Are We Building A Fortress Church?

Shaw’s Thesis

      Everyone wants to know what Pope Francis is really up to.  Is he the warm and fuzzy fulfillment of the “Spirit of Vatican II”?  Or, is he really another John Paul II or Benedict XVI in “progressive” clothing?  Who knows?  Russell Shaw comes up with as plausible an answer as any – really, better than most.  The Pope, he says, wants “to reshape the Catholic Church as a Missionary Church” (“Wanted: An American Missionary Church – Soon” here at The Catholic Thing).  Shaw cites Francis’ apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, in which the Pope says:

All of us are called to take part in this new missionary “going forth.” Each Christian and every community must discern the path that the Lord points out, but all of us are asked to obey his call to go forth from our own comfort zone in order to reach all “the peripheries in need of the light of the Gospel” [20]

“This”, Shaw tells us, “should be taken seriously”.  But he also adds that “taking up the challenge of being a Missionary Church would be a far more demanding – and exhilarating – project than this one-dimensional version of Francis and the Church” (he’s referring to the fluffy, easy-going, “who am I to judge?” image of the Pope popular with progressive types both in the Church and in the secular media).

     I don’t doubt that Shaw is correct that Pope Francis intends to encourage a more missionary ethos in the Church; it is also true that putting this ethos into practice is no easy task.  The Pope, quite properly, has presented a general direction; he has not dictated a concrete program or detailed plan, which leaves room for Catholic commentators like Mr. Shaw (and me - and you, if you’d like) to toss out our own ideas. 

The Assimilated Church and the Fortress Church

     Shaw turns his discussion at this point to the Church in the United States (although this discussion can apply to westernized countries in general).  Here is how he characterizes the issue:

Taking him seriously also could be a matter of survival, or something close to it.  Certainly, unless American Catholicism remakes itself as a Missionary Church, actively engaged in outreach to the world, it could become a rapidly, and irreversibly, shrinking ecclesiastical entity.

     The alternatives to a missionary Church for American Catholics are two and only two: the Assimilated Church and the Fortress Church.

Papal fortress at Avignon

Shaw goes on to explain that

In the Assimilated Church, most Catholics will have been homogenized into the values of American secular culture and become parts of it.  Indeed, many American Catholics already have chosen this option . . .

The Fortress Church, on the other hand,

Is fundamentally different.  If this is to be the future, Catholics will have largely withdrawn – psychologically, spiritually, and even physically – from contact with secular culture, raising the ecclesiastical ramparts against its influence as they retreat.  The Fortress Church is already disturbingly evident in some elements of the new Catholic subculture that’s begun to emerge.  It is a survival tactic born of desperation.

By contrast, while American Catholicism as Missionary Church will also be committed to opposing secular values incompatible with the faith, it will work hard to preach the Gospel, attract adherents, and, where, possible, evangelize the culture itself.

This is where Mr. Shaw takes a wrong turn.  I agree with what he says about the Assimilated Church - one might argue that many, maybe most, American Catholics are there already.  It seems to me that in the case of the Fortress Church, however, he’s putting up a straw man.  I don’t doubt that such a thing is a possibility; a fortress mentality may well take hold in the case of some individuals or in isolated pockets of the Church. What I’ve seen of the “emerging Catholic subculture”, however, looks only superficially like the Fortress Mr. Shaw is bemoaning above, and in fact bears a much greater resemblance to his description of the Missionary Church.

The Valley Forge Gambit

     It’s hard for me to be too specific about those things Shaw finds "disturbing" in that emerging “subculture”, because he doesn't give any specifics.  I’m supposing that he means things such as homeschooling, doing away with television, attending the Extraordinary Form of the Mass and other apparent “retreats” from the societal norm. These things, however, don’t necessarily mean closing oneself off from the larger world.  In fact, just such measures may be necessary if one is to be an effective missionary to the world, which includes both Assimilated Catholics and non-Catholics alike.

     A historical analogy may help illustrate my point.  In 1776 George Washington led his large and enthusiastic but largely untrained army against a combined force of British regulars and Hessian mercenaries at the Battle of Brooklyn [here].  His inexperienced Continental Army was simply not prepared for the shock of its encounter with professional soldiers, and collapsed in a disastrous rout. After Washington was subsequently driven from New York, he withdrew his army to the relative protection of Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. Had Washington and his army stayed in Valley Forge, of course, the war would eventually have been lost.   Instead, temporarily safe from enemy attack his army was able to reform, refit (at least after Congress voted the funds) and receive solid military training under the supervision Friedrich Von Steuben, a European soldier who had served as an officer in Frederick the Great’s Prussian Army.  As a result, a much better prepared Continental Army met the British two years later at the Battle of Monmouth [here] and fought them to a standstill, and but for the inept leadership of one of Washington’s subordinates, General Charles Lee, might have won a decisive victory.  As it was, the British withdrew leaving Washington in possession of the battlefield.

