small degree of pleasure that I heard about the “Front Royal Statement” (FRS), which outlines the foundational pillars of Catholic school renewal and had its genesis through Christendom College. The document is a fine rehearsal of a truly Catholic philosophy of education, which I trust will be helpful to many elementary and secondary schools as they engage in the always-necessary process of fine-tuning their programs. That said, I would like to raise some questions, which I hope will be received as coming from a friend.

For starters, the production of this document put me in mind of a story told by Fr. Joseph Fessio, who had been a papal delegate for the 1994 Synod on the Consecrated Life. In a one-on-one conversation between Pope John Paul II and the indomitable Jesuit, the sainted pope asked the latter if he had any suggestions on potential content for the ensuing apostolic exhortation. Fr. Fessio said (in these or similar words), “Holy Father, we don’t really need a single new document from the Holy See, only the enforcement of the previous one hundred,” which engendered the swift riposte: “I shall keep that in mind, too!”

As I just noted, I believe the FRS is “a fine rehearsal” of Catholic teaching and policies for our beloved schools. However, it’s all been said before, starting with the now-60-year-old Gravissimum Educationis of Vatican II (which retains all its freshness, lo, these many decades).  In fact, I coedited, with Fr. Nicholas Gregoris, felicis memoriae, an anthology of papal and other magisterial texts on this issue (The Mission of Catholic Schools: A Century of Reflection and Direction, Newman House Press).

My initial concern with the FRS is with the composition of the group that was assembled. The four episcopal participants are well-known as thoroughly orthodox men, equally zealous in their support of Catholic education. Beyond that, I must confess that even as a practitioner of the art of Catholic schooling for more than five decades, I was not familiar with the names of more than 65 percent of the participants, most of whom have no on-the-ground experience of the apostolate they were to advise. 

It is also quite surprising to me that not a single parish priest was among the group (since direct experience and every survey tells us that he is the pivotal player in the whole scenario). I am all for theory, but it has to be balanced with reality. It seems to me that these lacunae are the result of the almost stealth manner in which the conference was born, about which conference I had heard not a peep until the day after it was over.

So, if I had had some input, here are some topics that I think need to be addressed in a systematic and frank fashion.

First, can anyone explain why the relatively small Diocese of Wichita is still the only diocese in the nation with a completely tuition-free Catholic school system? The FRS does allude to the often-cost-prohibitive element of our current school scene. However, why not take the next step and ask my question? Why has no one else even attempted to replicate the Wichita plan?

Second, what role has nearly wholesale practice of artificial contraception played in the halving of our school system over a six-decade period? If you don’t have kids, there’s no point in having a school! When is the last time you heard even a vague reference to that issue by a priest or bishop in a public forum (liturgical or otherwise)?

Third, has anyone ever heard any cleric say from a Catholic pulpit: “Entrusting your children to a government school is endangering their souls?” The FRS dutifully observes that the American Catholic school system originated in responding to just such a danger in the 19th century. Unless and until this clerical fear is staunched, we cannot expect parents to spend thousands of dollars on an institution that simply boasts of a crucifix in a classroom and a daily prayer and religion class. It always amazes me to read a bishop’s pastoral letter on the importance of Catholic schools which ends with the apology: “Now none of this should be interpreted as an attack on our wonderful public schools and religious education programs.” Really?

Fourth, do we not realize that Catholic school imitation of “public” school bureaucracy is unsustainable? We don’t dine at the public trough. Every year, I evaluate dozens of schools around the country. I can’t comprehend why a grammar school of 200 children needs a full-time principal and vice-principal—neither of whom teaches even one class. My eighth-grade teacher of 68 kids was, likewise, the principal of a school population of 500. I also don’t know why we don’t rely more on volunteers (especially among the retired, of whom he have a vast supply in the average parish).

Fifth, when has a pastor challenged the priorities of parents who can afford winter vacations, sports camps of every kind, and hundreds of cable channels—yet who cannot afford a rather reasonable tuition for the average Catholic grade or high school (in most instances, you couldn’t hire a babysitter for the same amount)?

Sixth, when has an entire congregation been challenged to support a school, reminding all that the Code of Canon Law indicates that such support is the responsibility of the entire Catholic community, not just that of the parents who desire a faith-based education for their offspring? Not a few of the occupants of our pews were the recipients of a free Catholic education. Might this not be the moment to teach them their obligation to “pay it forward,” as the adage now urges? Yet more, can anyone explain to me how near-penniless immigrants built most of these institutions and why the most affluent Catholic population in the history of the Church can’t (won’t!) support them.

Seventh, why do parishes continue to be formed without a school as part of their establishment? Many surveys inform us that, all too often, parents want a Catholic school but have none within a reasonable distance. I know of one situation in which a parish has been split five times over a half-century period. The mother parish has a thriving grammar school and high school, but not one of the daughter parishes has a school, even though their total CCD population exceeds 2,000.

This is deplorable and must be laid at the feet of weak (or nonexistent) pastoral leadership on the part of several bishops and numerous pastors. Equally deplorable is that, in all too many instances, where a merged or regional school exists, its reality is not acknowledged on either the website or bulletin of the parishes allegedly co-responsible for it?

Eighth, when are we going to get some solid research as to why we have hundreds of thousands of “Nones” among us (or better, on the sidelines)? I have a theory, which no one has been willing to test. I think the two generations comprising the majority of “Nones” exist because they have been the ones least served by our schools. That is certainly the anecdotal information I receive from the “Nones” who eventually express a desire to “come home”; but that needs to be professionally tested and then acted upon, lest we have yet another generation of “Nones” to wonder about.

Well, that’s my wish list for some future conference to tackle. If we’re being honest, most of our difficulties with the school apostolate are self-inflicted wounds; but it’s going to take a degree of soul-searching and integrity to see that—and then a massive dose of the gift of the Holy Spirit called fortitude to act on the conclusions we reach. This is really our last chance. As Bishop Daly rightly warned in the introduction of the FRS: if we continue on the present trajectory, there will be no schools to be worried about in the next 60 years.

In a letter to the Archbishop of Sydney in 1879, St. John Henry Cardinal Newman—our newest Doctor of the Church (and yes, Doctor of Catholic Education)—asked what he thought to be a rhetorical question: 

It is indeed the gravest of questions whether our people are to commence life with or without adequate instruction in those all-important truths which ought to colour all thought and to direct all action;—whether they are or are not to accept this visible world for their God and their all, its teaching as their only truth, and its prizes as their highest aims;—for, if they do not gain, when young, that sacred knowledge which comes to us from Revelation, when will they acquire it?

As we move forward toward our nation’s 250th birthday, I would suggest giving her the gift of the revival of what I like to call “The Spirit of 1884,” when the bishops of the country had as their rallying cry, “Every Catholic child in a Catholic school.” That would be a most valuable gift because, as Pope Benedict XVI told us in his stirring 2008 address to Catholic educators in Washington, D.C., Catholic schools aren’t just good for the Church (which they certainly are) but “an education in faith…nurtures the soul of a nation.”

Mother Seton knew it. Bishop John Neumann knew it. Mother Cabrini knew it. In fact, every American saint knew it. Will we today learn that lesson?