Ramblings on Catholic education........

As a former educator, I am greatly concerned over issues of modern Catholic education. In doing so I am generally more concerned with what is happening here in America than in Europe. This is not to alienate my European and Latin American Readers. However, being a heathen American, I am more in touch with what is occurring (or not) in American education, and second, America so far has been the only nation to mildly resist the fullness of the liberal revolution, in spite of its constitution which is based on the ideas of Voltaire, Montesquieu and Jefferson.

That being said, to see the crisis of modern Catholic education we need to sketch briefly the beginnings of Catholic education in this country. The need for Catholics to form parochial schools as alternatives to public education were twofold:

1) To avoid the protestant presence and indoctrination present in many public schools of the 19th century, the reading from the King James Bible, and the fostering of a heretical religion.

2) To fight against the development of secular atheism and relativism by figures such as William James and John Dewey. Their philosophic system, which is called "Pragmatism", can succinctly be described as philosophical protestantism. As Protestants denied set dogmas and a magisterium, then belief in the individual and his faith, and private interpretation of scripture, so too did James (and later Dewey) move the concept of objective principles in ethics and sociology to the private person's understanding, a determination of accepted morality which would operate in a democratic fashion rather than a cultural or religious one.

Faced with these problems, Catholics in union with their priests and bishops worked toward establishing a system by which nurturing the soul of children would be seen as the first and foremost object of education. As the school systems became more secular, more modest, increasing numbers of Catholics began to feel that it was not only a good to send their children to Catholic school, but a duty.

In such a context, where men also worked 10 hour days and even their wives had to enter the workforce, schooling was necessary to educate the whole child. Catholic schools for many years were a rampart against the world, teaching children the Bible, Catholic doctrine, Latin and Greek, andHistory as well as Math and Science which was all important. The Jesuits, who at the time were the special forces of Christ's soldiers (whereas today they are the special forces of the clown marines) had been to every continent, learned every language, studied every science and avenue of Math and Astronomy which could be uncovered. In many cases, non-Catholics sent their children to Catholic schools on account of the education which Catholic schools provided. The best and brightest were priests and nuns teaching in Catholic schools. Catholic Universities also benefited from the presence of monks and priests highly skilled in their disciplines.

If one were to view the spectrum today however, he would have to ask: what went wrong? Where did those wonderful schools go to? Those highly skilled Jesuits, Dominicans and Franciscans, the armies of teaching nuns drilling equations and Latin conjugations into children's minds, where are they? They retired with the spirit of Vatican II.

Having worked in both Catholic and public schools, I can certify with a number of other former and current educators that the only perceivable difference between the two (with rare exceptions) is an occasional crucifix on the wall and a Mass once a week. Religious instruction is little different from what one could find in a comparative religions class at many secular high schools, and in most cases they teach heresy right in the textbooks. In many Catholic high schools sex ed is taught, biology classes teach the benefits of contraception, scorn is made on the average Papal teaching concerning women priests and homosexuality, and of course, priests who dress like laymen teach classes declaring that there is no difference between religions, or repeat some canard about religion causing all wars.

One of the things occurring concurrently with the modernist crisis of the 20th century was new trends in education stemming from Dewey, which rejected order, which rejected discipline, and which rejected the principles that sound traditional education were founded upon. Instead of promoting the concept of achievement among children, it was deemed that this might negatively impact the self esteem of the non-achiever. In our present time this has found a full expression in not publishing honor rolls, and in some cases abolishing grades below a C.

When Pope John XXIII decided it was an opportune time to break down the ramparts, to open up the doors to the world, it was these same principles and ideas which Catholics and good Catholic educators had resisted for the better part of 70 years that entered into the schoolhouse window.

Therefore it is no surprise, that as the armies of teaching orders put their habits in the same dustbin as traditional discipline (via a paper airplane) that moral corruption, heretical religious instruction and teenage pregnancy entered the school yard like a welcomed bully. In fact, it was then that the number of students graduating from Catholic school who left the Catholic faith rose to an all time high. Why not if Sister Snakebite is teaching that the Church is evil for not allowing contraception and women priests? Why not if Fr. Nirvana is teaching us to get in touch with our inner self through centering prayer? Why not when the entire discipline and structure of the Church around us from liturgy to architecture is recast in the image of man rather than God?