Von Steuben drilling American troops at Valley Forge 

     This, I suggest, is a better analogy for what is happening among many American Catholics than Shaw’s fortress.  The culture at large has become toxic: anti-family, anti-morality . . . anti-God.  It is dangerous to immerse ourselves in it, deadly to allow our children to be formed by it.  We need to equip ourselves properly before going out into such a world, or else we’ll fare no better than the Continental Army did in the Battle of Brooklyn. In fact, we may be more likely to be converted by the world than we are to convert it.  We need some space and time in a healthier atmosphere, away from the temptations and onslaughts of the secular world.  We need to train ourselves in our faith, both its meaning and its practice.  We need our own Valley Forge, and perhaps the spiritual equivalent of a Von Steuben, before we can be that Missionary Church that Pope Francis is calling us to be.  And that's what the subculture that Shaw sees emerging is all about.

Did Someone Say “Clericalism”?

     Russell Shaw, who has been a fine observer of and commenter upon the Catholic scene in the United States for a long time, has got this one wrong because he only sees part of the picture.  He is correct, I think, in his description of what the Missionary Church should look like, but he believes that our biggest problem is “clericalism” (!) in the form of a “passivity” that assumes that the ordained clergy will do all the heavy lifting:

Thus a plan of action designed for execution only or mainly by Church professionals won’t do the job.  Unfortunately, this is what we’re all too likely to get from the clericalized  cadres of today’s American Catholicism, indoctrinated as they are in the merits of lay ministry and cut off from the experience of a robust lay apostolate directed to engagement with the world.

With all due respect to Mr. Shaw, he seems completely unaware of the new ecclesial movements (Opus Dei, Communion and Liberation, Focolare, etc.), composed mostly of lay people, and most of which have an explicit goal of better equipping the laity to witness to Christ “out in the world”.  He makes no mention of a whole Apologetics Industry that includes Catholic television, radio, print publications, and more online resources than can be listed here.  None of these resources, created and staffed overwhelmingly by lay persons, existed fifty years ago at the time of the Second Vatican Council.  I regularly listen to one Catholic radio program that at least once a week has programs restricted to calls from non-Catholics, or from Atheists, or pro-abortion or pro-gay marriage callers – and they never seem to run out of such callers.  That’s hardly a fortress mentality.  And it’s worth pointing out that homeschooled students tend to be more socially involved than the population as a whole, both as teens and adults (see here and here).

What Do You Want First, The Good News Or The Bad News?

     Am I saying that all is well, and that the Church in the United States is the picture of spiritual health?  No, indeed.  The statistics that Mr. Shaw cites to illustrate the decline of the Church are real and sobering:

According to the Official Catholic Directory, from 1998 tom 2013 the annual number of Catholic marriages dropped from 289,000 to 164,000; infant baptisms from just over 1 million to 763,000; enrollment in Catholic elementary and secondary schools from 2.7 million to barely 2 million; and enrollment in non-school religious education from 4.3 million to 3.4 million.

The logical end point of assimilation is to become so assimilated that one ceases to be Catholic altogether.  At the same time, there’s a growing core of lay Catholics who are committed to living a truly Christ-centered life, and who are likewise committed to bringing the faith in its fullness to both their fallen-away brethren and to the wider world.  They fit very nicely, in fact, Russell Shaw’s description of the Missionary Church: “committed to opposing secular values incompatible with the faith, [working] hard to preach the Gospel, attract adherents, and, where, possible, evangelize the culture itself.”

There lies the future of Catholicism.

An earlier version of this Thursday Throwback was first published on August 19th of last year under the title "To Be In, But Not Of, The World".

A Couple Paving Stones On The Road To Hell

This Throwback Thursday Post was first published on December 12th, 2014. Warning: contains content of a sexual nature.  

      There’s an old saying: “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.”  It’s a little odd, when you think about it: shouldn’t our intentions be good?  The road to Heaven certainly isn’t paved with bad intentions, is it?  The answer, I think, is that the second half of the proposition is left out.  It's about good intentions that are not grounded in reality, or in wisdom, or in God’s law: they create more problems than they solve (if, indeed, they solve anything at all). 

“Is it OK if I take my pants off?”

     A classic example of the Road to Hell Principle is the thoroughly modern practice known as “Sex Education” (Sex Ed informally).  A concern, and I believe a sincere one in most cases, for the well-being of young people in an increasingly sexualized world has led to instructional programs in schools (and not just public schools) that, because they are disconnected from God’s law, and Natural Law, and plain common sense, promote the very harm they are intended to ameliorate.      One such program has been in the news recently: a class run by a Planned Parenthood chapter in California that was invited to teach a class on sexuality to 9th graders in the local public high school.  According to the Fox News story [full story here]:  

. . . some parents are irate that their children’s sex ed class at Acalanes High School in Lafayette is being taught by employees of Planned Parenthood without their prior knowledge. They are also fuming over the methods and materials being used, including a checklist that asks students if they are “ready for sex” and another worksheet that describes how to give and obtain consent, as well as a diagram that uses a "genderbread" person for lessons in gender identity. 

The Gingerbread Person is a cute little fellow who clearly was designed to appeal to children, much like the old Camel Cigarettes mascot “Joe Camel”; and like the much maligned cartoon camel, who was criticized for promoting an unhealthy product to children, Gingerbread Person offers reassurance to the very young that whatever they want to express or do sexually is not just all right, but good and desirable.  Things, perhaps, that had not even occurred to them before.  As for the class itself, many of the children “felt the sessions were pressuring them to have sex” or, as one parent put it, “Some of the kids were distracted because it was divergent from what they were taught at home.”  Indeed. For example:   

Included in the materials provided to students were documents and worksheets that included a checklist entitled, “Sex Check! Are You Ready For Sex?” in which the 13 and 14-year-old students are asked questions such as if they have water– based lubricants and condoms and if they could handle a possible infection or pregnancy. Another worksheet reads like a how-to on obtaining consent from a possible sexual partner and offers possible statements like “Do you want to go back to my place?” and “Is it OK if I take my pants off?”  

