2025 Scholarship Drive

Student-driven. Student-focused. The annual Scholarship Drive raises more than $600,000 for tuition assistance.

Saint Ignatius High School

Catholic Schools

In his blog "Catholic Schools" Jim Brennan '85 reflects on St. Francis Xavier’s mission to educate children in faith, highlighting the importance of Catholic schools in nurturing character and community today.
Catholic Schools


In When St. Francis Xavier made his way to India, he would walk up and down the streets of Goa, ringing a little bell to summon the children of that city to follow him to where he taught them the Christian catechism and various religious songs.

Xavier had gone to India as a missionary, heeding his superior–and best friend’s–exhortation to “go and set the world on fire” with the love of Christ. A Jesuit, he saw his role first and foremost as a missionary; going forth and “making disciples of all nations” (Mt 28: 19). He started with children, knowing that winning them to Christ would undoubtedly pique the interest of their parents, who in turn might want to know about the God-Man, Jesus.

I think of St. Francis every year at this time as we celebrate Catholic Schools Week.

Nearly three-hundred and fifty years after St. Francis walked the streets while ringing his bell, the bishops of the United States, convened in Baltimore, echoed his philosophy, noting in their resulting Pastoral Letter of 1884 (PL, 1884): “Few surely will deny that childhood and youth are the periods of life when the character ought especially to be subjected to religious influences.”

The 1880s was a period when the omnipresent anti-Catholicism of the United States (a phenomenon that historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. called “as American as blueberry pie”) reared its head in an especially aggressive fashion. Public school teachers, teaching Scripture in class, offered interpretations that often had a bigoted spin: seeing in the “anti-Christ” of the letters of John and the “Beast” of the book of Revelation reference to the Pope. Similarly, the “whore of Babylon” was identified as the Catholic Church.

And this was coming from our fellow Christians!

The bishops reflected that:

 

In days like ours, when error is so pretentious and aggressive, everyone needs to be as completely armed as possible with sound knowledge … In the great coming combat between truth and error, between Faith and Agnosticism, an important part of the fray must be borne by the laity, and woe to them if they are not well prepared. (PL, 1884)


True in 1884, the observation remains true today. To combat the “pretentious and aggressive error” of the age, and noting that there were three indispensable institutions for the education of children–the family, the Church, and the school–the bishops mandated that every Catholic parish in the U.S. establish a grade school (“No parish is complete till it has schools adequate to the needs of its children”). Moreover, every Catholic parent was to send his or her children to those schools unless they could guarantee solid faith formation in the home. While parishes never achieved full compliance–neither in the establishment of schools nor in the numbers of Catholic children who filled them–Catholic schools nonetheless enjoyed a period of growth not seen again until the Baby Boomer generation.

Born in the defensiveness of 19th Century American “fortress” or “ghetto” Catholicism, Catholic schools quickly evolved into a vehicle by which immigrants assimilated into American society, learning the language as well as–by episcopal decree–the history and political philosophy of the United States. Facilitated by the publication of the famous Baltimore Catechism, they also provided their students a solid foundation in the Faith.

Such is the case today for nearly 1.7 million American children, both Catholic and members of other religious traditions.

Since 1974, the dioceses of the United States have celebrated “Catholic Schools Week,” wherein they focus on the gift that our schools have been to the Church and American society. Building on the vision of the bishops at the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore, this year’s theme is “Catholic Schools: United in Faith and Community.” It is a reminder of how far we have come as a Church in this country: that we are “united in community,” part of a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural society where we can focus on our common humanity without fear or prejudice.

At the same time, being “united in Faith,” as Catholic schools we can unapologetically assert not only that we are grounded in faith, but that we are grounded in "Catholic" faith--a faith that is loyal to  Church authority while being open to all that is true, good, and beautiful. All the while still welcoming children of all religious backgrounds, respecting and celebrating their religious convictions while in love and with conviction, sharing ours…and striving to provide the first-rate education in the humanities and sciences all children deserve, and which many of us were blessed to have.

This Catholic Schools Week, those of us educated in Catholic Schools should take a minute to call to mind the teachers and administrators–the good sisters, brothers, priests, and lay people–whose love and dedication have helped form us. Pray for them–and for all of us continuing to work in our part of the Lord’s Vineyard–that we might better love and serve all our students.

And pray that they continue to come to the call of our bells.


A.M.D.G. / B.V.M.H.