Drive-by Catholic Journalism: a "Faux Catholic School"
June 8, 2010
Anyone who thinks that the Catholic press is somehow all around better than the secular press should read the Catholic News Service's report on a conference (or something) entitled "A Washington Briefing for the Nation's Catholic Community." (1)

This event was cosponsored in May of 2010 by Trinity Washington University and National Catholic Reporter.

That is like a briefing for the nation's pro-lifers being sponsored by Catholics for a Free Choice. National Catholic Reporter reporters sometimes do much better journalism than most members of the Catholic Press Association, however the opinion lobe of the NCR's brain can't compute that the Catholic Church, with its imperfect, undemocratic hierarchy of flawed males is what Jesus Christ ordained. And he ordained it fully knowing that the first flawed male to whom he gave the keys would betray him.

Trinity Washington University is one of those proverbial Catholic universities that has ceased to be a Catholic university. Long before Notre Dame feted a pro-abortion president, Trinity opened its arms to a pro-abortion Speaker of The House and got the newly installed archbishop of Washington to play along.

Suffice it to say, this "briefing" was probably very much a Catholic-Establishment show, an opportunity for progressive dinosaurs to do some last braying in these days after the Holy-Spirit has come and hit as an asteroid bearing John Paul II and Benedict XVI.

One of the speakers was the Archdiocese of Washington's outgoing superintendent of schools. I do not doubt that she is a lady of good will trying to do her best, but she's trying to do it with the post-Vatican-II-spirit-of-reform Catholicism that she was given.

Before the current renewal was launched, two generations of Catholics were taught that church is about seeking unity and uplifting the poor, no matter the compromise or price or means. The means include big-government means.

Typical of Catholics with that 60s mindset, the lady seems to think that the renascence and repossession under way in the church  is an ephemeral, ecclesiastical Tea-Party movement being led and followed by a few kooks from Paducah.

She referred to one Catholic school in the Archdiocese of Washington as a "faux Catholic school," --presumably an institution run by "faux Catholics"--and cited it as an example of schools being set up by people from "the home-schooling movement." This last is an establishment code-phrase for "Latin-Mass wackos."

The superintendent added that this school has not sought affiliation with the archdiocese. Good Catholics obey canon law and respect the local bishop's authority. The school should seek a relationship. However given that the local bishop's school superintendent described it as "faux," one can understand any reluctance on its operators' part.

She also sidestepped a question about letting the children in the custody of gay couples into Catholic schools. Correct answer: Gay couples are not really interested in a good Catholic education for the child. They're just trying to change or embarrass the church, shock conservative Catholic folk and make their friends giggle.

A school superintendent's singling out a school, identifying it by name and characterizing it as false should not have been mentioned in the CNS report at all.  At best, the inclusion magnified an official's lapse of professionalism; at worst, it aided her in spinning something.

The CNS story also did not have any reaction from those who were accused by an archdiocesan official of running a "faux Catholic school"  or even an indication that the CNS even tried ("A reporter's call to ["faux Catholics"] was not returned"). I attribute to the amateurishness that is rampant in the Catholic press. Some would call it "drive-by" Catholic journalism.

It's funny how the NCR-Trinity-College Crowd has no use for church hierarchy when the latter is investigating nuns who show signs of having degenerated into covens out to transfer their order's valuable assets over to themselves, but let a Catholic school be set up without the archie's approval, then authority is relevant.

And speaking of nuns, let me tell you a major reason why Catholic schools have been closing their doors, a reason not mentioned by the superintendent at all. The contraction of Catholic education is directly connected to the decline of religious orders, particularly those of nuns, and to the abandonment of Catholic schools by the sisters who remain.

It's no surprise that Establishment Catholics would fail to notice this. Their numbers include many a nun who has deliberately participated in the dismantling of conventual religious life and its traditional roles. Fewer answered vocations to the sisterhood were exactly what many nuns of recent decades wanted. Why? Every religious congregation has a pie of some sort; the fewer the members, the bigger the piece for each.

In the minds of many American Catholics, particularly the less-educated out in the country's Paducahs, a Catholic school is simply not a Catholic school unless it is staffed mostly by religious, nuns wearing habits or brothers or priests wearing clerical garb.

I know: that is a stupid way to think. I know that some contemporary Catholic schools staffed by orthodox lay faculty are possibly much better schools than the ones of old run by nuns or brothers. What can I tell you? More people smile at me when I wear a clean white shirt or stick my sunglasses in my hair.

That's the way God made His lower-wattage bulbs: "No nuns; it's not a Catholic school. The public school down the road is safe, adequate and used mostly by families like us. What's the point in paying Catholic-school tuition when my kids can go to that public school for free?"

You could add, "I can't afford the tuition anyway." The outgoing-superintendent was right about something: Catholic schools, like all private educational institutions, have been inflating their tuition like it's 1923 in Germany. I won't get into why, but it is another major reason for the decline in enrollment.

I will say that government aid to Catholic schools is not the answer for these reasons: 1) government-paying-for-things is what drives up costs 2) contrary to what Baby-Boom liberals think, governments do not have any more money. 3) In countries such as the UK and Canada, where governments heavily subsidize Catholic schools, Bishops have been hauled before committees to explain why their schools teach "hate" that is, why they teach that certain behaviors--Guess which--are morally wrong.

The outgoing-superintendent also lamented the closing of Catholic schools in city centers. Having once worked as a development officer in such a school, I have to say that those seminaries, as run by Establishment Catholics of post-Vatican II decades, are no big loss. If you want a glimpse into the minds of city-center student bodies, I invite you, with a forewarning, to take a quick glance through the Urban Dictionary.

Minds that conceive such vocabulary and definitions are Augean stables that aren't going to be shoveled out in schools run by I'm-OK-You're-OK Catholics who don't have strong Catholic identities, who don't impose Catholic values, who look the other way when there are fornication and fighting in the halls. The school that I worked at was so PC, it was policy that students belonging to Ethnic Group A could only be hollered at by Ethnic Group A faculty.

Catholic education seems to be retreating to affluent suburbs. There is good news in that.

Demographic groups who are hostile to the church and its values, who are competing to reign as kings of the elite hill are not reproducing and are becoming more and more stupid. Idiocracy (a funny-as-Hell movie) is now.

Yet traditionally-minded Catholics in affluent suburbs are having larger-than-average families and sending their kids to Catholic schools. These schools will prepare those already-advantaged kids to join and perhaps even dominate the elites of the future.

This means that there will be more pro-life, pro-family lawyers, judges, lawmakers. It means that there may even be half-decent MBA's with an ounce of brains and a sense of justice and social responsibility. It's good for science, the arts, literature, all creative endeavor. It means that civilization will go on.

I hope that among the "faux Catholics" of which the superintendent spoke there will be Jean-Baptiste de La Salles, Giovanni Boscos, "Dagger John" Hugheses and numerous priests, brothers and habit-wearing nuns, all living in poverty, who will once again bring true Catholic education to the less fortunate.

(1) "Catholic education is in 'mission confusion,' says longtime educator" by Mark Pattison, Catholic News Service, May 10, 2010