Detroit’s Archbishop Allen Vigneron recently spoke about the role of Catholic schools in the Church and the new evangelization—an issue particularly urgent as many Catholic schools struggle to remain open and affordable. Archbishop Vigneron argues that schools are “an organic extension of the Church, an outgrowth of her very substance”:
Schools are integral to the Church not only because of who our Lord is but also because of who we are. We are persons, not animals or robots. God has created us with a dignity and a capacity for wisdom that correspond, however analogously, to his own. But neither are we angels, so we also need to learn wisdom and to grow in wisdom. . . . There are many ways we come to wisdom and to the knowledge of God, but our schools provide privileged opportunities for this education during the most formative years of our lives.
He reminds his listeners that Catholic schools do not exist merely to provide a superior form of education. Rather:
What we want for our students, to put the matter in its simplest form, is that they become saints. A school that is an effective instrument of the New Evangelization will equip each of its students with all that is needed to offer a wholehearted “yes” to the universal call to holiness.
Calling for a “fundamental renewal of our Catholic schools,” the archbishop points to a successful educator of the past:
Here I look to the great scholar Alcuin, who was the schoolmaster of Charlemagne and a very significant reformer of Catholic education around the turn of the 9th Century and one of the leading lights of the Carolingian Renaissance. Alcuin’s efforts at launching a new education project bore great fruit, reshaping Christian culture over 1000 years ago.
Today, we’re Alcuin. Christ is calling us “(to) put out into deep water” in the work of renewal. We must be “deep” in our self-examination, “deep” in the changes we are willing to make for the sake of our mission, and “deep” in the boldness with which we will launch out into a new way of educating our children. Half-measures will not be sufficient to do the job. Our schools need our commitment, our self-investment, and our resolve if they are to become the instruments of the New Evangelization Christ wants them to be. Our children need what we have to offer in our schools, which is to say they need Jesus, and woe to us if we fail them. Jesus himself expects this of us, and we cannot disappoint him.
The address is available in its entirety here (PDF).
December 31st, 2012 | 3:06 pm
Indeed Catholic, diocesan, schools were a crucial element that supported Catholic families in raising their children in the Faith for so, so many years. We are in desperate need of them today more than ever. However…
From what I see now in the current schools they only gloss over any real elements of our Faith. Many very good ones have become just places for parents to put the kids getting them away from the truly harmful pulic schools. And they aren’t safe in Catehetical programs either.
For several years I taught CCD in a parish here in Reno where they had installed the Ignatius Press series which was a delight of solid teaching…..until one day our DRE told us the pastor wanted to change to a more updated version of texts. Ok. So what they did was have us look over a number of new ones by various publishers.
To make a long story short, there were only 3 out of us teachers who didn’t think any of them were as good as Ignatius Press in lining out and presenting what the Church thinking is and voted to just keep what we had.
So being outnumbered, out went our solid series. I know some parishes have got their act together on this issue over the past 10 years (it’s been that long since I was a teacher), but too many have not and parents are opting to teach home-school versions of religious education for their kids.
With the current division in our bishops I have misgivings on their ability to get any kind of serious parish schools on line any time soon. So I guess it’s just a game of ‘stay tuned’ for the current crop of those parents who are serious-minded Catholics.
January 1st, 2013 | 2:17 am
I followed the link provided and read Archbishop Vigneron’s address. He outlined a vision but did not (could not?) show a path to achieving it.
I look forward to seeing what the Archbishop actually attempts and how his efforts work out.
January 2nd, 2013 | 6:11 pm
I could name a Catholic high school in the northern suburbs of Detroit whose young women have been getting a strong brew of orthodox progressive ideology over the years. I recall reading a Detroit News columnist’s extensive hagiography of one its retiring teachers who was devotee of the Foners and other progressive academics. I read the article twice. Not once did the words Christ or Catholic come up in it. The man had taught at this school for over two decades. One of his pedagogical techniques was to bond with the young women over the loss of his daughter when she was nine years old. He actually showed home movies in the classroom. This emotional bonding is certainly classic leftist activism and, as I say, he was proselytizing the teachings of Jesus. There was in fact not hint of Catholicism in his comments and replies. What has happened to the Catholic universities in Detroit — whose professoriate were strongly supportive of the president and his policies, especially the Affordable Care Act — is also part of secondary education. In fact, this old babyboomer had is his share of progressive nuns and other teachers when I was in high school here in Detroit. A priest and architecture professor from UofD admonised us at Mass one Sunday not to “overreact to the health care bill.”
January 2nd, 2013 | 6:16 pm
Post Script: My point and I do have one is that the his excellency has his hands full just keeping existing schools open. I have no idea how he will reform them or rather, reinvigorate them with the rigors of Catholic pedagogy. I have certainly felt the light hand of discouragement regarding my own handful of letters in the archdiocesan papers. But then all one hears are words and more words from every corner of the establishment in SE Michigan — temporal and spiritual. The devout and the caring go on quietly with their work. But hands off the classroom.
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