The Third Plenary Council of Baltimore (1884), at which the bishops of the United States, in response to the hostile educational environment of government-run schools, declared that Catholic schools must be readily available and accessible to all Catholic children in the country.
It’s Catholic Schools Week - a week to reflect on and honor all that Catholic schools have done in the past and continue to do today. But beyond merely celebrating Catholic schools, it's also a moment to reflect on the vital need we have for Catholic schools. They are not luxuries, not merely “a nice thing to have.” They are a necessary part of the Church’s mission, and we as Catholics have a responsibility to revitalize, support, and sustain them.
Throughout Church history, the Magisterium has always recognized the necessity of Catholic schools, especially in places where the broader culture is hostile to the Faith. Accordingly, in more modern times, the Church also realized that any government-run school system which claims neutrality on the issue of religious faith, such as the one in the United States, cannot help but become hostile to the Faith. The reason for this is simple: your beliefs about the nature of the human person - his purpose and ends - are going to inform how you educate, and if you espouse a non-Catholic view of the human person, your educational program is bound to be antithetical to Catholic teaching.
G.K. Chesterton recognized this reality in his own time and context. In this short excerpt from his work The Common Man, Chesterton implies that there can be no secular school truly compatible with the Catholic faith, because the Catholic faith espouses a “conception of life” that must be wholly integrated into its entire educational plan. In such schools, the faith must be taught “all of the time,” in every subject and every program. Catholics need Catholic schools where such integration can take place; where such integration is not permitted, the result will be to “crush” the Faith.
For these reasons, the Popes and the bishops since at least the late nineteenth century have insisted on the obligation of the Church to provide Catholic schools to Catholic families, the obligation of the state to allow Catholic schools to operate with freedom, the obligation of parents to send their children to Catholic schools whenever possible, and on the obligation of all Catholics to support Catholic schools.
As a Church, It is time for us to reawaken ourselves to these obligations. And to these I would add another: the obligation to protect the fidelity of Catholic schools to the Magisterium. It is not enough to open a school with the same curriculum as the public school, add a religion class and a few crucifixes, call it Catholic, and wash our hands of our responsibility. If our Catholic schools are to fulfill their purpose of preserving the faith of the next generation, we must make sure those schools are in fact preserving the faith themselves.
All of us with the Friends of Chesterton of Massachusetts embarked on the project of opening a Chesterton Academy for precisely these reasons. We know and embrace our obligations as lay Catholics and as parents to make an authentically Catholic education available and accessible to Catholic families. And we hope that any of you who read this will similarly be inspired to support our endeavor. As Catholic Schools Week comes to a close, let's take the opportunity to reflect on how necessary Catholic schools really are, and to discern prayerfully what role the Lord may be calling each of us to play in their revitalization.
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