"You can go now."

There are more problems with school-based sex ed classes that I can get into here.  I will point out that the foregoing tends to support what many of us have been saying for a long time: that such classes not only debase sexuality and separate it from its appropriate place in a loving marital relationship, but actually encourage (or even “pressure”, as the students say above) early and promiscuous sexual activity. 

     Here’s another case, this time from the UK [full story here].  After a sex ed class, a thirteen year-old boy and girl   

. . . went to a secluded area where they discussed what they had just been taught about sexual intercourse. The boy said that he asked the girl if she wanted to "try sex." Although the young girl repeatedly said "No," the schoolboy proceeded to pin the girl down and rape her. Afterward he allegedly told the girl, "You can go now."  

     This is only one case to be sure, but we can see a clear connection between the instruction and the act.  And, as it turns out, many British students have misgivings similar to those expressed by their American counterparts above.  From the Life Site story:  

Earlier this year a poll of UK teenagers by the Institute of Public Policy Research (IPPR) [here]found that a large majority of both boys and girls complained that sex education often presents promiscuity as normal, putting additional pressure on them to become sexually active before they might otherwise do so. Many of the teens criticized the sex education lessons they had received at school for not doing enough to discourage them from becoming sexually active. One 18-year-old girl responded to the poll question about her sex-ed experience: "I always felt pressured by teachers, like, 'sex is normal, just be safe OK' when actually I wasn't interested in having sex at the time and was happy to wait for the right person.” "I don't think sex should be taught as 'the norm'. I think people should be made to feel comfortable and teachers should say, 'you should wait, the law states 16, don't be pressured'." 

The Definition Of Insanity

According to Dr. Philip Ney, a retired professor of psychiatry, there is plenty of research to show that the negative effects of sex ed programs are very real.  In an essay he wrote for Life Site News [full article here] he says: 

It is quite conclusive now, that the more sex education, the more sexual activity and all the problems that go with that.  The introduction of sex education is well correlated with the increase in abortion, STDs and boy-girl interpersonal problems. Good education gives people the desire to try it out or learn more experientially.  Paradoxically, in that respect, current forms of sex education are good education but have the wrong results . . . The earlier the sex education, the younger children explore sex and try various sexual techniques. Present evidence makes it possible to also conclude that the earlier the sex education, the earlier the sexual behavior. Thus sexual education is sexual titillation.  

     Despite all the evidence that these programs do the opposite of what they intend, the “experts” have nothing to offer but more of the same.  In response to the British case above, one such expert said that “in her opinion the solution to this type of misbehavior is more sex education, ‘and much earlier than 13, I would say.’”        This whole situation brings to mind an old saying: “Insanity is to keep doing the same thing, while expecting a different result”.  But what else can they do in the public schools, or in the secular world in general?  They have rejected a worldview in which healthy sexuality is nourished and supported.  They have torn down the social attitudes and institutions that protected people from the consequences of lust run amok. In a world where the most important thing is feelings (and isn’t that what the Genderbread Person is all about?), right and wrong are random abstractions.  That’s why even abstinence classes, while better than the Planned Parenthood inspired alternative, are still not enough.  Young people need to be taught not simply the (negative) practice of abstinence but the (positive) virtue of Chastity, and not just in a classroom: they need to see it as part of a coherent worldview, as something that not only works but can be lived out joyfully, especially by the example of the adults in their lives. 

         It has happened before. There are many reasons why Christianity spread as quickly as it did throughout the Roman Empire in the first few centuries after Christ.  I have heard that one of them was that pagan Romans saw the joy in the lives of their Christian neighbors, not the least part of which was the love and respect Christian men had for their wives.  In a culture that more and more encourages people to use each other for pleasure rather than embrace each other in love, we are again called to show a more excellent way.  We need to understand, and help our fellow Catholics see, that Church teachings on sexuality and marriage are not so much a series of prohibitions as they are a road map to happier, more productive, and holier lives.  We need to rebuild, one person, one family, at a time a culture in which Christ is King.

In Defense Of Catholic Education (Worth Revisiting)

This Worth Revisiting post was originally published in June of 2014. To enjoy the work of other faithful Catholic bloggers visit Worth Revisiting Wednesday, hosted by by Elizabeth Reardon at theologyisaverb.com and Allison Gingras at reconciledtoyou.com.

1953: the Good Old Days

Should We Have Catholic Schools?

   
 Fellow Catholic blogger RAnn at This That and the Other Thing recently published a post called “Catholic Schools – Should We Have Them?” [here].  She raises some interesting points, and asks a number of questions well worth asking, in particular “whether we as a church should be investing so many resources in our schools”.  Let me say at the outset that I have a lot of experience in this area: I have taught in Catholic High Schools for the past twenty-seven years; at the same time, I attended both Catholic and public schools (I graduated from a public high school), and my own children are home-schooled, so I’m drawing on a wide range of experience. While there are definitely things that Catholic schools can and should do better, I would argue that they are more important than ever.

