Posted on 03/07/2008 9:00:20 AM PST by bs9021
CINO Prep
by: Malcolm A. Kline, March 07, 2008
Although Catholic schools look good when compared with their public counterparts, they don’t fare as well in contrast to the way they used to be. In the wake of Vatican II, “Radical reformers tore at every aspect of Catholic life, questioning time-honored practices and beliefs,” Phillip F. Lawler writes in The Faithful Departed: The Collapse of Boston’s Catholic Culture. “Catholic schools jettisoned their religious education programs; the old reliable Baltimore Catechism quickly became a collectors item.”
“In parochial high schools, religion classes became freewheeling discussion sessions, with students encouraged to reflect on the works of contemporary theologians who announced that ‘God is Dead,’ or to analyze the verses of pop songs.”
Lawler is the editor of Catholic World News. From what he found, it looks like too many parochial schools, while posting superior SAT scores vis-a`-vis public institutions of lower learning, are in danger of becoming Catholic in Name Only, or CINO.
“The rote question-and-answer approach of the old Baltimore Catechism was replaced by a lighter program that encouraged young students to explore their own feelings rather than master truths,” Lawler recounts. “The results were predictable; even in Catholic schools, students remained in the dark about fundamental truths of the faith.”
“A survey by the Catholic Press Association found that among Catholics between the ages of fifteen and seventeen, only 37 percent could name the four Gospels; most Catholic teenagers (56 percent) could not even name one.” For the record, they are Matthew, Mark, Luke and John...
(Excerpt) Read more at campusreportonline.net ...
“In the wake of Vatican II, “Radical reformers tore at every aspect of Catholic life, questioning time-honored practices and beliefs,” Phillip F. Lawler writes in The Faithful Departed: The Collapse of Boston’s Catholic Culture. “Catholic schools jettisoned their religious education programs; the old reliable Baltimore Catechism quickly became a collectors item. From what he found, it looks like too many parochial schools, while posting superior SAT scores vis-a`-vis public institutions of lower learning, are in danger of becoming Catholic in Name Only, or CINO.”
Catholics who hung on to the “old” ways were hounded out of the Church. Oh BTW, the danger is long past. When Catholic school children can’t name the four evangalists, the money spent on tuition would be better spent on beer.
Catholic schools today seem to be nothing more than private schools with a crucfix out front. I think there’s also a “follow the money” aspect to it in that a non-Catholic student pays an higher unsubsidized tuition rate so the schools want as many of them as they can get without regard to “faith”. It used to be that the schools were seen as a means of “propagating the faith”, but that’s gone.
oooooooooh the good ol’ days of the Sisters of Mercy beating the hell out of us for eight years. Of course the girls got 12 years of nuns with high school.
While us boys graduated to the Christian Brothers beating the hell out of us for four more years in high school!
I remember one of my brothers coming home crying & complaining because one of ths nuns had giving him a paddling...
our mother sent him back to the school and told the nun to “paddle him some more” LOL
Unfortunately, there aren’t many nuns anymore so we Catholics are forced to home school like everyone else.
After I beat the bejeezis out of the leader of the Popular Girls Clique at my public school (thus ending rather decisively the public bullying unremarked by the teacher) I was sent to a Catholic Girls School and I must say that the principal Sister Mary Bernadette (not her real name) and her squad of Nuns with Guns made sure that we understood we were there for an education and The Sixties had no place in her territory at all. Mama was so pleased with this attitude that she worked extra hours to keep all us girls in the same school (the Catholic schools were very good about bursaries for large families in those days). One of the many techniques she had for controlling behaviour was shame. The worst possible punishment was to be compelled to call your mother, in Sister’s presence, and tell her exactly what you had done. In my youngest sister’s case that involved repeating the word she had written in lipstick on the mirror in the washroom. (Her in-school punishment was to write that particular word 1,000 times in her best handwriting; Sister told her that perhaps after that she would have written it often enough that she would not wish to write it again.) And you would not want to be the girl whose mother had to leave work and come to the school to take her home to replace her non-regulation clothing with the complete school uniform.
Of course, that was when our parents’ ideas of right and wrong were the same as those of the Holy Mother Church. These days Sister Principal would probably be arrested if she tried to punish anybody for anything.
It was also much harder for the boys to convince us that Youhavetohavesexeverydayoryoudie — when the school was full of strong, successful women in full vigor who never had sex at all.
We had someone like you at DeSales back in the 70’s. She was expelled from public school. She wore a navy sailors hat to Mass and finally got expelled from DeSales when she made a bonfire of her books in the driveway of the school.
She lived close to me and her grandfather had mega bucks. I wasn’t supposed to have anything but minimal contact with her.
I attended my local Catholic school for only a couple years of and received an excellent education in the short time there. When I got into public school, I didn’t learn anything for another 2 years, the classes were so advanced.
Of the top 10 students in my high school class, 8 had attended the Catholic school, which only ran through 8th grade.
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