NOTHING NEW?

Perhaps you have heard the brouhaha over the new teacher’s contracts in the Diocese of Cleveland.  I do understand the angst about them.  Essentially there is nothing different about them per se, but on the other hand there is something very different about them.

 

What is not different about them is that there is no new information in them.  What was implied before is now spelled out.  A public life lived in accord with the faith was expected before and is expected now.

 

What is different is now it is spelled out on more controversial topics.  Living in invalid marriages, publically supporting abortion rights, and a host of other points have been spelled out more explicitly.  This is partly in response to the new healthcare mandates, partly to help stave off litigation, and partly to reestablish a stronger Catholic identity in our schools.

 

Is it a good idea?  Not being a lawyer or a politician I am not sold either way.  But there is an aspect of this whole dust storm that is coming to light that illuminates a profound misunderstanding about what we are (supposed to be) doing as Catholic schools.  A reading of some Letters to the Editor as of late give example.

 

One of these letters read something like this: “It is a shame that the Catholic Church is forcing the issue on what constitutes a good Catholic.  By limiting the pool of teachers, we will be missing out on great educators, which can only harm our schools and our students.  We want our kids to have the best teachers.”

 

Such a statement betrays a deep confusion of the nature of Catholic schools.  A Catholic school is not a public school, it is not even a private school, it is a parochial school.  Unlike public schools which are becoming more and more limited in passing on culture, discipline, ideas of right and wrong, good and evil, or even God, and unlike private schools who are there to simply provide a superior education (hopefully), a Catholic school is also about the formation of the human person, imbuing ideas of the good with very clear ideas of what that is.  She passes on truth, concepts of what is holy, beautiful, and how one should live embracing the respect of life, family, the dignity of the human person, and all that entails with the 2,000 year understanding of the revealed truths of the faith.

 

It is culture that we are passing on, not simply knowledge.  If it were not for the faith and the culture we would close our schools or make them profitable private schools as has happened to so many of our colleges and high schools. 

 

So let’s say there is a police officer that comes to your child’s school to teach about staying off of drugs.  He is very effective.  The kids love him.  He is popular with the parents.  But he also has a website promoting illegal drug use and the kids know it.  He admitted to the kids that he regularly uses drugs though they should stay off of them.  He was quoted in the newspaper as saying that drugs should be made legal and available.  No matter how good he is in the classroom and while in the school building, do you really want him teaching your kids about drugs?

 

Our faith is a culture, not a set of facts in a book.  It cannot be taught like math.  It is caught, not taught.  No one can “teach Catholicism” while living a life contrary to it for then it becomes a dead message.

KEEP US STRONG OH LORD

There was the economic bubble that seemed like it would last forever.  Wiser folks held their breath and waited for the bubble to burst.  And it did.

 

That is the way I feel sometimes about our parish and our parish school.  It is strong at the moment and we are surrounded by parishes with schools almost entirely.  But can that much saturation last?

 

The Diocese of Cleveland is the 11^th largest diocese in the United States, but it has the 5^th largest system of schools instructing approximately 47,000 students.  Chicago, which population wise blows Cleveland out of the water, instructs 85,000.  So we have a lot of schools.

 

In some areas the schools are quite concentrated.  There are good number of reasons for this.  There were once larger families which provided plenty of students for the school.  Many ethnic parishes opened schools right around the corner from diocesan parishes with boundaries which would cater to their specific needs.  School was once free to extremely inexpensive and more families would attend.  It was a practice in the diocese for many years to build a school first and have a church that would later be turned into the school gym when the “real” church was built.  All this (and more) added greatly to the number of schools in this diocese.

 

Many of those factors no longer exist.  Not as many families have many children, Catholics have fled heavily populated urban areas, many of the ethnic communities have assimilated into the general population, schooling is expensive, and while there is still an emphasis on Catholic education, it is not what it once was.

 

Many our schools have red flags about them.  The first sign of an ailing school is that the student population falls beneath 200.  Around 150 students serious discussions must be made about the future of the school.  If more than 25 cents of every dollar in the collection basket goes toward the school budget, caution should be taken.  If there is a general trend of falling student numbers over several years, that may be a sign that the school needs great attention.  Finally, if there is no plan, no actions being taken to raise student numbers, reach out to the community, advertise the school, make the school more attractive, then one should be worried.

 

The problem is (and sometimes the great blessing) that our schools are set up as independent system of schools.  Nobody wants to be the one that says, “I will close my school so that yours may stay open and healthy,” or “Let us all build a regional school that we will all send our children to and close our schools.” 

