This just posted on the SaveSJR blog ...
St. John Bosco Schools, a new Private Independent school teaching in the Catholic tradition, has received a number of requests to explain their model and what will set them apart from other local schools.
If you are interested or just curious, there will be an informational meeting at 7:00 pm, Wednesday, June 11.
See the SaveSJR site for full details and contact information.
Eugene Michael has posted a group of questions that have been on his mind from time to time.
Some of them have occurred to me too. For instance,
Why do we never hear an explanation from a member of the clergy as to why women can’t be priests?
If anyone out there is tired of holding his/her breath waiting for this to be addressed from the pulpit or in the Catholic Courier, Boston College Philosophy Professor Peter Kreeft has a tour-de-force explanation on his website.
It runs just over an hour and is a bit triumphalistic to some ears, but it does cover all the bases.
And if you should have other questions or interests Dr. Kreeft has about three dozen other audio files available for free here.
Today's D&C features a story on various Rochester-area mainline Protestant churches and some of their members. A part of the story profiles a young couple who were raised Catholic but are now members of the United Church of Christ, "drawn not by doctrine but by the sense of community." The story goes on to say that the wife "found it more and more difficult to recapture the feeling and experience of faith she had as a teenager," so she and her husband, "began to search for something that worked."
This brought me back to two days before Christmas 2004 when I opened up the D&C to find a photo of two fellow parishioners - a married couple that I'll call Dick and Jane - prominently displayed on the front page. The photo accompanied a story about folks searching for a church home and I quickly learned that Dick and Jane not only were no longer fellow parishioners, but they were also no longer fellow Catholics.
"Shocked" would probably have been the best description of my reaction. These were just about the last folks I would have expected to leave the Church. Both had been very active in our parish. They were at Mass every Sunday and during the week had both served on several committees and he on the parish council. Dick had also been a Eucharistic minister and Jane a religious ed catechist and the entire family had been active members of our parish's Families In Religious Education (F.I.R.E.) program. They were the stereotypical pillars of the parish. Or they had been.
What happened? Well, according to Jane, "the leadership changed and took the church in a different direction." Now she said she found herself making a grocery list in her head during the sermon while Dick fought sleep and the children twiddled their thumbs. “We knew there was more,” said Jane.
It is true that our parish had recently undergone a change in pastors and that the new guy, while a good and holy priest, was certainly less dynamic than his predecessor. Two well-liked staff members had also recently left, one to take up new responsibilities with her religious order and the other to travel the country with her husband in retirement. Their replacements were well-qualified people, but again perhaps a bit less dynamic than their predecessors.
In short, some of the non-essential, external trappings had changed, but it was still a Catholic parish. The Sunday homilies might have become a bit drier to some ears, but they were still the product of many hours of prayer and preparation and they still offered solid catechesis. The essential part, however, was still the same: The Eucharist was still the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Our Lord, Jesus Christ.
So in looking for "more," Dick, Jane and their children have actually settled for less. In becoming members of the Lutheran church a couple of miles away they may have found something more exciting, more entertaining, but they have left the Real Presence behind. They traded Jesus in the Eucharist for warm, fuzzy feelings.
I haven't talked with Dick and Jane since they left the Church but it seems obvious that their Catholic faith had been a mile wide and an inch deep. It was a faith more predicated on feelings than religious convictions, a faith that needed interesting homilies more than it needed Jesus in the Eucharist. As Jane said in the article, "After a while you get a feeling of where you belong."
Unfortunately, a lot of what passes for catechesis these days is pretty empty stuff, heavy on emotional and/or "experiential" content, sprinkled with dubious "truths" and devoid of what really matters. And why shouldn't it be? People like Professor Richard Gaillardetz, who recently made his third trip to DOR in the last four years to address our "ministerium," have a disdain for "propositional" catechesis and most certainly pass that on to their audiences. People like Sr. Elizabeth Johnson, who routinely sow the seeds of doubt if not those of dissent, make regular, well-attended appearances here. And the priests, pastoral staff and educators who comprise their audiences then go back to their parishes and schools to instruct the faithful.
