John Dewey and Progressivist Education

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Despite its dominance in philosophy and scientific inquiry, Enlightenment empiricism would have but minimal practical effect upon education until it manifested itself powerfully in a philosophy of education—progressivism —that came to prominence during the early years of the twentieth century.

Progressivism was largely founded by the thought and labor of John Dewey (1859-1952), a man whose mind was enraptured by the scientific method, and who expanded its use to education.[1] He took the processes of empirical science, established by such men as Sir Francis Bacon, and extended them further than most of the men of the Enlightenment would have taken them. While men such as John Locke (1632-1704) would have seen the scientific method as a means by which empiricist knowledge is gained regarding objective, physical nature, Dewey understood the scientific method as knowledge itself.[2] While at least most empiricists would have remained consistent with the ages past in holding a division between knowing and doing, Dewey abolished that division and postulated knowledge to be but mere doing.[3]He advocated a theory known as operationalism which held that knowledge is merely the scientific method in action.[4]

In his thought, Dewey reflected in many ways that of the Enlightenment philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), who seems to have perceived the logical results of the Enlightenment better than did his contemporaries.[5] Dewey paid much heed and respect to Rousseau, who Henry T. Edmundson III described as the “single most important influence on progressive education,” both in Europe and America, although Dewey rightly criticized Rousseau’s neglect of his own children.[6] An essential point of agreement between Rousseau and Dewey was their belief in the natural goodness of man.[7]

Endorsed by pure empiricists such as John Locke, this concept of man’s innate goodness flowed naturally from the nominalist and empiricist positions.[8] In the words of Richard Weaver, “If physical nature is the totality and if man is of nature, it is impossible to think of him as suffering from constitutional evil; his defections must now be attributed to his simple ignorance or to some kind of social deprivation. One comes thus by clear deduction to the corollary of the natural goodness of man.”[9] Without universals, there is nothing to which human nature may be compared and nothing by which it may be deemed corrupted.[10] If anything is wrong with man, the ill is due to something external to man (such as a destructive environment or a lack of information) and not to man himself. Man is, as described by John Locke, born with a mind that is a tabula rasa or “blank slate,” without any natural propensity to evil.[11] The doctrine of original sin is thereby abolished.[12]

As a result of these ideas, Rousseau and Dewey promoted what has since been labeled the “child-centered” approach to education.[13] For them, education is concerned with hands-on experience and physical activities and manipulations—the only true knowledge—with an emphasis on vocational preparation.[14] They saw the rightful foundation of these endeavors as the natural impulses of the child.[15] Based upon the natural goodness of man, they charged previous education with suppressing these impulses as vices and, thereby, with suppressing the selfhood of the child.[16] These impulses should be set free from adult correction or discipline and utilized as guides for classroom activities and instruction.[17] In this way, the ideas of Dewey, reflecting those of Rousseau’s “noble savage,” led to traditional virtue and notions of sin or evil being replaced in America’s educational system by the savage’s right to be “himself,” a shift which encouraged an egocentric, i.e. selfish or prideful, approach to knowledge. The results of such a shift are all too evident in our current situation.

[1]. Clark, Gordon H. Thales to Dewey: A History of Philosophy. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1980,  519, 523, 525.

[2]. Ibid., 525.

[3]. Ibid., 524-525.

[4]. Ibid., 526.

[5]. Henry T. Edmondson, John Dewey & the Decline of American Education: How the Patron Saint of Schools Has Corrupted Teaching and Learning (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2006), 8-9.

[6]. Ibid.

[7]. Ibid., 8.

[8]. Russell Kirk, The Roots of American Order (Washington, DC: Regnery Gateway, 1991), 406.

[9]. Richard M. Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 4-5.

[10]. Ibid., 4.

[11]. Kirk, Roots of American Order, 406.

[12]. Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences, 4.

[13]. Edmondson, John Dewey, 8.

[14]. Ibid., 8-9.

[15]. Ibid., 22.

[16]. Ibid., 8, 22, 23, 33.

[17]. Ibid., 22, 23.

