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| TUCSON -- This is a period when the American Catholic Church is as dry and dull as the Sonoran Desert. The hope and joy generated by the Vatican Council is dead. The separation between the leaders and the followers has grown wider. The former speak on many things; the latter barely hear them. The latter have created for themselves a Catholic identity based on the resurrection of Jesus, concern for the poor, Jesus in the Eucharist, God in the sacraments, and devotion to the Mother of Jesus; the former hassle them about secularization and relativism. To the repulsive sexual abuse crisis, one must now add the financial embezzlement crisis. | ||
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As a young woman said
to me: ''We'll never leave, but we're alienated and waiting.'' Some of us
[like me] wonder will there ever be good news again in our lifetimes. No part of the desert is more barren than Catholic grammar schools and high schools. One rarely hears parish sermons about the benefit of Catholic schools. Diocesan school offices are busy with plans to close more schools. A few bishops endorse the schools but don't demand that the parishes build them. The National Catholic Educational Association tempers whatever enthusiasm it feels because it must respect its ''religious education'' membership, which tends to believe it can do what the schools do and probably better. Many Catholic laity don't think the schools are necessary anymore (although others stand in waiting lines or fight bishops and priests who want to close them or won't build new ones -- not that the laity matter these days). |
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All of this pessimism troubles me because I've
spent much of my life doing research on Catholic schools. Catholic schools
are among the best things that the church in this country has done, they are
resources in social capital that the church should treasure, and they are
more important in a time of change in the church than in a time of
stability. Most people laugh at my research, which is the fate of a
sociologist whose findings conflict with conventional wisdom. Now, however, and suddenly, I hear a clarion call in support of Catholic primary and secondary schools from beneath the shadow of the Golden Dome. The university's "initiative" for Catholic education vigorously celebrates Catholic schools, not only in word but in deed. Its Alliance for Catholic Education program trains future teachers and school principals. I learned about it both from a former ACE teacher writing a dissertation and from the presence of ACE here in the real Sonoran desert. The principal of our parish school and the vice principal of the nearby Catholic high school are impressive and dedicated young Catholics. Two ACE volunteer teams teach in minority schools here. The bishop and the priests who work with them are almost ecstatic. Eighty seniors from dozens of Catholic universities are recruited every year, though most of them are Domers. They go through an intense summer of educational training and spiritual formation -- with emphasis on the vocation of a teacher -- and are assigned to teach in poor Catholic schools, mostly in the South. They live in a community of a sort, have a common prayer life, and even eat together. The second summer back under the Dome they learn more about education and the practice of the spiritual life, and then return to their work. At the end of the two years, they receive a master's degree in education. More than half continue to teach -- three quarters of these in Catholic schools. The ACErs continue to hang together, they swarm in certain cities, they date one another, even marry; they belong to a Fellowship foundation that seems to be a kind of alumni association. A few of them become priests. The Holy Cross Fathers may have found one shape for the religious life of the future. The ACErs' concern is Catholic education. They aim at helping Catholic schools in a local and direct-service way. They are not a reformist pressure group like Voice of the Faithful. Yet, a woman I taught more years ago than either of us cares to remember with two ACE children observed to me: ''Be careful, Andy, those kids are going to take the church away from you.'' To which I replied, ''Please God!'' .
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