Rethinking Catholic Schools Week

Bringing "those other kids" and their families fully into the fold

My early education was in the Catholic school system, which means that for twelve years I celebrated Catholic Schools Week with my peers. Dress-down days and school assemblies were a part of the curriculum whether we were excited about school or not. I’ve now been a Catholic homeschooling mom for 25 years (we “dress down” every day), and one Sunday a year I shift uncomfortably in the pew as the liturgy is turned into an advertisement for and celebration of a system of which we’re not a part and likely never will be.

I hope I don’t come off as cranky. My intention is simply to be frank. As the visible American Church continues to shrink and parishes close, it is urgent that we understand the reality that more baptized Catholics are now on the outside of the church building than inside; and we must understand why.

The following article was first published in February of 2010. We are no longer members of the parish mentioned…

…but the words may ring true for those who are also on the margins of school parish life, particularly kids who are public schooled, homeschooled, charter schooled, and the great numbers of developmentally disabled for whom most parishes have no provision. I don’t know all the reasons why families leave their parishes specifically and the Church generally, but I know that this is one reason that they do.

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Catholic Schools Week Comes Home

(Adapted from an article published 2/12/2010)

Once a year, our diocese celebrates Catholic Schools Week and our parish joins in with gusto. We reportedly have the largest school in the diocese. For homeschooling kids, it’s an awkward time since we are also a Catholic school in our parish but not recognized in the same way... or actually in any way. It’s a time to give thanks and recognition to the parish school but also a marketing campaign to draw Catholic families to a faith-centered education through the diocesan schools.

Though I am happy that we can work and worship alongside the parish school community, my kids do feel excluded from what is made to seem like a primary and indispensable part of Catholic life. In spite of our efforts to maintain an active and positive connection with our parish community, they are different because of the choices their parents have made, and that difference is highlighted by the exclusion from a major parish celebration.

“But Mommy... aren’t we a Catholic school?”

The answer is obvious. Of course we are. But Catholic Schools Week is not really about all Catholic schools... just diocesan Catholic schools.

“But Mommy... aren’t we a part of the diocese? And the parish?”

*sigh*

Again, it’s obvious on its face. We are active and happy members of our parish family and yes, we are members of a Catholic school of which our parish enjoys the fruits. But kids see what they see and know what they know. They know that Father doesn’t really want to talk about their Catholic school unless it is to suggest that they come to his parish school instead. They know that the DRE seems irritated by homeschoolers. They sense that parish leaders think (because some have said so) that we’re rigid backwards catechetical neanderthals. They feel the sting of unjust judgment and exclusion.

So we sit in the front pew at the “Catholic Schools liturgy” and listen to Father go on about every Catholic school represented in his parish except for ours…

It doesn’t matter, I tell myself. Yet I know very well that it does matter.

Finding the heart of the parish…

It has been said and written in my community that “the school is the heart of our parish”. As a homeschooling mother who loves her parish home, I agree that this does seem to be the case from an activity, financial, and population point of view. I do wonder though if that perspective ever strikes anyone else (even school parents and Father) as being wrongly inverted.

The parish church is and ought to be the heart of the school and entire faith community. This is where Christ comes to us through the sacramental life and transforms us. The families of the school children keep the parish lively. They comprise a large chunk of our parish population. They help provide a great deal of the church revenue (over $1,000,000 of which went to subsidize the school last year). But the “source and summit” of our faith resides in the Presence of Jesus Christ in the parish church.

Words are important. If our school fails, have we lost the “heart of our parish”? I hope not!

The Church teaches that each family is a Domestic Church or Ecclesia Domestica (1655 CCC). The family is not only a microcosm and symbol of Christ’s larger Church, but the very soil from which the garden of the Church bears fruit. The American Church is floundering today because the family is in crisis. Every home is the first and primary school of the faith by way of love. We cannot rebuild the Church by separating the family from its primary function but only by restoring it to proper order, so that every soul knows that they are loved and by Whose love they are created and resurrected.