DANIEL K. HUBIN resides in the Nashville, Tenn., area where he studies education, history, and literature at Welch College. He earned the Eagle Scout Award in 2014 and currently teaches U.S. government and civics to homeschool students.

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Editorial: Infidelity, Dissent and Scandal—from McCarrick to Catholic Education

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In light of the terrible scandals confronting the Church in recent days, may we (once again) propose a key part of the solution to widespread infidelity, dissent and scandal?

We propose the renewal of faithful Catholic education.

The Church has been repeatedly wounded by the predatory, criminal and obscene abuse of innocent boys and men by trusted leaders, including former Cardinal McCarrick and those who enabled him.

How can we still be in this situation? After the 2002 scandals, the faithful stood with the bishops and trusted them to end not just the sex abuse scandals—which we were assured were all in the past—but also to work to rebuild and strengthen Catholic identity across the Church’s institutions.

But here we are 16 years later. Church attendance is plummeting, young people are abandoning the faith, and heterodox Catholic colleges, leaders and organizations have persisted in dissent and scandal without consequence or public correction.

If you wonder how we got here, Anthony Esolen’s article on the McCarrick scandals at the Newman Society’s website is a must-read. McCarrick, he points out, was one of the signers of the infamous “Land O’ Lakes Statement” in 1967, which paved the way to outright dissent and academic opposition to Humanae Vitae a year later.

Esolen rightly finds that the Cardinal’s behavior—and the apparent tolerance for that behavior by other bishops—had much the same cause as the decline of Catholic education.

And it can be corrected, if all of us in the Church demand fidelity and true Catholic formation in our homes, our schools, our colleges, and our seminaries.

But this will be easier said than done. In many corners of the institutional Church, we seem to be rushing to meet the (fallen) world where it is, instead of boldly and confidently proclaiming that true happiness is found in Truth, in the Way of Christ. Just look at the agendas, marketing materials and speaking lineups of the upcoming World Meeting of Families and the Synod on Young People.

More than ever, what our families need… what the Church needs… what all the world needs, is a revitalization of truly faithful Catholic education.

Still, in too many Catholic elementary and secondary schools, we find the influence of the utilitarian Common Core and secular textbooks and curricula, often embraced by well-meaning but apparently poorly catechized educators. The Newman Society’s Catholic Is Our Core project exposed the inadequacy of the Common Core, and thankfully many dioceses have abandoned it. A number of them have embraced our faithful Catholic Curriculum Standards. But there is still so much more to be done.

With regard to Catholic colleges, it is well past time for the Church—the bishops, the clergy and religious, and parents—to publicly reject those that undermine fundamental Church teachings while claiming a Catholic identity! This scandal has done enormous damage to souls.

The most heterodox of the Catholic colleges serve as incubators for practically every bad idea in the Church today. Dissident educators and their college leaders bear direct responsibility for leading young people astray—and yet we cannot ignore the painful fact that the Church’s continued endorsement of these institutions leads many Catholic families to send their sons and daughters to be corrupted by sin and relativism.

More than a quarter of Catholic colleges allow overnight, opposite-sex visitation in student bedrooms! What effect do you suppose that has on students and their faith? Where are Church leaders and Catholic parents on this? Why are they not demanding that it stop?

This is just one example of how the Church’s silence on public scandal and the collapse of Catholic moral formation have fostered infidelity and dissent.

The good news is that there is a renewal of Catholic education underway: at Newman Guide colleges; at Catholic Education Honor Roll schools, including lay-run independent Catholic schools that get too little support and attention from the Church; in the exploding Catholic homeschool community that also gets too little support and attention from the Church; and in lay Catholic organizations like the Newman Society, FOCUS, ICLE, the Augustine Institute, and so many others.

Thanks be to God for this!

And thanks also for those orthodox and holy priests and bishops who faithfully live their vocations and proclaim the Truth of Christ. We have met and worked closely with many of them, and they need our prayers and support more than ever.

We need the entire Church, both clergy and laity, to demand fidelity from every Catholic and every institution which claims a Catholic identity. It’s an expression of the greatest love to uphold Truth, Beauty and Goodness in Catholic education and throughout the Church. May we love our young people and fellow Catholics more deeply and fervently in these times of dissent and confusion.