     I’d like to start with a point on which I respectfully disagree with RAnn.  She had been reviewing a book on the integration of segregated schools in the 1950’s and 60’s, and points out that the first black students in the previously all-white schools had a very hard time of it: she ties that to the question of whether to send her children to public or to Catholic schools. “In both cases”, she says, “I think there is a choice that is right for society and a different choice that may be right for individual kids.”   I don’t think the analogy holds.  In the case of integration, black students had been unjustly deprived of choice of schools, and forced to attend inferior ones; integration really did put them into better schools, despite the hardships and indignities suffered by the first black students to integrate; superior schools at least potentially gave them more and better options later in life, and of course paved the way for a much better educational outcome for those who followed them.  The temporary disadvantages were for the sake of future benefit not just for society as a whole, but for those children themselves. 

Catholic Schools Are Good For Students

     The question of whether to choose a public or private school for your children today is very different.  As I argue below, putting them into a public rather than a Catholic school may in fact be to the detriment of society as a whole, and very often means putting them into a worse school, rather than a better. Catholic schools have always out-performed public schools in every measurable academic category, as long such categories have been measured (see here and here).  My own experience backs this up: I’ve taught Latin and English in three different high schools in three different states, all of which draw students from a wide area and from a wide number of grammar and middle schools, and I have consistently found the Catholic school students much more prepared for high school level language study than the students from the public schools.   

     Also, in light of the integration issue, it’s worth noting that minority students derive particular benefit from Catholic schools: they are much more likely to graduate from high school than their peers in public schools, and two and one half times more likely to attend college (here). Catholic schools, in fact, have long been recognized as an unparalleled path to success for minority students, and their closure has a more profound impact on these students than on other students (here).  So, if we’re talking about Catholic schools in the context of the civil rights era integration of the public schools, we might point out that Catholic schools, by effectively preparing African American and other minority students to participate successfully in society as adults, do an excellent job of accomplishing what was the primary purpose of school integration in the first place.  In this regard, supporting Catholic schools is good for both the individual students and society as a whole.

Sometimes It's Even Good For Their Souls

     What is true for minority students is true for all other students as well: the purpose of education is to prepare them for adulthood.  From society’s point of view, the end of education is that children are good and productive citizens.  We Catholics want the same, but we also have a higher aim: we want our children to be formed into moral and faith-filled adults.  This is even more important than intellectual excellence; it is better to be illiterate before the Throne of God than to be the smartest man in Hell. Happily, as we saw above, Catholic education in fact does a superior job of training the intellect, but its primary purpose is to point the students under its care in the direction of sainthood.

     If we remember that we’re talking about formation and not simply instruction, the case for specifically Catholic schools becomes even clearer.  We are corporeal beings, unlike the Angels (see here), and as students we are formed by the entire school environment as much as we are by the content of the curriculum.  When I last attended public schools three and a half decades ago they were already committed to a secularist worldview, and had already abandoned any effort to teach the natural virtues.  Today’s public schools have gone beyond that, and beyond where they were even twenty or fifteen years ago to the point where many of them have Planned Parenthood, the world’s largest abortion provider and a zealous fornication promoter (take a look here get a feel for their agenda) providing “health” instruction; an increasing number are instituting mandatory “diversity” classes. The courts in some states have ruled there is no right to exempt your children from objectionable classes.  Add on top of that an environment that crushes any dissent on various leftist enthusiasms from global warming (or is it now “climate change”?) to gay marriage.  That's before we even start to talk about the whole Common Core fiasco.  We’re kidding ourselves if we think that our children will absorb the good things and somehow be immune to the bad things. I’ve heard the argument that “we went to public schools and we came out all right.”  First of all, as I pointed out above, these are not your father’s public schools, or even your children’s father’s public schools; also, quite frankly, not all of us do come out all right: I know plenty of people who didn’t, and speaking for myself, there were experiences and hard-to-shed habits I picked up in my public high school that I could have done without.

Catholic Schools Aren't Perfect, But . . . 

     One might counter that Catholic schools have their imperfections as well: there may well be administrators and teachers who undermine the Faith; as a practical matter, a school of any significant  size will need to hire people who are not practicing Catholics to fill some positions.  Also, as is the case in any school, the peer group will exercise a powerful formative influence, and many, probably most, students will be there not from religious devotion, but in order to benefit from the safer environment and the superior academic rigor.  It was partly for these reasons (we wanted our children to model themselves on us rather than their peers), but also because we wanted to have more control over the process, that my lovely bride and I decided to home school our children.  Most people are not going to go that route, however, and for all their unavoidable imperfections, good Catholic schools provide an environment where Christ is at the center, the Catholic faith is both taught and lived out, and moral excellence is promoted. 

     I'm also not a big fan of the idea that our children can or should be sent into the maw of the government-run educational complex as Ambassadors for Christ.  I don’t think it’s fair, reasonable or, frankly, even safe to send our not-fully-formed children into the public school system and expect them to improve the environment there in the face of a peer culture that is hostile to religious faith and a system that ever more aggressively proselytizes for extreme secularism; all but the most heroic are more likely to be converted themselves.  They have a better chance to be successful evangelizers as well-formed adult Catholics.  Also, a good Catholic school will not only bring some, at least, of the Catholic students from lukewarm families into a closer relationship with Christ and his Church, but will also convert some of its non-Catholic students.  In the school where I currently teach we typically see several of these students receive the Sacraments of Initiation and enter the Church at the last school Mass of the year. Even those not converted will at least be "levened" by the experience, a levening they will bring with them throughout life.