Thus we find ourselves in a situation where the Pope is prepared to declare that most Catholic Universities are not Catholic. We are in a situation where religion text books contain statements like, "Jesus probably thought he was a prophet" (Zanzig, "Jesus of Faith, Christ of History", a popular high school text). Or, "Jesus did not know he was God", (ibid) the concept that the first five books of the Bible were made up after the Babylonian exile by a multiplicity of authors following various traditions ("Written on our Hearts", from the same publisher of the above), that great Old Testament heroes like Samson, Judith, Joshua, and David did not exist but were pious stories, that Liberation Theology is a beautiful way for the poor to find dignity (Justice and Peace), that there are two truths, one scientific and one religious, or that the Church was too hard on Arianism and needed to "understand" them(!) (Story of the Church by Alfred McBride, O.P), and that Jesus was not fully God. The "Celebrating the Sacraments" book from the same publisher, declares that the Eucharist is only a meal, frowns on infant Baptism, has pictures of priests who are committing innumerable liturgical abuses and scarcely has one true thing to say about the Sacrament of Confirmation. Long gone are the days when our children in religion classes learned the Creed and what it means, that the Mass is the representation of the Sacrifice of Calvary (until they had me as their teacher that is), or that Confirmation is not the "sacrament of adulthood" in the Catholic Church! I mentioned this to the Bishop in a meeting I had with him, and he said "Well, that has been largely discredited." I replied "That may be, but not in the confirmation classes in your diocese!" What I also didn't mention, because my principal was also present, was this is true in some of the classes taught by my colleagues!

What turned my head, was when I taught the Church's teaching on the Mass, not only the Traditional formulation, but also from sections of the new Catechism, and it was as if I had said I was part of a band of traveling mexican midgets. They had not heard it before! One little girl raised her hand and said "What I see every Sunday doesn't look anything like that." This is ultimately why I was fired from my first teaching job, the religion which I was teaching was completely at odds with the one being pedaled for 40 years. I mean, for goodness' sake, Catholic education has totally capitulated to the world, to the point where the textbooks have all been revised to reject one of the patrimonies of Western civilization, the Christian dating system which is Christo-centric in nature, in favor of the ridiculous "before the common era (BCE)" and "after the common era (CE)". It is so ridiculous because it is only common to westerners for one, and the thing which makes it common, is the worship of Jesus Christ as the true God and resetting our dates to be in accord with his life, death and resurrection, instead of saying this is the year 2799 Ab Urbe Condita, or 3,000 or however many years the Chinese date, or the 6,000th year that the Jews date, or the 1584 years of the Islamic Calendar, or the intricate dates of the Hindu and Jainist calendars.

The well catechized faithful who were instructed before Vatican II have given way to the uninstructed, and institutions of education have given way to hedonism, allowing scandalous dances with scandalous music, preaching the modern Gospel rather than the Gospel of Jesus Christ, filling their "liturgies" with pop-music to "inspire" the children, but what happens to them when they graduate? They fizzle away. I watched good and innocent children be destroyed, and could do little but pray. This estimation could be made of the majority of Catholic schools. There are very few which you can really safely entrust your children to and they are like a needle in a haystack.

What is also troubling, is the sexual abuse in Catholic schools, and the far greater abuse in public schools. This has no link to the sex abuse scandal per se (except that they both originate from the devi), however it is important to understand that as bad as the homosexual abuse scandal has been, the sex abuse by teachers in public and private schools is astronomically worse. Society would have a fit if it was truly aware of the sexual abuse that goes on in the school system. Not just from teachers abusing or having sex with students, but other students sexually abusing other students. Now more than ever, it is the case that not only if you value your child's faith but also if you value their innocence, their very soul, you cannot send them to either public or Catholic schools. Homeschooling with tutors when necessary is the only viable way to educate your child without them being sexually abused by a) a teacher b) by other students, the only way to give them a real education these days, and the ONLY way to preserve their innocence as long as possible. As much as society poo poos homeschooling, it is homeschoolers who regularly have high marks and graduate from colleges with honors.

Lastly, it is important to note that whether or not there was a dark age from the 5th century until Charlemagne is debatable, and most reputable historians at least put the term in brackets because it really isn't the case. One cannot fail to doubt that today we are entering a real dark age, because with all our technology and our illiterate society, the love of reading and writing, the love of learning is disappearing. Kids don't want to learn, they want to listen to their I-pod, watch the tv, have sex or visit myspace. Adults don't want to learn, they want to watch basketball and see a good movie. The old, once venerable and figures of respect, are now the perverts from the 60's who have grown to nasty old men and groaned in their old age. The scale of debauchery and immodesty in the enjoyment of worldly pleasures have fostered a Godless consumerism derived from atheistic Capitalism which has entirely snuffed out the love of learning, and now we are entering a "Brave New World" as Huxely put it, with a "Brave new family" as an editor titled a collection of Chesterton's Essays on the family and sexual ethics. We are entering a world with the most narcissistic generation known to man, where unlearning passes as learning and learning is ridiculed as patriarchal and politically incorrect. Black people, instead of being inspired by heroic figures who did their best against unjust and immoral oppression, who would have given their left foot (and sometimes did!) to learn how to read and write, are now corrupted by the latest drug dealer/murderer who has made a career in rap music, who typifies the worst of the lying stereo types of the Klu Klux Klan. It is in times like these that Catholic parents must take full authority as the primary educators of their children and prepare their children to be citizens of City of God, not of the planet.