My home is a Catholic school and the school is inseparable from our family identity. But the heart of our family is not our school; the heart of our family is Jesus Christ.

Those other kids…

I exhaled a sigh of resignation as I began reading the Catholic Schools Week edition of the parish newsletter before the “Catholic Schools week” liturgy. We are friends with many of the students at the school and with their families. Our kids play sports for the school and we coach in the CYO programs. We are on a parallel journey spiritually and academically but with different methods. To be blunt, the newsletter highlights of the school were exclusive and dull, showcasing mostly things like new computers and zoo field trips. My kids were glued to it while I yawned shamefully. I wryly wondered if the newsletter editor would like a copy of our zoo trip pics... or maybe of our upgraded home computer.

Yes, it was naughty of me. I’m not actually bitter against the work that others do in Catholic education and I shouldn’t indulge in pettiness…

But I wondered how the public school kids felt—and the charter school students and the disabled and their families—and I thought maybe I had an inkling. My thoughts wandered way back to being a kid in Catholic grade school and the general attitude of students and teachers about the PSR/CCD kids. Teachers warned us on PSR days to put our things away because those kids would be using the classroom and you don’t want your stuff stolen or ruined. I wasn’t a mean kid by any stretch but I still picked up the attitude of superiority…

Those other kids. Other. Inferior. Stupid poor kids who aren’t Catholic school educated like us.

Is it really any wonder that few kids enroll and even fewer stay in the Church? What kind of church family is this anyway?

So I kept reading the newsletter but was increasingly agitated that what ought to be family was just not really at all. Then on page ten of that same newsletter I discovered a consolation and a treasure. An associate at the parish, Father Richard Bona, had written an article entitled Parents: Primary Teachers (full text is below), and my eyes opened wide as I read what I already knew to be true but which is almost never acknowledged in institutional settings.

While recognizing the valuable contribution of the parish school, Father looked beyond the identity of the particular school to foundational truths of Catholic education as a whole. He wrote:

“As we remember the Catholic educational programs and in particular our own parish school, let us remember that they have only a secondary role. The biggest and most lasting impact of faith is achieved only through a HOME LIFE.”

The true health of a parish can be best ascertained, not by the size or vibrancy of the school attached to it, but by the vibrancy of the parish life, regardless of what the school does. And the health of parish life is fed directly by the substance of the families who gather there. That means pastors need to be investing in all families, not just some. Celebrating all Catholic education, not just parochial or institutional. And making sure that the focus is not placed too heavily on the secondary things (the parish school), but the building up of the family through the treasure of Jesus Christ Himself.

My own Catholic school experience mirrors the unfortunate reality of many others; that I did not learn the faith well there and at times even learned the wrong things about the most important things. My conversion came later within the framework of dynamic loving community that was more familial than institutional.

Since the NCEA started Catholic Schools Week in 1974, there has been a marked decline in attendance and excellence of the schools. The overwhelming majority of children who identify as Catholic do not attend Catholic schools. Our parishes have grown weaker and our collective faith less vibrant. I’m not suggesting causation between a week in January and that decline, but perhaps we can acknowledge that a fundamental shift in parish participation is warranted.

Perhaps it would be better to drop the public parade of self-congratulation during liturgy than risk further alienating the public schooled, homeschooled, and charter schooled families, and the ever-increasing numbers of developmentally disabled who receive absolutely no provision from the Church for parish school education.

Let us all go quietly, fervently, and joyfully about the work of loving and educating souls. The reward is not just a week long pat on the back, but the work itself, our healed homes, our vibrant parishes, and the final welcome when we hope to hear…

Well done, good and faithful servant.

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Following is the article I read sixteen years ago in a parish newsletter.
Thank you, Father.