"Be Not Afraid!"

     There’s a lot more that can be said on this topic, and this is already a long post, so here’s my final point: it might well be the case that the traditional model of the parish school is no longer viable, but that’s no reason to abandon Catholic Education itself in a culture that is rapidly shedding its Christian heritage.  We need to find structures that fit the times.  Already a growing number of homeschooling families are participating in a wide variety  of groups and organizations; some families in my area have actually created their own school, independent of any official Church body; and it may well be that the new ecclesial movements that are doing so much to energize other parts of the Body of Christ will have something to contribute here.  We need to be open to the Holy Spirit and, as Saint John Paul II often said (and as it says many times in scripture), "Be not afraid!".  Whaever form it takes, this is not the time to abandon Catholic education.

Why Jeopardy Doesn't Know Judas

Who is that guy, and why is he kissing Jesus?

     Sometimes a single detail captures and gives flesh to something much larger.  For instance, today a person of my acquaintance (a non-Catholic Christian) told me with evident disgust that he recently saw a television quiz show in which not one of three contestants could name the betrayer of Jesus.  Just think about that.  What do you think the odds were forty years ago of picking three reasonably well educated adults in the United States at random and finding that none of them could name Judas Iscariot?  We might in fact have been mildly surprised (at least) to find even one such person, because the Christian worldview, and the Christian story, had been so deeply embedded in the culture for so long that even the non-religious and non-Christians generally had a pretty good idea of the major players in the Biblical drama. No longer.

     Lest you think I’m just another old-timer pining the “good old days” that never were, take a look at this recent report, “Five Trends Among The Unchurched”, from the Barna Group, a Christian-oriented research firm.  Barna’s five trends are that 1) “Secularization is on the Rise”, which is to say that each generation is not simply less religious in terms of numbers, but also more radically separated from religion; 2) “People Are Less Open to the Idea of Church”, as measured by the number of unchurched who are open to appeals from their believing fellow citizens; 3) “Churchgoing Is No Longer Mainstream”: the percentage of Americans who have never attended church regularly increased by more than 50%, from 15% of the adult population to 23% of the adult population, from 1993 to 2013; 4) “There Are Different Expectations of Church Involvement”, or more simply people are much less clear on what “church-going” is all about, including the importance of Sunday worship, or staying in a particular faith community; 5) “There Is Skepticism about Churches’ Contribution to Society”, as Barna explains:

Although many of the churchless hold positive views of churches, a substantial number also have no idea what Christians have accomplished in the nation, either for the better or for the worse.  When the unchurched were asked to describe what they believe are the positive and negative contributions of Christianity in America, almost half (49%) could not identify a single favorable impact of the Christian community, while nearly two-fifths (37%) were not able to identify a single negative impact.

Overall, Barna’s report paints a picture of a society that is increasingly “indifferent” to religion, comprised of a growing number of people who live unaware of any religious dimension to their lives, and who don’t perceive any need for it. Moreover, while most unchurched people today have at least some knowledge of, and experience with, Christian belief, the report shows that with every generation we are seeing more and more people with no direct connection to Christianity at all.  As I said a few years ago in an essay I wrote for Catholic Exchange:

Our civilization has been shaped by Christianity for almost two thousand years.  Christian beliefs, attitudes, and moral convictions (commonly referred to as the Judeo-Christian worldview) are woven into all of our customs and institutions . . . anyone raised in the West over the last two millennia has been formed, to a large degree, by that Christocentric worldview, whether they consciously embrace it or not.  More than one commentator has remarked that even the “new atheists” such as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens have not jettisoned principles such as the dignity of the human person (not a universal value by any stretch) or a Judeo-Christian concept of justice – they employ these very ideas, in fact, as weapons against Christianity . . . Without its source and foundation of Christian belief, however, the worldview itself will quickly wither . . . a society that abandons faith will soon be resubmerged in paganism.

The loss of that worldview will have a profound impact (what we have seen so far is just the beginning).  In his eye-opening book Who Really Cares Arthur C. Brooks copiously documents the fact that believing Christians are not just more generous, but much more generous, of both their time and their treasure than other people, and correspondingly more honest, courteous, etc.  Any objective observer would have to conclude, based on the data, that a less Christian society would be proportionally less generous, honest, and courteous.  Not only that, but people who are so disconnected from any experience of religion at all, and perceive no need for any religious dimension in their life, are going to be much harder to evangelize. At the same time, greater efforts at evangelization will be necessary, because our Western Society, which at one time could with some amount of truth be called Christendom, is quickly reverting to Mission Territory.