Founder of Catholic Magazines Reflects on Faithful Catholic Education

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Graduates of Newman Guide colleges are making a difference for the Church and the world, and Rose Rea is no exception!  A graduate of Franciscan University in Ohio, Rose is the founder of Radiant and Valiant magazines for young Catholic women and men, respectively.  Readers can subscribe to Radiant and Valiant magazines, which are owned by Our Sunday Visitor, at this link.  We thank Rose for taking the time to share with us about how her Catholic education prepared her to share the Faith through these magazines.

Photo of Rose Rea by Lisa Wahl.

Rose, how did Franciscan University of Steubenville prepare you to serve the Church and achieve professional success?

Franciscan has a way of bringing people to campus who are not afraid to live out their faith in a beautiful and vibrant way. I had never seen anything like it in my high school years, so when I visited my older sister attending Steubenville, I knew immediately that this was the place I wanted to be. I made life-long friends there, studied abroad and traveled all over Europe learning about the history of our Catholic Church and most importantly, I was educated and formed in a Catholic environment by people who wanted me to succeed in whatever I felt called to do. Having Fr. Michael Scanlan as a spiritual advisor was also the biggest blessing. What a holy man he was!

How has your Catholic college education helped you communicate with young men and women in Radiant and Valiant magazines?

It sounds cliché, but to be around people who were cool and Catholic resonated deeply within my heart. So many adolescents and young adults feel very alone in their faith, because most of their peers around them are not living out a faith-filled life. At Franciscan University, we connected with people from all walks of life who were very great examples of people living in the world doing very normal things, but who were not “of the world”. That definitely motivated me to want to bring that mentality to young women and men everywhere. I felt that if I could just inspire one young lady to save herself for marriage because she is worth it or one young man to step up to make a decision God wanted him to make, even if it was difficult and hard, it would be valuable! The world is in desperate need of courageous men and women who are ready to answer God’s often difficult calling in their lives and we want them to understand that a small yes to God can lead to making a huge difference in the world! Every fire starts with a spark, right?!

What kind of articles can readers, including college students and graduates, find in these magazines?

Readers will find so many different topics covered! For the ladies, we cover topics like dating and relationships, include modest fashion in each issue, and highlight in-depth interviews and personal stories from well-known speakers and authors. We feature artists and photographers, as well as fantastic organizations, who are making a difference in their respective vocations. Overall, women will find all kinds of stories that will uplift and inspire them to grow deeper in their faith and allow them to connect with women just like them.

For the men, we share stories of courage, conviction and determination by guys just like our readers who were not afraid to answer God’s call in their own lives. We feature authors, bloggers, musicians, priests, military men and national speakers who are making a difference. It is so incredibly fun and rewarding to work with these talented young, Catholic men and women. Their stories are phenomenal!

This October, the Vatican will host a Synod on Young People. Some have suggested that the Church needs to back away from certain teachings and traditions to appeal to young people, but to the contrary, your readers and the students at Newman Guide colleges are attracted to the Church. How can the Church communicate Truth, Goodness and Beauty to today’s young people?

I completely agree with the latter; the doctrine and teachings of our Catholic Faith do not need to be updated or changed for our modern times. The teachings only need to be communicated in a more appealing and effective way to reach today’s young in the modern language that they speak. God’s gift to us, the teachings of the Catholic Church and the beautiful examples of the Saints and the martyrs need to be reheard and retaught to the new generation; so many of them are already responding in a positive way! There is much more work to be done, but I see the fruits of the sacrifices our parents and those before us have made. This is a difficult but special time to be Catholic, and our own happiness and the salvation of many souls depend on our complete abandonment to God. When that happens, then we’ll find peace! That is the goal of Radiant and Valiant magazines—to bring our readers to this peace—which we strive to do, led by our most blessed mother, the Virgin Mary.

college campus

It Never Was About Anything Else

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More than fifty years ago, a group of prelates, priests, and cherry-picked leaders in Catholic higher education published the so-called “Land O’ Lakes Statement,” a declaration of independence made on behalf of Catholic colleges from the oversight of, and from influence by, the Holy See, local bishops, and the magisterium of the Church. The ostensible reason for it was that the Church was seen by its secular counterparts as retrograde and sluggish in producing scholars and statesmen of international recognition. That is, Notre Dame, the school whose president, Father Theodore Hesburgh, led the signatories, was not yet Harvard, Yale, or Princeton. A petitio principii if there ever was one, for why should Notre Dame have wanted to be one of those schools, which were all in the very quick process of abandoning most of their classical and Christian heritage?

