by Bishop James Conley
Jesus was a teacher. Catholic education dates back to apostolic times. The Catholic Church established the first schools in western civilization. In recent years, I have devoted significant time and energy as a bishop to Catholic education. It is a crucial part of our mission and call to evangelization as a Church. That’s why I have been praying, researching and working on a new pastoral letter on Catholic education. That letter will be published in the coming weeks.
As we begin a new school year, I had the honor and joy of celebrating a Mass of the Holy Spirit at St. Michael Parish in Lincoln, for all of our Catholic school teachers and administrators in the city of Lincoln. Similar Masses were offered in school parishes across the Diocese of Lincoln last week, invoking the Holy Spirit as our teachers and administrators returned to school in preparation for a new academic year.
In the Diocese of Lincoln, we are blessed to have 24 elementary schools and six high schools, where nearly 700 teachers and administrators educate more than 5,000 students. We are also very happy to welcome 50 new teachers to our diocesan family this year. These new teachers went through an orientation a few weeks ago, to introduce them to the beautiful vision and mission of Catholic education.
Just last month, 32 of our teachers and administrators attended the annual conference for the Institute for Catholic Liberal Education held at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kan. They joined more than 500 other educators from across the United States to pray, to listen to expert presenters, and to share ideas about how to make our wonderful schools even more effective. We are excited to host next year’s annual conference at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
The mission of Catholic education has been a priority in the Diocese of Lincoln for decades. Our Catholic schools are strong in their Catholic identity. They are focused on the formation of the whole person: body, mind and soul. Dr. Jared Staudt touches on this idea in his new book, “Words Made Flesh: The Sacramental Mission of Catholic Education.”
In it, he writes, “Catholic education teaches its students how to live in an integrated and holistic way to guide its graduates to mature Christian adulthood, and which secondarily will lead graduates to do well in the world.”
In our Catholic schools, we strive to integrate coursework, interweaving subjects to assist students in understanding the “big picture,” of how the subjects work together to form a holistic view. In the words of Bishop Robert Barron, “at its best, education opens us to what elevates the soul and, ultimately, teaches us to be saints.”
I think one small example of the success of our Catholic schools is the fact that we have 17 new diocesan seminarians who began the “propaedeutic stage” of their priestly formation last week at St. Gregory the Great Seminary in Seward. Of those 17 new seminarians – the largest new class of seminarians in decades – 16 attended our Catholic schools at some point in their primary and secondary education. Of the 34 total seminarians we have this year studying for the Diocese of Lincoln, 29 attended our Catholic high schools.
This is also the case for our current active priests. Of the 149 active Lincoln diocesan priests, more than 70 percent attended Catholic schools. Among our priests under the age of 40, that statistic is closer to 80 percent. The numbers are very similar for our religious sisters as well. This is not even to mention the fruit of strong marriages and families that have come out of our Catholic schools.
But we can never rest on our laurels. The culture today seems to be becoming more and more secular, and even hostile to our Catholic and Christian beliefs. We need to do the very best we can to prepare our young people to face the culture in which they will live. Young people are disaffiliating from the Catholic Church at alarming rates, particularly during their college years. I can’t tell you how many parents have come to me, lamenting the fact that their child had 13 years of Catholic education and stopped practicing the faith in college. There is no simple response to that challenge, because there are so many factors in our culture that can lead young people away from the Church.
There is much hope on the horizon, though. Currently in our Lincoln diocesan schools – and across the country – there is an exciting renewal taking place in Catholic education. Renewal in Catholic education is always about connecting deeper with Jesus the teacher; knowing him, and imitating him. An ever-increasing number of diocesan school systems are reviewing and renewing their curricula to make sure Catholic education is not merely a matter of information transfer, but it is all about the transformation of souls; bringing students to know Jesus.
In the Diocese of Lincoln, we are in the midst of reviewing the curriculum in all six of our high schools in an attempt to better align subjects historically and to “cross pollinate” all subjects, so that students can see how all subjects relate to one another.
Every subject and every activity in a school bears the fingerprint of God and should point to the beauty, joy and wonder behind all reality. Whether that be the marvel of number, equation, order and sequence in mathematics, or salvation history, all reality is “charged with the grandeur of God,” filled with meaning and purpose, and should provide the answer to the “whys” behind everything. Again, as Bishop Barron said recently, “education should be in the meaning business!” Young people want to know the “why” behind everything.
With information streaming at us with incredible speed, 24/7, it can sometimes be overwhelming if one doesn’t have an organizing principle. As I have said before, it is like giving a child a 10,000-piece jigsaw puzzle, without providing a picture on the box to show the finished product. It can be overwhelming at times and can cause a lot of anxiety for young people.
I highly recommend a brand-new book by Jonathan Haidt entitled “The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness.” It’s a New York Times bestseller and a fascinating study by a very accomplished educational psychologist on the challenges Gen Z is facing today.
I am looking forward to sharing more thoughts on Catholic education with you in my upcoming pastoral letter. I am very proud of our Catholic schools, and the teachers, administrators, priests and parents who collaborate together to make those schools the very best they can be. We are all following in the Teacher’s footsteps and a long tradition of Catholic education. May we continue to do so and may God bless our efforts!
