All of this raises another challenge with which Catholic schools struggle and for which there is little clarity. To what extent does a Catholic school have to model the values and attitudes found in the Gospels? The answer seems obvious. Catholic schools should be rooted in the Gospels and be the best example of Catholic
You can’t entirely fault the schools for the increase. It is expensive to operate a school. No longer can the schools rely on religious sisters who teach for a token salary. There are fewer sisters available to teach and they must be paid a living wage, not only out of justice but because their income
What is the purpose of Catholic education? The most basic response to this question is to form people in their Catholic faith and to prepare them to live out their call to Christian discipleship. This response treats Catholic education as a catechetical exercise. That is, its focus is primarily on persons who are already baptized
This time of year is usually set aside to honor Catholic Education and to encourage families to send their children to Catholic Schools. A lot of schools register students for the next school year in March, so publicizing Catholic schools a month or so before is a reminder to parents to register their children. I
The famous science fiction author, Arthur C. Clarke, once wrote that “Any technology that is sufficiently advanced, seems like magic to earlier generations.” Both magic and technology are exercises of power to better control the environment and our ability to function in that environment. Science is presented as practical and concrete in its focus on
When you live in such a frightening world and the stories that help you understand that world are filled with demons, ghosts, vampires and witches, all of whom have the ability to do you harm, it is not surprising if you are more than a little suspicious of anyone who might be linked to these
I was a middle age adult in 1997 when the first Harry Potter book was published. Even though I was an adult and supposed to be serious minded, I enjoyed “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” very much. I was hooked on the magical world of this literary eleven-year-old. Since then I have read every
As I explained earlier, natural law assumes that God is the ultimate source of the laws of nature. As the author of the laws of nature, these laws reveal something of God’s will to us. When trying to understand natural law, Aquinas and the theologians of his day examined the laws of nature as they
The question that is still being debated is what has caused the climate change that we are now experiencing? One theory is that it is part of a long-term cycle in the climate of the planet. Over the centuries the climate varies and shifts, so that what is now desert was once a lush forest
Recently the UN held a conference in Poland on the need to move away from fossil fuels and toward energy sources that are less damaging to the environment. At the same time scientists are talking about record high temperatures in the Arctic, which are devastating our polar ice caps and over the next few years