     Evangelizing a neo-pagan culture presents a very different challenge than did the conversion of the original pagans.  The ancient pagans found Christianity to be strange, and sometimes counterintuitive (“love your enemies” [Matthew 5:44] is still tough for us to swallow), but the neo-pagans believe that Christianity has been tried and found wanting, and most of what they hear from the media and popular culture is negative, which is why barely half of the unchurched people cited above could think of a single good thing the Church has done, while almost two-thirds could think of something bad.  We need to work as never before at being “wise as serpents and as innocent as doves” (Matthew 10:16), to be that city on a hill (Matthew 5:14) without looking like hypocrites, to preach without “preaching”.  How to do that I don’t know, except that we’ll get nowhere without prayer, the sacraments (especially Confession and the Eucharist . . . and Confession), and a firm reliance on God’s Providence.  Lord, have mercy on us.

Don't Give Up On Catholic Education!

1953: the Good Old Days

Should We Have Catholic Schools?

   
 Fellow Catholic blogger RAnn at This That and the Other Thing recently published a post called “Catholic Schools – Should We Have Them?” [here].  She raises some interesting points, and asks a number of questions well worth asking, in particular “whether we as a church should be investing so many resources in our schools”.  Let me say at the outset that I have a lot of experience in this area: I have taught in Catholic High Schools for the past twenty-seven years; at the same time, I attended both Catholic and public schools (I graduated from a public high school), and my own children are home-schooled, so I’m drawing on a wide range of experience. While there are definitely things that Catholic schools can and should do better, I would argue that they are more important than ever.

     I’d like to start with a point on which I respectfully disagree with RAnn.  She had been reviewing a book on the integration of segregated schools in the 1950’s and 60’s, and points out that the first black students in the previously all-white schools had a very hard time of it: she ties that to the question of whether to send her children to public or to Catholic schools. “In both cases”, she says, “I think there is a choice that is right for society and a different choice that may be right for individual kids.”   I don’t think the analogy holds.  In the case of integration, black students had been unjustly deprived of choice of schools, and forced to attend inferior ones; integration really did put them into better schools, despite the hardships and indignities suffered by the first black students to integrate; superior schools at least potentially gave them more and better options later in life, and of course paved the way for a much better educational outcome for those who followed them.  The temporary disadvantages were for the sake of future benefit not just for society as a whole, but for those children themselves. 

Catholic Schools Are Good For Students

     The question of whether to choose a public or private school for your children today is very different.  As I argue below, putting them into a public rather than a Catholic school may in fact be to the detriment of society as a whole, and very often means putting them into a worse school, rather than a better. Catholic schools have always out-performed public schools in every measurable academic category, as long such categories have been measured (see here and here).  My own experience backs this up: I’ve taught Latin and English in three different high schools in three different states, all of which draw students from a wide area and from a wide number of grammar and middle schools, and I have consistently found the Catholic school students much more prepared for high school level language study than the students from the public schools.   

     Also, in light of the integration issue, it’s worth noting that minority students derive particular benefit from Catholic schools: they are much more likely to graduate from high school than their peers in public schools, and two and one half times more likely to attend college (here). Catholic schools, in fact, have long been recognized as an unparalleled path to success for minority students, and their closure has a more profound impact on these students than on other students (here).  So, if we’re talking about Catholic schools in the context of the civil rights era integration of the public schools, we might point out that Catholic schools, by effectively preparing African American and other minority students to participate successfully in society as adults, do an excellent job of accomplishing what was the primary purpose of school integration in the first place.  In this regard, supporting Catholic schools is good for both the individual students and society as a whole.

Sometimes It's Even Good For Their Souls

     What is true for minority students is true for all other students as well: the purpose of education is to prepare them for adulthood.  From society’s point of view, the end of education is that children are good and productive citizens.  We Catholics want the same, but we also have a higher aim: we want our children to be formed into moral and faith-filled adults.  This is even more important than intellectual excellence; it is better to be illiterate before the Throne of God than to be the smartest man in Hell. Happily, as we saw above, Catholic education in fact does a superior job of training the intellect, but its primary purpose is to point the students under its care in the direction of sainthood.

     If we remember that we’re talking about formation and not simply instruction, the case for specifically Catholic schools becomes even clearer.  We are corporeal beings, unlike the Angels (see here), and as students we are formed by the entire school environment as much as we are by the content of the curriculum.  When I last attended public schools three and a half decades ago they were already committed to a secularist worldview, and had already abandoned any effort to teach the natural virtues.  Today’s public schools have gone beyond that, and beyond where they were even twenty or fifteen years ago to the point where many of them have Planned Parenthood, the world’s largest abortion provider and a zealous fornication promoter (take a look here get a feel for their agenda) providing “health” instruction; an increasing number are instituting mandatory “diversity” classes. The courts in some states have ruled there is no right to exempt your children from objectionable classes.  Add on top of that an environment that crushes any dissent on various leftist enthusiasms from global warming (or is it now “climate change”?) to gay marriage.  That's before we even start to talk about the whole Common Core fiasco.  We’re kidding ourselves if we think that our children will absorb the good things and somehow be immune to the bad things. I’ve heard the argument that “we went to public schools and we came out all right.”  First of all, as I pointed out above, these are not your father’s public schools, or even your children’s father’s public schools; also, quite frankly, not all of us do come out all right: I know plenty of people who didn’t, and speaking for myself, there were experiences and hard-to-shed habits I picked up in my public high school that I could have done without.

Catholic Schools Aren't Perfect, But . . . 

