Our Catholic Schools
2006-07
A Discussion on Ontario’s
Catholic Schools
and their Future
Institute for Catholic Education
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Our Catholic Schools – 2006-07
Two Conversations
“Two conversations …. must take place now, at this time, at this defining moment in
Catholic education in Canada. The conversations might be called “The Conversation
behind the Wall” and “The Conversation at the Wall.” Canadians who continue to enjoy
the privilege of Catholic education are the people “behind the wall.” You are being
summoned to engage in a very serious conversation regarding the future direction, yes,
even the survival, of Catholic education. You are being challenged by the people at the
wall to define yourselves and to articulate your distinctiveness as a publicly-funded
educational institution.
It is impossible to go to the wall and engage those at the wall in a conversation unless
all of you together agree and are clear as to your purpose, mission and meaning. This
clarity demands a shared conversation about Catholic education in Canada and the
precarious situation in which it finds itself. It is a defining moment for all who believe in
Catholic education.
Sister Clare Fitzgerald
Forward to the book Catholic Education: The Future is Now,
by James Mulligan, CSC
Ref: Introduction
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The Purpose of Catholic Education
Our Catholic Schools – 2006-07
The Purpose of Catholic Education
The purpose of Catholic education is embedded in its spiritual,
sacred, religious, Catholic roots. Anything that invalidates,
threatens or undermines those roots will cause profound
disturbances and, eventually, the demise of Catholic education.
The vision or purpose of Catholic education must, at a minimum,
be co-owned and co-nurtured by parents, trustees, administrators,
teachers, students and the wider Catholic public, including, and
especially, parish priests. If vision is transformed into passion and
passion is transformed into commitment, the demise of Catholic
education in English Canada will be contained in Newfoundland.”
Sister Clare Fitzgerald
Forward to the book Catholic Education: The Future is Now,
by James Mulligan, CSC
Ref: Introduction
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Catholic Schools –
Christian Communities
Our Catholic Schools – 2006-07
After all is said and done Catholic schools are about creating small Christian
communities which are meant to mirror the values of the home and the
Church. This is the learning environment Catholic educators seek to create.
What these communities provide to students in this fragmented society of
ours is a zone and a sense of personal stability. Amidst all of the many
voices and messages with which young people are bombarded, amidst all
they learn from the media, what they hear on Muchmusic, what they read in
the newspapers and watch on Television - amidst all these voices they need
a word and a voice which assures them some stability. They need some
clear and uncompromising sense of identity which only community can offer.
Msgr. Dennis Murphy
Catholic Education Week, 1999
Ref: DP 1a
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Our Catholic Schools – 2006-07
Faith in Every Student
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Our Catholic Schools – 2006-07
Faith in Every Student
When I walk in a classroom as a Catholic teacher, when I see my students, I
have to know that each one of them is a child of God, created by God, for
God, and that they are destined to go home to God. If you do not believe
that, you’re in the wrong school. I believe there’s a God and that we’re all
going home. This whole journey on this earth is a journey home to God.
That’s the whole basis of our educational system. We are here to nourish
that child on the journey home.
As well as proclaim, we must provide. In every one of our schools we must
provide space and time for the sacred, for the holy. Retreat time, prayer time.
We also must provide space and time for the academics. To be Catholic is to
be intellectual. As educators, this means we’ve got to love learning – that’s
the ballpark we’re playing in.
Sister Clare Fitzgerald
Address to Renfrew CDSB
November 1999
Ref: DP 1a
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Learning How to Listen to God
Our Catholic Schools – 2006-07
Learning How to Listen to God
In short, kids need a culture and environment that allows them, in all of
the noise of the contemporary world to hear the whisper of the Spirit,
the gentle urging of Jesus, the call of God. Perhaps they will not follow
in the way of that word and that call today. Perhaps they will not even
follow in its way tomorrow. But for all of their life they will have learned
how to listen to God. They will have spent many hours in a community
which tells them who they really are – a community which ever echoes
the word of Jesus in today’s gospel, “You did not choose me, but I
chose you.” This finally is why Catholic schools are distinctive, and
why they are schools to believe in. What these schools offer to our
kids is a gift not only to our Church but to our society as well.
Msgr. Dennis Murphy
Catholic Education Week, 1999
Ref: DP 1a
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Our Catholic Schools – 2006-07
Values
Daniel Buechlein, Archbishop of Indianapolis, wrote that
Catholic schools are guided by a number of values that
Catholics share with many other religious traditions: God
comes first; reverence for the sacred – the belief no one
is fully human or truly free until he or she respects
spiritual realities; the importance of family; the dignity and
sacredness of every person; the importance of telling the
truth; purity of heart (the desire for what is right and
good); and the realization that happiness does not come
from material things.
Robert Barlow
Religion Columnist, London Free Press
Ref: DP 1b
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Our Catholic Schools – 2006-07
Catholic School Councils
What essential role or roles should school councils play if their
ultimate purpose is the betterment of education? It is well to
recall that the primary purpose of school councils must not be
to empower parents, principals, teachers, parishes or any other
community groups or business concerns. School councils must
rather assist all of these groups to empower children to learn
better.
“Catholic School Councils for Tomorrow”
Response of the Ontario Catholic School Trustees Association to The Education
Improvement Commission Paper: “The Future Role of School
Councils”
Ref: DP 3a
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Our Catholic Schools – 2006-07
The Cost of Indifference
One can look at the demise of Catholic education in Newfoundland form two perspectives:
eternal factors and internal factors, or pressure “from without” and erosion “from within.”
