Catholic Schooling
January 21 and 28, 2024
Jesus Christ: Yesterday, Today, and Forever ~
Beginning on Sunday, January 28, the Church observes Catholic Schools Week. I’m writing this Pastor’s Column on Catholic schooling now because next weekend, January 27/28, we’ll start having representatives in the narthex after Mass to answer any questions you may have and I want to give you a heads up now about that.
All Catholic parents are responsible for their children’s religious upbringing, to that end, the Church tries her best to help parents bring up their children in the practice of the faith through both schools and parish-based programs. As you know, school is super important for kids and adults too.
Consider Proverbs 22:6: “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” It is human nature to become part of what we are around. Children who spend time with thieves usually become one. Children who spend time with athletes aspire to become one. Children who spend time with virtuous people are likely to aspire to a virtuous life too. Children who attend school with non-Catholic children from 8am-3pm Monday through Friday take on non-Catholic values. Children who attend school with other Catholic children and teachers, teaching and living the Catholic faith, are likely to be a practicing Catholic as an adult. Make no mistake, education is indoctrination.
Just so we’re all clear eyed about the public school system in Washington and what it means for our kids, there is: 1) Mandated LGBTQ indoctrination from kindergarten on up, where kids are encouraged by their teachers and especially their peers to question their sexual orientation and even gender; 2) A public school system where profanity and sex-laced language and conversations are happening without censor; 3) A place where most kids have smart phones without filters and share pornography with other kids at lunch, on the playground, or school bus; 4) A public school system that is militantly agnostic and has nothing to say about God or even the virtues. Question: what good does an education do for anyone when the beholder is of poor character (lazy, dishonest, greedy, a quitter, accusatory, impure, etc.)? Without personal virtue, education is wasted.
So why are so many Catholic children in our public school and not in a Catholic school? Like me in my childhood, many children don’t have an option. Many Catholic children grow up in rural areas and can’t access a Catholic school, but what about the majority of Catholic kids who could have attended a Catholic school but didn’t?
Parents who didn’t enroll their children in a Catholic school for kindergarten, didn’t for a few different reasons. Let’s start with a good reason: with millions in tax-payer dollars, the public schools can offer specialized schooling for a disabled child. Now the much more likely reasons. The parents at that time in their life didn’t realize the long-term value a Catholic education for their children, or did but the convenience and lack of expense of the local public school was just too easy to bother with an alternative. Of course, once a child starts a public education, having them change to a Catholic one can be fraught with conflict and struggle, changing horses mid-race doesn’t always work, so they just ride it out. For most though, it just boils down to money. What most don’t realize is that it comes with a long-term cost.
For a majority of Catholic parents, choosing a “free” public school or a Catholic school where they may have to pay something, even if it is something they can manage, is an automatic disqualifier. That’s so sad. Children are our greatest investment. Failing to invest in them is a failure to invest in their future on earth and in eternity too. It’s a failure for the parent’s future too, including eternity. A decision of this magnitude demands that parents set aside the time to research their options. Fortunately, there is help and a lot of it.
I’m speaking now to Catholic parents whose kids are in public school. We can help you afford a Catholic education for your kids (or grandkids) if money is truly the reason they aren’t there already. Between tuition that is specific to your income and expenses, your children’s grandparents’ income, parish subsidies and benefactors, no child will be turned away from a Catholic education through the 8th grade because of money. It is my hope that in time the Archdiocese of Seattle will be able to address affordability of Catholic high schooling too. In the meantime, if there is a will there is a way.
As I stated in my opening sentence, for the next two weekends there will be representatives from a variety of Catholic schooling options available to speak to you in the narthex. Grandparents, you can stop by these tables to see how you might be able to help get your grandchild in a Catholic school. Next weekend, January 28/29, representatives from St. Joseph’s School and St. Thomas Aquinas Pre-School will be in the Narthex. The weekend of February 3/4, representatives from St. Thomas Aquinas Pre-School and Regina Caeli Homeschooling Consortium and will be available to speak to you.
A word about Catholic homeschooling. We support it too. Some people still think all children should be herded into a conventional school, but the statistics bear out the success of children, now adults, who were homeschooled. Homeschooling, Catholic or not, was growing steadily before Covid. Since then it has taken off. Whether you are open to trying homeschooling alone or with others in a consortium like Regina Caeli, we support you. Homeschooling isn’t for everyone as more factors have to be present for it to succeed (both parents on board, single income household so one parent can teach, a parent who can actually teach, children who will respond to their parent as a teacher), yet for those for whom it can succeed, I encourage you to look into it. In addition to the tables in the narthex, we will have parents who have experience with homeschooling and alternative educational models, available to speak to you in the parish hall during the coffee hour after the 11am Masses on Sunday, January 28 and February 4. I encourage those of you with school age children to take the time to grab a cup of coffee and hear them out. It might be the most consequential conversation of your children’s lives.
I opened this pastor’s column with a passage from the book of Proverbs. I will close with a passage from the book of Deuteronomy 6:4-7: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. And these words which I command you this day shall be upon your heart; and you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.”
In Christ, I Love You,
Fr. Thomas Nathe
