Where Are the Grown-ups?

While I have not yet reached my fifth decade on this earth, I am still old enough to remember when adults were figures of authority. Once upon a time, youthful poor decision-making was met by an adult with a firm, loving correction tinged with a hint of nostalgia for a time when they, too, required such measures. 

The young will always require correction. But in a culture that celebrates and perpetuates eternal childhood, who is left to make such corrections? 

The lack of true leadership from people who should know better is one of the many reasons that public schools are the place where people lose their children. The leaders of secular education have failed by every measurable standard. The curricula is not only immoral, it is wholly inadequate for producing even a base level of literacy, which is evidenced in the significant decline of literacy in the United States.

The physical communities themselves have succumbed to behaviors that nourish gang activity, leaving even those children who come from solid families to be traumatized by violent classroom behaviors at an early age. Teachers are leaving the profession in droves, their love for education being beaten out of them by a system that is infested with DEI and sexual perversion, and that seems to have no regard for the divine dignity of children, instead treating them like computers to be programmed. 

That the secular world wants your children should not be in doubt. That so many of the people working in our Catholic schools share similar worldviews to those of their secular counterparts should cause you to fast and pray for their conversion. 

There is much to feel discouraged about with the current diocesan education system. Too many young people who have graduated from Catholic high schools remain unbaptized or are apathetic to the practice of the Catholic Faith. That any Catholic high school would not have as its primary mission the salvation of souls is to render it impotent at best—and a tool of the devil at worst. 

Setting aside commentary on the lack of spiritual direction and the infiltration of secular curricula, our Catholic schools are suffering from the same deplorable lack of mature leaders.  Setting aside commentary on the lack of spiritual direction and the infiltration of secular curricula, our Catholic schools are suffering from the same deplorable lack of mature leaders.Tweet This

If you were presented with a cross section of homecoming pictures from both public and Catholic high schools, you would find very little difference. That there is an epidemic of effeminate men allowing their daughters to leave the house in dresses that are the Hollywood costume of prostitutes is something for great concern. What about the mothers? Where are the women who insist that their daughters’ value rests not in how their bodies can be displayed and used but, instead, in the divine dignity of their souls, their bodies being reserved for the sanctity of marriage or consecrated life?

Where are the Catholic school leaders who are less concerned about divisional football championships and more concerned about the salvation of the souls entrusted to their care? Too many of them are hiding behind their own prolonged childhood, justifying the discretions of their youth by believing it wasn’t “that bad” and that they “turned out okay.” In the meantime, the young, who more than anything crave structure and boundaries to challenge them, are met with a lukewarm “Jesus loves you as you are.”

With no goalpost, and absent loving adults to assure them that they are capable of more, these young souls are falling like snowflakes into Hell. Nature abhors a vacuum, and Satan wastes no time claiming the ground we cede. Why have we given him a clear path to our children?

If you consider yourself a grown-up, it is time to start acting like one. Our young people don’t need more friends. They need real adults who, knowing the potential of the young souls in their care, insist that those souls be more than the world tempts them to. The task is a formidable one, but we have to love our children enough to try. 

My first call is to administrators of Catholic schools: get your dress code under control. Insist that your young women respect their own bodies and dress like ladies. No more scandalously short skirts with their uniforms; and insist that they cover up for school dances. Forbid Crocs, slippers, and pajama pants. Make sure that your young men have clean, pressed uniforms that fit properly, and that they attend to personal hygiene.

You cannot control the culture outside your walls, but you most certainly can control the culture within them. For love of the young souls, call them to a higher standard. With a starting point of basic self respect, you will be more likely to have their attention; and then you can start to take back some of the cultural ground we have lost. 

God willing, one day these young people will become the adults the next generation needs. 

Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us.