We know, of course, what was at issue here. It was a preemptive strike against what Pope Paul VI would issue in 1968, namely the encyclical Humanae vitae. For the business of contraception, abortion, fornication, and every other sexual sin for which there is a name was on the table for reconsideration. A mere ten years later, the authors of Human Sexuality: New Directions in American Catholic Thought (1977), would find it somewhat difficult even to condemn sexual activity with animals, let alone anything else that human beings might do, so long as they did it with the appropriate funny internal flutter (if I may adapt Frank Sheed’s wonderful phrase), a flutter of love, whatever love is, and mutuality, and sincerity, and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

I bring the matter up, because one of the signers at Land O’ Lakes was the now disgraced Theodore Cardinal McCarrick, at that time the president of the Catholic University of Puerto Rico. McCarrick was also one of the main movers in Dallas in 2002, when the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops twisted themselves into pretzels so as not to bring up the staggeringly plain facts of the clergy sex scandal. That is, more than four-fifths of the victims were boys, and most of those boys were big kids, not little kids—big enough to resist the advances of a grown man. They were seduced, not overcome by sheer physical force. That, as I’ve said elsewhere, does not make the deed less miserable. In a crucial way it makes it worse, because the boys were inveigled into cooperation with their own defilement, and so they could never say that they had no part in it.

In an interview with USA Today, from June 2002, speaking about the upcoming conference in Dallas, McCarrick tries to parry the whole question of homosexuality. When the interviewer brings it up, he engages in another petitio principii: for the real question is whether someone who has engaged in, and who feels a strong desire to engage again in, actions contrary to nature and to the division of the human race into male and female, suffers from a severe moral and psychological syndrome, one that would disqualify him from the priesthood or from any line of work that would put him in contact with boys and young men. So, responding to the suggestion that homosexual men not be admitted to the seminary, McCarrick makes the standard move, balancing homosexuality with heterosexuality:

“You want someone who can live a chaste life; that is key for me. If somebody who would like to go into the seminary says, ‘All my life, I’ve tried to be chaste, I’m a heterosexual, and I have tried to be celibate, and I have proven that I can be,’ I think you say ‘Fine.’ If someone says to you, ‘All my life I’ve tried to be chaste, I have a homosexual orientation, but I’ve always tried to be chaste,’ I think you do that one case by case. Probably beginning in this next school year, the question of admission to seminaries will be discussed. It might be that the overwhelming weight of opinion will say that homosexuals should not be ever admitted to seminary. I’m not there yet. But if that’s what they tell me to do, then that’s what we’ll do. Certainly, I’m there if we say anyone who has been active in a gay life should not be admitted.”

I detest having to parse a bishop’s sentences, but when he will not speak frankly, he leaves us little choice. We notice that all that is required of the homosexual here is that he has “tried to be chaste.” I can try to hold my place on the field of battle. I can try hard to do it, and then I can run away. I can try not to sin. But in the cases of fornication and sodomy, trying is not good enough. We are not talking here about sins of intemperance, including what used to be called self-abuse. We are talking about sins that you actually have to plan in advance, as McCarrick himself did. It may be difficult to refrain from the lewd thought or the untoward glance. It is not difficult to keep your clothes on.