 

In the mean time I continue to count my blessings that we have such a strong healthy school and pray that it will continue to be so in the future.  But what does the future hold for Catholic education?  We are waiting for the pioneer saint to assist us.

IGNORANCE IS NOT BLISS

This post is being written specifically for those who think they do not need to read it. It concerns a certain body of knowledge that many people do not find it necessary to know at the present and figure that when the time comes, there will be plenty of knowledgeable people and handy resources to help them through. Such is not the case.

Most likely one day you find yourself in need of this information. Life will be going on somewhat normally and all of a sudden people will be looking to you to make a decision. If you are lucky you will have a few days to decide. If you are not, you will have someone standing in front of you looking at the second hand of his watch and saying, “We need a decision.”

The body of knowledge is bioethics. Or more specifically Catholic bioethics. At the very moment you need the information the most, chances are you will not have ready access to it. Not everybody thinks like you do and not everybody has the same intentions that you do. Some people are simply avoiding lawsuits. Some people are making money. Some people are very sincere but have different values from you. Some people do not care. Nobody is as invested in the relationship in which you are asked to make a decision as you.

At this point you do not want to just call a priest and ask, “What should I do?” You want to know “whys” and options and true teachings of Christ not something easily grasped in desperate moments. You want to be able to say to others who are emotionally involved, “This is why our decision is alright,” not just, “Father said so.”

We also do not have a bioethics “hot line” though that would be very cool. As we have less and less priests, they are less and less available to be able to sit by a phone 24 hours a day, seven days a week just in case they are needed at the hospital. It is sad but nonetheless a fact. Far too many “chaplains” at hospitals, nursing homes, and even many hospices do not get extensive training in care for Catholics. For many it is just a section in a workbook that they turn to and it may very well be that they are not very invested so as to be able to enlighten you and know fine points.

Until this situation is corrected it is time to arm yourselves with knowledge.

OUR CHILDREN ARE NOT THE FUTURE OF THE CHURCH

THEY ARE THE CHURCH – The Rev J. Glenn Murray SJ

You who have been with Adam’s Ale for awhile know that the parish in which I grew up tended to be about ten to twenty years behind the rest of the Church. At times this served us well and inadvertently made us cutting edge and sometimes just made us out of step.

Up until my high school years we were mercifully behind the times in the way CCD was taught. While most of the rest of the country had declared the Baltimore Catechism one step away from heretical and got on with the important business of making felt banners, we were still forced to learn why God made us. (To know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world and be happy with Him forever in the next.)

Father Ozimek would brag from the pulpit that we had the best attendance in the diocese (would you want to explain to Fr. O why you weren’t there) and the whole kit and caboodle was run pretty strictly. We had examinations and report cards and the support (or perhaps threat) of the community.

Then in high school, with all the good intensions in the world, some well meaning people came into save and modernize our CCD program. The name changed to Confraternity of Catholic Dogma (CCD) to Parish School of Religion (PSR) and we gradually slipped out of a school environment into something between therapy and art class. We began to split up into discussion groups and talk our feelings about Jesus and His teaching and then gather around tables and make banners, which mercifully never made it into our little English Gothic Church. I understand the effort. I understand the well-meaning intentions. But we as students knew full well that we had stopped learning anything except that Jesus loved us and how each of us happened to feel about it.

This was not unusual in U.S. Catholicism. It just happened earlier in most places. The worst part of this great American experiment in religion education is that two generations (maybe three) of parents came of age not knowing their faith. Whereas at least before there was a snowball’s chance in July of parents being able for fill in gaps in religious savvy, now many times the parents are equally as uniformed about their faith as their children.

There is a perspective out there that many people believe that says youth gatherings of any type must be entertaining in order to draw people in and that they need to be social and accepting so that all feel welcome. These are nice ideas but not as primary objectives especially if that means sacrificing substance so that we end up with pizza parties and dances instead of kids knowing what the Eucharistic elements are or knowing how to answer the bishop (and our bishops in this diocese are becoming much more serious about this) when he quizzes them at confirmation. Pizza parties and dances are the job of the local recreation center. We can do such things but they must be clearly subject to the completion of our primary mission: the catechizing of our children. If we fail at that, we fail at our reason for being. Period. We might as well close our doors and send everyone to the pool.

We can’t suck kids in to Church by doing bad catechesis and entertaining them into sticking around until they are adults and hope that they will learn their faith by osmosis and be persuaded to put a few bucks in the collection basket. There are plenty of Churches that do that. We cannot be one of them. Our message is too important. Eternity depends on it. Everybody is willing to serve children candy. It is our business to give them meat.

Then, after they are fed, have the dance. But you won’t be failing your mission statement if you do not have one.