Tea at Trianon: Reclaiming Our Catholic Schools

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, November 12, 2024

Reclaiming Our Catholic Schools

From First Things:

An alarming number of children from Catholic families lose their faith during elementary and secondary school. By age thirteen, 50 percent fall away from the Church; by eighteen, it’s 86 percent.
This exodus is not unique to Catholics—other Christian communities struggle with similar problems. But many of these children are in Catholic schools for 16,000 hours from pre-school through 12th grade. And the 1.6 million students that are in the classrooms far exceed the twelve apostles that Jesus Christ started with.

After serving as Superintendent of Schools for five years for the Archdiocese of Boston—one of the largest Catholic school systems in the nation—I believe that Catholic schools could lead a national Catholic renewal. But many Catholic schools are not properly ordered. We need to do many things differently.

For starters, we must ensure that we have a strong and authentic witness to the Catholic faith in every classroom. Pope Paul VI, in 1975, noted that “Modern man listens more willingly to witnesses than teachers, and, if he does listen to teachers, it is because they are witnesses.” Such is the purpose of the St. Thomas More Teaching Fellowship, for instance, which recruits and trains faithful Catholic college graduates.

We also need school leaders fully committed to evangelization and total fidelity to the Magisterium. As superintendent, I had the privilege of appointing 75 percent of the current parochial school leaders in Boston over a five-year time period—one of the largest intentional turnovers of Catholic school leadership talent in the nation. (Read more.)