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.)