By Bishop James Conley
This week we celebrate Catholic Schools Week. Each year at the end of January, the Catholic Church in the United States shines a bright light on Catholic education, giving gratitude to almighty God for the tremendous gift of Catholic education.
By the time you read this column, I will have visited five of our six diocesan high schools (catching the sixth in the days ahead) and a good number of our elementary schools. I will offer all-school Masses, lead Eucharistic processions through the school hallways, and celebrate with the students, faculty and staff the joy and wonder of our Catholic schools. It’s an exhausting week of travel but I love every minute of it, because it provides me with an opportunity to see our schools in action, in all their beauty and splendor.
Why do we do this at the end of January? It’s all about the saints! We began the week on Monday with the feast day of St. Angela Merici, the foundress of the Ursuline order, the very first order of religious sisters in the United States dedicated to Catholic education, and who founded the first Catholic school for girls. On Tuesday, we celebrated the feast of St. Thomas Aquinas, the Angelic Doctor and patron saint of all learning. On Friday, we honor St. John Bosco, “father and teacher of the youth!”
As we read in last week’s Southern Nebraska Register, in a beautiful full-page graphic on the Portrait of a Graduate : “when you enroll your child at a Diocese of Lincoln Catholic School, it’s the beginning of a partnership, where parents are the primary teachers of their children. The beginning of a journey where faith is the center of everything. The foundation of a lifetime. The beginning of a life that sees beauty, truth and goodness in the world and is called to share it with others.”
As I articulated in my recent pastoral letter on the Joy and Wonder of Catholic Education, if a school is to be authentically Catholic, according to the teachings of the Holy See, it must be: 1) inspired by a supernatural vision, 2) founded on a Christian anthropology, 3) animated by communion and community, 4) imbued with a Catholic world view throughout its curriculum, and 5) sustained by gospel witness. These five marks are deeply embedded in the DNA of an authentically Catholic school, and it is what we strive to do in the Diocese of Lincoln, day in and day out, for our 6,843 students in our parish preschools, our 24 elementary schools and our six high schools.
I look forward each year to Catholic Schools Week because I get a chance to see and experience our schools in action—living and celebrating the love of learning, giving thanks to God for our Catholic schools, and showing my support to our wonderful parents, teachers, priests, sisters and students, asking the Lord to continue to bless our mission of Catholic education.
In the secular world of education, we often hear words like “excellence” and “success.” These are great words, but what do they really mean? The ultimate measure of excellence and success in Catholic education is how well we educate the whole person, body, mind and soul, by instilling virtue, knowledge and wisdom. In other words, excellence and success in Catholic education is measured by how well we cultivate faith, goodness and sanctity in our students. Our mission is to nurture the spiritual and intellectual lives of our students and their families, while preparing our graduates to live faithfully according to their God-given vocations. For this reason, it is crucial that we teach students how to integrate their faith into every aspect of their learning.
In a recent article in The Catholic Thing, David Bonagura, author and teacher, wrote that Catholic education can be considered excellent and successful if it seeks to:
“...develop young people’s capacity to love God with all their heart, mind, soul, and strength, and to love their neighbor as themselves. All courses and activities at Catholic schools – from arithmetic, art, band, and basketball to science, technology, theater, and writing – ought to contribute to meeting these two ends of Catholic education in their complementary ways.”
This is the clear mission of Catholic education, and this is what we try to do in all of our Catholic schools in the Diocese of Lincoln. Professor Bonagura goes on to write:
“God is the Creator of all things; to study any aspect of Creation and to exercise the abilities He has given us leads us back to Him. A Catholic school achieves “excellence” to the degree that its particulars – curriculum, sports, activities, programming, and religious formation – contribute to bringing students to God. And the particulars cannot be viewed apart from the whole. If an academic curriculum helps students grow in wisdom, virtue, and faith, it is excellent; if it is a disjointed series of courses that do not foster growth in both reason and faith, it is not excellent, regardless of how many students matriculate at Ivy League universities or work for Fortune 500 companies.”
Again, from last week’s Portrait of a Graduate we believe that:
“...graduates of the Diocese of Lincoln Catholic schools are not only academically prepared but spiritually and morally equipped to actualize their God-given potential. They leave our Catholic schools ready to transform the world as disciples of Jesus Christ, living lives of truth, goodness and beauty while advancing the Kingdom of God. Together, they stand as testimonies to the enduring value of an authentically Catholic education.”
In the words of one of the greatest Catholic educators in the history of the English-speaking world, St. John Henry Newman wrote in his seminal Idea of a University, “We attain to heaven by using this world well, though it is to pass away; we perfect our nature, not by undoing it, but by adding to it what is more than nature, and directing it towards aims higher than its own.”