     One might counter that Catholic schools have their imperfections as well: there may well be administrators and teachers who undermine the Faith; as a practical matter, a school of any significant  size will need to hire people who are not practicing Catholics to fill some positions.  Also, as is the case in any school, the peer group will exercise a powerful formative influence, and many, probably most, students will be there not from religious devotion, but in order to benefit from the safer environment and the superior academic rigor.  It was partly for these reasons (we wanted our children to model themselves on us rather than their peers), but also because we wanted to have more control over the process, that my lovely bride and I decided to home school our children.  Most people are not going to go that route, however, and for all their unavoidable imperfections, good Catholic schools provide an environment where Christ is at the center, the Catholic faith is both taught and lived out, and moral excellence is promoted. 

     I'm also not a big fan of the idea that our children can or should be sent into the maw of the government-run educational complex as Ambassadors for Christ.  I don’t think it’s fair, reasonable or, frankly, even safe to send our not-fully-formed children into the public school system and expect them to improve the environment there in the face of a peer culture that is hostile to religious faith and a system that ever more aggressively proselytizes for extreme secularism; all but the most heroic are more likely to be converted themselves.  They have a better chance to be successful evangelizers as well-formed adult Catholics.  Also, a good Catholic school will not only bring some, at least, of the Catholic students from lukewarm families into a closer relationship with Christ and his Church, but will also convert some of its non-Catholic students.  In the school where I currently teach we typically see several of these students receive the Sacraments of Initiation and enter the Church at the last school Mass of the year. Even those not converted will at least be "levened" by the experience, a levening they will bring with them throughout life.

     There’s a lot more that can be said on this topic, and this is already a long post, so here’s my final point: it might well be the case that the traditional model of the parish school is no longer viable, but that’s no reason to abandon Catholic Education itself in a culture that is rapidly shedding its Christian heritage.  We need to find structures that fit the times.  Already a growing number of homeschooling families are participating in a wide variety  of groups and organizations; some families in my area have actually created their own school, independent of any official Church body; and it may well be that the new ecclesial movements that are doing so much to energize other parts of the Body of Christ will have something to contribute here.  We need to be open to the Holy Spirit and, as Saint John Paul II often said (and as it says many times in scripture), "Be not afraid!".  Whaever form it takes, this is not the time to abandon Catholic education.

A Couple Paving Stones On The Road to Hell

      There’s an old saying: “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.”  It’s a little odd, when you think about it: shouldn’t our intentions be good?  The road to Heaven certainly isn’t paved with bad intentions, is it?  The answer, I think, is that the second half of the proposition is left out.  It's about good intentions that are not grounded in reality, or in wisdom, or in God’s law: they create more problems than they solve (if, indeed, they solve anything at all).  

     A classic example of the Road to Hell Principle is the thoroughly modern practice known as “Sex Education” (Sex Ed informally).  A concern, and I believe a sincere one in most cases, for the well-being of young people in an increasingly sexualized world has led to instructional programs in schools (and not just public schools) that, because they are disconnected from God’s law, and Natural Law, and plain common sense, promote the very harm they are intended to ameliorate.

     One such program has been in the news recently: a class run by a Planned Parenthood chapter in California that was invited to teach a class on sexuality to 9th graders in the local public high school.  According to the Fox News story [full story here]: 

. . . some parents are irate that their children’s sex ed class at Acalanes High School in Lafayette is being taught by employees of Planned Parenthood without their prior knowledge. They are also fuming over the methods and materials being used, including a checklist that asks students if they are “ready for sex” and another worksheet that describes how to give and obtain consent, as well as a diagram that uses a "genderbread" person for lessons in gender identity. 

The Gingerbread Person is a cute little fellow who clearly was designed to appeal to children, much like the old Camel Cigarettes mascot “Joe Camel”; and like the much maligned cartoon camel, who was criticized for promoting an unhealthy product to children, Gingerbread Person offers reassurance to the very young that whatever they want to express or do sexually is not just all right, but good and desirable.  Things, perhaps, that had not even occurred to them before.  As for the class itself, many of the children “felt the sessions were pressuring them to have sex” or, as one parent put it, “Some of the kids were distracted because it was divergent from what they were taught at home.”  Indeed. For example: 

Included in the materials provided to students were documents and worksheets that included a checklist entitled, “Sex Check! Are You Ready For Sex?” in which the 13 and 14-year-old students are asked questions such as if they have water–based lubricants and condoms and if they could handle a possible infection or pregnancy. Another worksheet reads like a how-to on obtaining consent from a possible sexual partner and offers possible statements like “Do you want to go back to my place?” and “Is it OK if I take my pants off?” 

There are more problems with school-based sex ed classes that I can get into here.  I will point out that the foregoing tends to support what many of us have been saying for a long time: that such classes not only debase sexuality and separate it from it’s appropriate place in a loving marital relationship, but actually encourage (or even “pressure”, as the students say above) early and promiscuous sexual activity.

     Here’s another case, this time from the UK [full story here].  After a sex ed class, a thirteen year-old boy and girl  

. . . went to a secluded area where they discussed what they had just been taught about sexual intercourse.

The boy said that he asked the girl if she wanted to "try sex." Although the young girl repeatedly said "No," the schoolboy proceeded to pin the girl down and rape her. Afterward he allegedly told the girl, "You can go now." 

