The just-issued Front Royal Statement cites the drop in from 13,000 Catholic schools in the 1960s educating 5 million students to 6,000 schools with 1.7 million students. Among other things the statement prescribes a curriculum for primary and secodary Catholic education:
• At its core are the liberal arts, especially grammar, logic, and rhetoric, which cultivate the powers of the intellect and conform the student’s mind to reality itself.
• Mathematics trains the intellect in precision, logic, and order, while revealing the beauty and intelligible design of God’s creation.
• History is a great teacher of human nature, revealing both its nobility and weakness, while awakening wonder in God’s providential plan at work in the rise and fall of empires and nations. “The times of all kings and kingdoms are ordained by the judgment and power of the true God,” writes St. Augustine.
• Science pursues truth and cultivates wonder through the contemplation of the order and beauty of God’s creation, with faith and reason working together in harmony.
• Literature and philosophy refine the moral imagination, train the intellect to contemplate the true and the good, and order all knowledge toward wisdom and God as the Highest Good.
• The most formative and enduring texts of the Western tradition, such as those by Homer, Plato, Augustine, Dante, Shakespeare, and Aquinas, shape how we understand reality as well as the nobility and weakness of human nature.
• The great works of classical music and fine art, such as compositions by Bach and Beethoven, Gregorian Chant, along with works of Raphael, Michelangelo, and Bernini, raise the soul to higher things and suggest the order, and transcendence, of created reality.
• Finally, theology, as the queen of the sciences, serves as the integrating discipline that orders all other studies toward their ultimate source and end in God.
From Catholic Culture
This is good. Thank you for putting this story up.
Catholic schools are dead, let’s be real
Some Catholic schools are. But, not all. There are too many to name here. I can name Catholic colleges, high schools and primary schools that are very good and truly Catholic. I just came off of the campus of one after a week-long retreat. Our interaction with the students who served us was a blessing. Religious Sisters were there studying as well. (And, we knew they were religious by their habits.) Check out the Newman Guide for a list of some good Catholic schools. And, some Catholic campus ministries at secular or other private colleges are very good.
Pope Leo and his two older brothers, John and Louis Prevost, were among the 5 million Catholic students enrolled in 13,000 Catholic schools in the 1960s, prior to the Vatican II disastrous collapse of the Church, and Catholic parishes and schools. Their father, Louis Prevost, was a Catholic school teacher, principal and superintendent, and a parish Catechist. Their mother, Mildred Prevost, was a Catholic school librarian. Both parents had Master’s degrees from DePaul University in Chicago, run by the Vincentian Fathers. Young Robert Francis Prevost’s 2nd grade class at St. Mary of the Assumption Catholic school, had 50 students. His 8th grade class had 82 students, split into two classes. The Sisters of Christian Charity taught the children, and Mrs. Prevost and other parish mothers helped out at the school. After Vaticsn II, the Church and school were closed, and the vacant buildings stand unused, and in disrepair, today. Tragic.
Today, the Pope’s parents’ alma mater, DePaul University in Chicago, has a Women’s and Gender Studies Dept., which offers Interdisciplinary studies in Women and Genders and Sexualities– and even a Master’s degree. In 2005, DePaul U. was notorious, to become the first Catholic university in America to offer a Gay Studies minor. DePaul U. is the largest Catholic university (by enrollment) in America. Their Women’s, Genders and Sexualities, and Gay Studies courses and degrees, are a terrible disgrace, especially for a Catholic school! When DePaul U. began their Gay Studies Minor, I had the.opportunity to express my horror about it, to then-school President. Fr. Dennis Holtschneider, C.M. I told him this was a disgrace to Christ, Our Lady, St. Vincent DePaul, and St. Catherine Laboure, a Daughter of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul, who was given the Miraculous Medal in apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary, in 1830. Lifelong, I have worn a blessed Miraculous Medal. Why doesn’t Fr. Holtschneider give out blessed Rosaries and Miraculous Medals to all the students– and end DePaul’s Gay Studies, and Women’s and Gender and Sexualities Studies garbage— for love of Christ and Our Lady?? Holtschneider was polite, but full of typical academic “baloney.”
Just how many (plural) “genders” and “sexualities” are listed in the curriculum, in the extremely immoral DePaul University academic programs? Shame on Fr. “Dennis the Menace” (sorry!) Holtschneider and his Vincentian Fathers religious order, and that now-corrupt “Catholic” school! How many goofed-up, immoral, bad “Catholic” students have obtained one of those corrupt degrees, and have been hired to teach in similar bad “Catholic” schools? Wish Pope Leo, and his Vatican prelates, would fix these shameful problems!
That looks like a Fab Five of bishops.
I guess it shouldn’t surprise us that bishops who want truly Catholic and truly human education are orthodox in other matters as well. And, there are other bishops in addition to those who would almost certainly sign.
(And, others, including cardinals, who probably would not and prefer sexual chaos and confusion.)
The famous 1967 “Land O’ Lakes” statement, a highly influential manifesto on Catholic education, written by a group of Catholic clerical university administrators (including many leading Jesuits), scholars, and Church leaders, was spearheaded by Modernist liberal Holy Cross Father, Fr. Theodore Hesburgh, then-President of Univ. of Notre Dame. This highly secular, Modernist liberal statement was written and implemented in response to principles of Vatican II, to re-shape “modern Catholic educaion” in America. The “Land o’ Lakes Statement” totally destroyed Catholic education in our country. Yet to this day, elite liberal Modernist Catholic clerical iniversity leaders stand by it. Shamefully evil.
yah ….. but Fr. Hesburgh got a US Postage Stamp with his picture on it.
Pretty Good?
But, the Simpsons cartoon characters and the Stalinist Frida Kahlo also got pictured on US postage stamps.
Question is: how’s that going to work out on judgement day?
Only God knows.