Buchanan's right -- they are polluting our children. We're getting ready to head into the holiday season (Martin Luther King, Jr. Day) at my sons' parochial school. Last year about this time my kindergarten son and I were sitting in traffic when we saw a billboard with MLK's picture on it. Just for fun, I asked him who he thought it might be. His response: "That's Martin Luther King -- he saved the world."
Too bad Jesus didn't rate such a mention during the Christmas season just past (oops -- I probably should have said "holiday season".) Our supposedly Catholic school had a holiday program in which I don't believe that Jesus's name was mentioned even once. We did get a rousing number about Kwanzaa though.
As a result of these experiences, a couple of things are beginning to dawn on me. First, the so-called Catholic schools stopped being Catholic when they stopped having priests and nuns as teachers (there's not a single one at my children's school -- nor is there any at any other "Catholic" school in my allegedly conservative diocese. Instead of nuns and priests as teachers, we have ill-formed laywomen who wouldn't recognize the Catholic Catechism is someone handed it to them.
Second, that what is left of the Catholicism in our Catholic schools is being relentlessly watered down to the point that the schools are merely secular private schools with a Catholic name affixed. For example, these past two weeks I've been battling the announcement that during Lent this year, the kids will have the option of eating meat. Now to a non-Catholic this is probably a small thing -- and in truth it is, but it represents a larger truth: that whatever that is Catholic that is left in these schools is being relentlessly purged. So I have to ask myself, "What is Catholic about a Catholic school that has none of the usual pious customs and a watered-down, slapped-together religious instruction that is essentially non-denominational?" Not much, it would seem.
There are some good Catholic schools out there though. Perhaps not in your diocese, but all it takes is one good parish opening a school. Not a small task unfortunately, but it is highly likely that as soon as word gets our an orthodox parish is opening a school, that school will be filled to the brim.
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