More important were the factors “from within,” factors, and attitudes within both the
institutional church and the larger Catholic education community that, over time,
compromised the quality of Catholic education, making much of it indistinguishable from
public education and, consequently, causing it to be perceived by the public – including most
Catholics – as unnecessary and unwelcome duplication….. (One such factor was) the
breakdown of the home-school-parish myth. The home-school-parish partnership paradigm
continued to be promoted but, in effect, this model ceased functioning in the early 1970s with
the secularization of the culture and the fragmentation of more than a few families. Reaching
the parents and selling them on the value of Catholic education was an enormous challenge,
a challenge, unfortunately, that ended in failure. Too many Catholic parents were indifferent
to the value of a Catholic education. Too many priests had little to do with the schools. Too
few schools made sincere overtures to collaborate with the parish.
James Mulligan, CSC
Catholic Education: The Future is Now
Ref: DP 3b
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Our Catholic Schools – 2006-07
Transforming the World
We must proclaim and provide, and as Catholic schools we
must also promote. We promote social justice. We promote a
better world. There is an essential difference between Catholic
education and public education. We both educate the child and
transform the child. But Catholic educators also educate the
child to transform the world. The goal and objective of Catholic
education is the world. It is not the child. We are called to
influence the world. Jesus Christ said go into the world and
proclaim me. The world is the goal and the focus of our
education systems. That child is being educated morally and
ethically with the concept of social justice and peace to go out
into that world and make a difference.
Sister Clare Fitzgerald
Address to Renfrew CDSB
November 1999
Ref: DP 3c
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Our Catholic Schools – 2006-07
Distinctiveness
We must grasp firmly the challenge of
providing a kind of education whose
curriculum will be inspired more by
reflection than by technique, more by a
search for wisdom than by the
accumulation of information.
Pope John Paul II
Newfoundland, 1984
Ref: DP 4a
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Our Catholic Schools – 2006-07
A Tradition to Support
All the money in the world will not assure
the continuation of Catholic education.
Fidelity to Catholic roots and heritage
will.
Sister Clare Fitzgerald
Forward to the book Catholic Education: The Future is Now,
by James Mulligan, CSC
Ref: DP 4b
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Our Catholic Schools – 2006-07
Other Faith Communities
Our commitment to the best education for all students
impels us to respect and support the wishes of parents in
other faith communities for religious education in the
public school system or for alternative schools which will
reflect their values and beliefs…. We have publicly
committed ourselves to support the concept of the
development of alternative schools for people of other
faith communities.”
“This Moment of Promise”
Ontario Conference of Catholic Bishops
Ref: DP 4c
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Our Catholic Schools – 2006-07
Benefiting Society
No one who is concerned about the increasingly
secular and materialistic nature of our society should
seek the abolishment of the Catholic system. No
one who is concerned about the growing disparity
between the rich and the poor in our society should
be opposed to Catholic education.
By teaching moral values and placing emphasis on
the formation of conscience, Catholic schools benefit
society.
Robert Barlow
Religion Columnist – London Free Press
December, 1999
Ref: DP 4c
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Our Catholic Schools – 2006-07
The Gift of Catholic Education
It is becoming clearer to the Catholic education community that publicly-funded
Catholic education is an unparalleled gift. To be sure, it is a right enshrined in
the Constitution, but as we saw in fall 1997, the best lawyers in the land cannot
protect that right if the Catholic stakeholders don’t care, or if they take the gift
for granted. Outside of a dedicated minority…it would seem that the majority of
Catholic stakeholders in (Newfoundland and Quebec) were no longer interested
in a Catholic school system.
In the rest of Canada, we must allow our apprehension vis-à-vis the future of
Catholic education to motivate us even more to care for this unparalleled gift of
Catholic education. Now, more than ever before, as partners in Catholic
education, we must become a vigilant community. We must ensure that
Catholic education contributes significantly, for example, to the social project of
…Ontario. We must be protective of the distinctive character of our Catholic
schools.
James Mulligan, CSC
Catholic Education: The Future is Now
Ref: DP 4c
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Our Catholic Schools – 2006-07
Parent participation and support
I would like to conclude ….. with a word of invitation to parents, especially
those who are active in Catholic school councils, to own for themselves the
vision of Catholic education ….. and to actively contribute to shaping our
present vision of Catholic education to meet the demands of the future. In a
Catholic school or school board, we will only be effective to the measure that
a core group of parents is as passionate as we are about our mission.
Parents…. are a precious and absolutely essential nucleus of the concern
and commitment we need in Catholic education… The school team needs
your support. At times, they will need your prophetic voice and wisdom. Be a
link between the parish and the school. There is much you can do to
facilitate communication; to build up the parish-school community… Perhaps
the most important dimension of your involvement will be to reach out to
other parents: talk to them, invite them, persuade them to take an active
role in your Catholic school community…
Continued
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Our Catholic Schools – 2006-07
Parent participation and support
We desperately need that core group of committed
Catholic parents in each school to expand its focus and
become more intimately involved in building up the
Christian community of the school. In an era when lay
ministry is flourishing in the life of the church, your active
participation in the Catholic school is a most effective
expression of your baptismal vocation as a follower of
Jesus.
James Mulligan, CSC
Catholic Education: The Future is Now
Ref: DP 5a
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Our Catholic Schools – 2006-07
Thank you
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