Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Catholic
Catholic Education: You Can’t Serve Two Masters

Catholic Education: You Can’t Serve Two Masters

Last updated on: December 27, 2014 at 1:43 pm by Jennifer Fitz

Catholic Education: You Can’t Serve Two Masters 2014-12-27T13:43:49-05:00 Jennifer Fitz

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

One of the reigning errors of our insecure, perpetually-offended culture is the Approval One is the Rejection of All Others fallacy. So allow me to be perfectly clear: My love of homeschooling is in no way a rejection of our Catholic schools.

Not for a moment. Those who pay attention in real life know that I put quite a lot of effort into steering families towards their local Catholic schools whenever I can.*

Thus in the busyness of getting the new school year going, I was dismayed to have several different parents spontaneously volunteer to me — in flesh life, not just internet parents — that one of the reasons they were happy to have left their local Catholic school was because the kids weren’t being taught the Catholic faith there.

Not that bad isn’t very good.

There wasn’t any particular muckraking. Just, “Gosh, I was paying all this money for my kids to learn the faith, and it was not being taught.”

The telling moment: A mother waxing about the amazing world of religious education opened up to her no-longer-in-Catholic-school family, now that her kid was using the Faith and Life textbooks.

Now I happen to love F&L. It’s my go-to spine for a religious ed program. But this isn’t some obscure program imparting mysteries unfit for the great unwashed. This is just a normal religious education textbook, used in thousands of parishes around the country.

Being wowed by Faith and Life when you’ve just spent a year or more at a Catholic school would be like being wowed by Sadlier-Oxford’s vocabulary books when you’ve just done a year of SAT-verbal prep. Um, yeah, it teaches the topic. But that’s what it’s supposed to do.

So what’s going on at St. Blandings?

I’m well aware of the patches of dissent that plague many parishes and schools around the nation. But the parents I heard from weren’t talking to me about dissent. Their children weren’t being taught anything false; they were simply not being taught the depths of the truth.

I think what I was hearing this week was something milder and much more pernicious: Catholic schools viewing their primary mission as being financially-viable in a highly competitive education market.

Pick your master.

I’m an accountant by trade. I understand the financials. Parents want a good academic education for their children, and Catholic schools enter the game with the odds stacked against them. By definition, to pay private school tuition is to pay for your child’s education twice: Once in taxes to fund the public school your child doesn’t attend, and then a second time to pay for the school you’d actually choose.

It’s a hard sell. Catholic schools are under tremendous financial pressure to try to nab just enough of the I-Have-Money-to-Burn market that they can stay afloat. Barring a massive community of very wealthy faithful Catholics, the easiest catch is to push good academics on the broader not-so-Catholic set. The not-so-Catholics are maybe not so keen on dropping $15K for their kid to study Faith and Life.

A Catholic education is worth sacrificing for.

The irony is that faithfully-Catholic families are the target of parochial-school enrollment guilt: If you really cared about your child’s faith, and the good of the Church, you’d send them to us.

There’s truth behind the pitch. Families who are serious about forming their children in the faith will sacrifice — in time, in money, in labor — to ensure their children have the best possible formation in their faith that they can possibly get.

Likewise, all Catholics should be ready to put their money where their catechism is when it comes to supporting faithfully-Catholic schools, even if they have no children to enroll.

But when a family drops out of St. Merchant’s Parochial only to be wowed by Faith and Life, we’ve got a disconnect.

Sadly, every dropout causes the administrative spiral to pick up speed: If you can’t keep the Catholic families, you have to water the theology program just a bit more, in hopes of nabbing a few more non-Catholics to fill those empty desks.

Radical change means radical sacrifice.

For the St. Anodyne’s of this world, there’s a hard choice. To choose to teach the Catholic faith in depth and breadth is to choose to alienate good paying customers. There’s a market for Catholic education, but it’s full of large families with stay-at-home moms and piles of loans from Christendom. To choose to serve that market is to take the risk that you won’t find enough faithfully-Catholic sponsors to keep the school out of the red.

Catholicesque education, on the other hand, seems to pay the bills. It’s the safer choice. This side of the grave.

*This post isn’t about public schools, but yes, I am well aware of the many situations in which the local government-run school is truly the best available option. Likewise, though I’m leery of school-homing, I’ll even go so far as to say there’s a time and place for boarding schools.

–> It’s as if I think parents are responsible for choosing the best education for their children, and that no single solution could possibly be the one-and-only answer for every single in the child in the world. Look here to learn more about where I got that idea.

Life of Grace Cover image courtesy of Aquinas and More Catholic bookstore.

Previous Post

September 3, 2014

Head's Up, Combox Closing

Next Post

September 10, 2014 What Happens if Sacramental Confession Ceases to be Secret?

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Books Catechesis Catholic Q&A Chastity Church Craziness Come See Me Talk Disability & Chronic Illness Economics Evangelization Facepalm Forgiveness Good Things History Homeschooling Human Rights It's All Catholic Listen to Me Survey Series Liturgical Living Marriage Modesty Not Satire. But almost. Rant-o-Rama Sacred Art & Music Satire South Carolina Spark Clutter Stick that Corner Suffering Thinking Topics Writing Stuff

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 July 2026 June 2026 January 2026 December 2025 September 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 November 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 May 2019 April 2019 February 2019 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Who was the brother of Moses and helped him confront Pharaoh?

Select your answer to see how you score.

David Joseph Joshua Aaron