This is only one case to be sure, but we can see a clear connection between the instruction and the act.  And, as it turns out, many British students have misgivings similar to those expressed by their American counterparts above.  From the Life Site story: 

Earlier this year a poll of UK teenagers by the Institute of Public Policy Research (IPPR) [here]found that a large majority of both boys and girls complained that sex education often presents promiscuity as normal, putting additional pressure on them to become sexually active before they might otherwise do so.

Many of the teens criticized the sex education lessons they had received at school for not doing enough to discourage them from becoming sexually active.

One 18-year-old girl responded to the poll question about her sex-ed experience: "I always felt pressured by teachers, like, 'sex is normal, just be safe OK' when actually I wasn't interested in having sex at the time and was happy to wait for the right person.”

"I don't think sex should be taught as 'the norm'. I think people should be made to feel comfortable and teachers should say, 'you should wait, the law states 16, don't be pressured'."

 

According to Dr. Philip Ney, a retired professor of psychiatry, there is plenty of research to show that the negative effects of sex ed programs are very real.  In an essay he wrote for Life Site News [full article here] he says:

It is quite conclusive now, that the more sex education, the more sexual activity and all the problems that go with that.  The introduction of sex education is well correlated with the increase in abortion, STDs and boy-girl interpersonal problems. Good education gives people the desire to try it out or learn more experientially.  Paradoxically, in that respect, current forms of sex education are good education but have the wrong results . . . The earlier the sex education, the younger children explore sex and try various sexual techniques. Present evidence makes it possible to also conclude that the earlier the sex education, the earlier the sexual behavior. Thus sexual education is sexual titillation. 

Despite all the evidence that these programs do the opposite of what they intend, the “experts” have nothing to offer but more of the same.  In response to the British case above, one such expert said that “in her opinion the solution to this type of misbehavior is more sex education, ‘and much earlier than 13, I would say.’”  

     This whole situation brings to mind an old saying: “Insanity is to keep doing the same thing, while expecting a different result”.  But what else can they do in the public schools, or in the secular world in general?  They have rejected a worldview in which healthy sexuality is nourished and supported.  They have torn down the social attitudes and institutions that protected people from the consequences of lust run amok. In a world where the most important thing is feelings (and isn’t that what the Genderbread Person is all about?), right and wrong are random abstractions.  That’s why even abstinence classes, while better than the Planned Parenthood inspired alternative, are still not enough.  Young people need to be taught not simply the (negative) practice of abstinence but the (positive) virtue of Chastity, and not just in a classroom: they need to see it as part of a coherent worldview, as something that not only works but can be lived out joyfully, especially by the example of the adults in their lives. 

     There are many reasons why Christianity spread as quickly as it did throughout the Roman Empire in the first few centuries after Christ.  I have heard that one of them was that pagan Romans saw the joy in the lives of their Christian neighbors, not the least part of which was the love and respect Christian men had for their wives.  In a culture that more and more encourages people to use each other for pleasure rather than embrace each other in love, we are again called to show a more excellent way.  We need to understand, and help our fellow Catholics see, that Church teachings on sexuality and marriage are not so much a series of prohibitions as they are a road map to happier, more productive, and holier lives. We need to rebuild, one person, one family, at a time a culture where Christ is King. 

A "Cool" Homeschooling Project

Our backyard in winter - not the ideal gardening environment

     Our faith calls us to live our lives by standards different than those of the secular world: “’My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways,’ declares the Lord” (Isaiah 55:8).  God’s ways and the World’s ways seem further apart than ever.  As society at large becomes ever less Christian, it becomes correspondingly more hostile to the practice and the values of the faith, a hostility which is intensified in the public school system, which tends to be dominated by leftist and materialist ideologies.  To put young children there, at an age when character, values, and worldview are still being formed, seems too much like exposing tender plants to rigors of cold weather too soon.  State schools are simply too firmly committed to forming their students in the Ways of the World.

Marigolds protected in the unheated greenhouse

     Catholic schools are a much better option, of course, and a Godsend to countless Catholic families and others looking for a saner, healthier educational environment for their children.  Even here, however, the influence of the secular world can often have a more powerful effect than we would like, despite the best intentions and efforts of those who run the schools (and as one who has taught in Catholic schools for almost three decades, I know about both the good and the, um,  less good) .  And so a small but growing number of us are choosing (along with many of our separated brethren in other Christian traditions) is to teach our children at home.

     For us, then, the choice to homeschool  has been based mostly on a desire to have more influence over the character development of our children, in the hope that when they do go out on their own they’ll better understand what it means to be “in the world but not of it.”  As it happens, there are also some practical advantages as well.  For one thing, our children have been able to work on long-term projects that would have been impractical or even impossible if they had to schedule them in or around school attendance:

Marigolds from the same bed as those above left outside

several of them have written books and made feature-length movies, one has composed a piano sonata, and they all have participated a couple of times in productions of Shakespearean plays  (organized by a local Baptist Pastor with extensive training in theatre) that were intensely  involved, demanding, and rewarding.

     Their most recent project has been to convert our little front porch into a cold weather greenhouse. This is a whole-family project, but the main movers are my son John and my lovely bride, Linda.  John and Linda have just started a blog , “Little Greenhouse in the Woods” [here], chronicling the progress of the project.  Feel free to stop by to encourage a worthy homeschooling project, and to see how things are growing (God willing) through the Maine winter.