As Eugene Michael says, "No wonder there are so many confused and non-practicing Catholics in the DOR." To which I can add: No wonder there are so many Catholics deserting the Church for other denominations.
An article appearing today on the Catholic Courier website is headlined "Pastoral ministers answer dozens of questions during 'Catholic Call-In'."
According to the article more than 80 questions were fielded on topics such as church doctrine, mortal sin, heaven, hell, the Sunday obligation to attend Mass, marriage, divorce and annulments.
No mention is made of any calls with questions relating to the closure of 13 Monroe County Catholic schools, although I know of 4 people who intended to make such calls.
Perhaps they and others of which I am unaware are covered by the line,
Some questions were not answered immediately, but instead were forwarded to experts in the appropriate diocesan departments.
If so, I'm sure the "experts" will get back to the callers post haste.
Just a few miles down I-90 the Diocese of Syracuse is showing DOR how to actually promote its Catholic Schools.
Part of the Syracuse Catholic Schools ad campaign relies on that old political stand-by, the lawn sign. The diocese has the signs made up and distribution couldn't be simpler: Parents simply pick them up at school, take them home and plant them in their front yards.
The result: Syracuse Catholic Schools are getting calls from parents interested in registering their kids.
Of course, we really couldn't do anything like that here. We just might get too many kids signing up and then the Bishop's experts would no longer look like experts.
Carol A. Kostyniak, Secretary for Catholic Education in the Diocese of Buffalo, had an interesting op-ed piece in last Sunday's Buffalo News.
She had recently attended the White House Summit on Inner-City Children and Faith-Based Schools hosted by the president. The event brought together 250 educators, policymakers, philanthropists and business and community leaders to develop local strategies to keep the doors of inner-city faith-based schools open to America’s disadvantaged students.
One paragraph that caught my eye says,
Margaret Spellings, U. S. secretary of education, has referred to inner-city faith-based schools as “national treasures.” Spellings hosted a panel that included Acting Secretary of HUD Roy Bernardi, on “Educational Options and America’s Cities.” The panel indicated that faith-based schools are often the stabilizing force in their neighborhoods. In addition to providing safe and academically rigorous environments, these schools have a positive influence on community stability, employment and reduction in crime. The panel concluded that protecting such schools is in the interest of the citizens and leaders of neighborhoods, cities, states and the nation. (emphasis added)
The article concludes with,
As the summit indicated, our children cannot wait until we turn around our nation’s failing public schools or build new ones. Parents and neighborhoods need the opportunities provided by their faith-based schools. It is up to our entire community to work to ensure the future of these national treasures and to ensure that future generations of children and their communities continue to reap the benefits of our faith-based schools. They are a legacy worth saving.
I've been going through my draft posts, things I started but somehow just never got around to finishing. Some just weren't worth any more work and have been consigned to the round file. Others need some more thought and/or research and will remain drafts for now.
This one, however, while speaking of the wider Church also has a message of hope for us in DOR. It is an excerpt from an April post at Purify Your Bride and really doesn't need any further comment from me .
We have creative liturgy. We have liberal theology. They are appealing to those who are unsatisfied with the original. But what about those who simply don’t know about the original? Well, they just won’t get it. It cannot last. It trades off the notion that you already respect the gospel but are not quite ready to accept it fully and unconditionally.
Chesterton talks about liberalism lasting only one generation. After that people will move on to atheism or back to orthodoxy. You can have a lot of fun pulling down the sacred but once it is down it is down. That is when the church by logic should die but it never does. That is because there is something deep inside our souls that longs for fairy tales. There is something even deeper that tells us the gospel of Jesus is the one true fairy tale.
Chesterton points out the Catholic church is the only institution that can survive this sort of crash. It has done it again and again. Of course, this happens because Jesus said it would.
