Closing Catholic Schools
It seems that we are heading for a confrontation over the existence of the separate school system in Ontario. On one hand the government under McGuinty is pressuring separate schools to accept GSA groups. On the other hand, every time the issue comes up there is a flurry of public opposition to the separate school system. It may be useful to look at the thoughts of our current pope on the defense of Catholic schools in Germany.
In Milestones, Ratzinger reflected on the German church's desperate struggle to hold onto its schools under the Nazis, concluding that the wiser course would have been to let them go. "Already it dawned on me that, with their insistence on preserving institutions, these letters [from the bishops] in part misread the reality. I mean merely to guarantee institutions is useless if there are no people to support those institutions from inner conviction." Ratzinger said that the older generation of teachers in the Third Reich was largely anticlerical, whereas the younger was pro-Nazi. "So in both cases it was inane to insist on institutionally guaranteed Christianity," he concluded.
He said in Salt of the Earth: "Once the church has acquired some good or position, she inclines to defend it. The capacity of self-moderation and self pruning is not adequately developed... it's precisely the fact that the church clings to the institutional structure when nothing really stands behind it any longer that brings the church into disrepute."
A Biography of Joseph Ratzinger, John L. Allen, Jr., Continuum, 2000
Freyr,
ReplyDeleteYou are absolutely correct in your assessment. The OECTA position is about protecting "turf" in the sense of economics, power politics etc. The OECTA position of maintaining the "Catholic" system is untenable. They reject infallible Church teaching (e.g. the issue of "priestesses c.f. 2008 Handbook), they reject - as you point out, the divinely appointed teachers of faith and morals - all in the name of being "searching" teachers! (c.f. Handbook). They manifest this rejection once again with the GSA issue. They claim they are Catholic? Let them obey their teachers...
Why maintain a system that - at least the leadership - is de facto protestant? Abolish the "Catholic" system. At least OECTA members can get a reduced union due and pocket the cash. Usually the love of money far out weighs the love of heresy.
Actually it's Ratzinger's assessment. I am merely pointing out the parallels. We should be taking some very specific steps in the near future. Sacramental preparation should be taken out of the hands of the separate schools entirely and placed squarely back in the local parish. When I was a kid in NYC they had the school build long before they even thought about the church. In 1959 my parish had a clapboard church but the school was a fine new brick building. Catholics in Ontario simply do not want Catholic schools badly enough.
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