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Parents: The Primary Teachers

By Father Richard Bona

We are blessed to have a day school at our parish where children can learn about faith and science. We are blessed to have a PSR program where many volunteers teach catechism to our children who attend public schools. We are blessed to have the youth group where young people can deepen their faith and love for God. These are surely blessings, but they are only tools to help and support parents in their duty being the primary teachers of faith for their children.

Parish schools and programs are not meant to replace the teaching role of parents. In fact, these above mentioned tools’ effectiveness completely depends on the parents’ willingness to take their duty seriously. One can have years of Catholic schooling, but if it is not lived, practiced and taught at home, the person will very likely know little about loving and trusting God. Catholic educational programs are not there to make up for parents’ lack of resolve to hand down faith. Without the parents’ help Catholic schools and programs can make only a minimal impression on their children’s faith.

An objection is sometimes raised by parents that they do not know how to teach; they do not have the prerequisites, skills, time or talents to teach religion to their children. But this objection is contradicted by the fact that all parents teach something to their children. Through their daily lives, words and examples parents teach discipline or irresponsibility, good work ethic or laziness, diligence or carelessness, respect for authority and social order or self-centeredness. We do not need to have degrees to teach all these things. It is the same with our faith. Faith is not a possession of information about the afterlife; it is a trust in God, the Father, lived out courageously. When one lives for God, he or she need not be educated to hand it down to children. Yes, instructions from experts and reading up on different topics can help, but it is not required. Most of the mothers and fathers of saints were often illiterate and still were able to be the best teachers. Here is an account of one such mother, Margaret Bosco, the mother of a great shepherd of souls, St. John Bosco. Pere Auffrey writes:

“This poor unlettered Piedmontese woman had a subtle sense of true education...At the bottom of this education, as at its top, was God...She would seize the least opportunity of impressing this thought of their Creator in its various aspects upon the heart of her sons. On a starry night she would take them out and say: ‘All the stars are wonderful; it is God who put them there. If the sky is so lovely, what must paradise be like?’ Or else, in the presence of one of those magnificent dawns which tinge the snowy girdle of the Alpine horizon with a ruddy glow: ‘What wonders God has made for us, dear children!’ If hail had destroyed the humble family vineyard wholly or in part: ‘Let us bow our heads!’ she murmured. ‘God gave us these beautiful bunches of grapes, and now He has taken them away. He is the Lord. It is a trial for us, for the wicked a punishment.’ And on a winter evening, when the family was huddled together round a flaming log and the north wind was whistling or icy rain was hammering on the roof: ‘Dear children, how we should love God for providing us with what is needful. He is indeed our Father who is in heaven.’

It was not only for the needs of the body that this watchful mother was so vigilant; more than all she took thought for the training of the soul, and she began by feeding her children’s minds with the pure teaching of the faith. She could neither read nor write, but she knew all the catechism by heart, and Scripture history and the life our our Lord as well. From her memory all this living doctrine, patiently doled out, was passed on into the minds of her boys. She might have found some excuse in her daily care for handing over this work to the zeal of the cure of Castelnuovo; but in Italy, at the time, the catechizing of children took place only in Lent, and that meant for these children walking more than six miles a day; she preferred to teach them herself everything she knew, trusting to her work being checked or completed by the cure of the parish.” ¹

The author, who quotes this story of Margaret Bosco, highlights something that is so often forgotten. Parents, through the Sacrament of Marriage, receive a singular grace to teach their children. This grace is given only to the parents. It is not given to siblings, grandparents, uncles and aunts or even Catholic schools. They all have their own graces, but only parents have the parental graces. These graces that flow from Holy Matrimony can and should be trusted.

As we remember the Catholic educational programs and in particular our own parish school, let us remember that they have only a secondary role. The biggest and most lasting impact of faith is achieved only through a HOME LIFE. The reason is that it was God who designed the family life that way.

1. As quoted in: Teaching Religion at Home by Mary Reed Newland, B. Herder Book Co., St. Louis, Missouri, 1963, http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/liturgicalyear/activities/view.cfm?id=932 . Please visit the website. It is worth reading her whole article.

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