We should perhaps not say that McCarrick was a flat liar when he uttered that final sentence: “I’m there if we say that anyone who has been active in a gay life should not be admitted.” He may by then have repented of his deeds, after all. He may also be slurring the word “active,” or the word “life.” Never underestimate the human capacity to draw distinctions in our favor. A man may say, “Pornography is not a part of my life,” and mean it, while still he views it once in a while, casually—as if it were something he stumbled upon at times, or at least did not strive too hard to avoid. A man may say, “I am not an active adulterer,” because he has not committed adultery in several years and has no intention to do so in the near future.

But what has all the turmoil in the Church and in Catholic colleges been about, ultimately? Not controversies over the Trinity, not scholars hurling books at each other’s heads for misinterpreting Augustine, not even profound disagreements over such important matters as evolution, the character and the dangers of democracy, the licit use of money, or the relative blessings of work and leisure. Not community and what it is, not culture and why it is fading, not the duties we owe to both our ancestors and our posterity. Nothing of that. Consider Land O’ Lakes and the recent revelations regarding Cardinal McCarrick to be bookends on a shelf, and every book between the bookends is about nothing more respectable, nothing more complicated, and nothing less grubby than how to do what you want with your groin and have a nice day afterwards.

University of Notre DameAnthony Melone on Unsplash.com

30 Years Later, Notre Dame Has Learned Nothing

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Proving that they’ve learned absolutely nothing from the scandal when they honored President Barack Obama in 2009, the University of Notre Dame recently honored former Indiana Gov. Joseph Kernan with one of its highest honors despite his public advocacy for the legalization of abortion.

The university honored Kernan with its 2018 Rev. Edward F. Sorin, C.S.C., Award, “in recognition of his significant contributions to the University of Notre Dame and his country,” according to a press release from the university. While a politician, Kernan famously insisted that as a Catholic he was “personally opposed” to abortion but remained an advocate for keeping it legal. This line of thinking, of course, is absurd and immoral.

The honor for Kernan is at least partly fitting, because it was on the campus of Notre Dame that New York Governor Mario Cuomo established his indelible print on American politics and Catholicism by infamously promulgating the argument that a Catholic politician can, in good conscience, personally oppose abortion while politically fighting to establish its legality. The past three decades have borne the terrible fruit of that speech.

In a watershed moment for American Catholics, Cuomo didn’t just attempt to create a space for Catholics to vote in favor of legalized abortion, but he went even further by accusing pro-life Catholics of “seeking to force our beliefs on others.” He said that forcing our views on abortion on others would be like forcing our views of premarital sex on others. Of course, this leaves out the victim of abortion, the unborn child.

On top of this, he also said Catholics’ diversity of opinion on abortion policy is essentially equivalent to Catholic diversity on issues such as military expenditures and education policy. So, Cuomo essentially laid out the enduring playbook for Catholic social justice warriors for the next few decades.

Of course, the university named for Our Lady also honored the newly elected President Barack Obama in 2009, despite his history of radically pro-abortion votes and his pledge to support abortion as president—a promise he upheld with gruesome distinction. It then honored Vice President Joe Biden, another defender of legal abortion, with its Laetare Medal. Kernan himself was the commencement speaker at Notre Dame back in 1998.

Moreover, Notre Dame seems to have exempted itself from Humanae Vitae. Just this year, the university announced that it would offer insurance coverage for contraception and abortifacients to employees, a policy it said was “based on Catholic principles.”  The same excuse of not “forcing our belief” on non-Catholic employees—employees of a Catholic institution—has been used by Notre Dame to justify its harmful policy.

Amid that darkness, the honoring of Kernan who followed Cuomo’s lead shouldn’t be surprising in the least. It isn’t, but it’s still disappointing that Notre Dame hasn’t realized its mistake thirty-plus years after the Cuomo debacle and nine years after the Obama spectacle.In 2004, Kernan’s high school alma mater, St. Joseph High School in South Bend, was forced by then-Bishop John M. D’Arcy to withdraw its invitation to Kernan to deliver a graduation speech, based on his policy statements on abortion. Bishop D’Arcy made clear at the time that Kernan’s appearance contradicted the moral truths the school expected students to embrace.

Kernan, a Notre Dame graduate, served as mayor of South Bend and as lieutenant governor and governor of Indiana and consistently and publicly pronounced himself to support the legalization of abortion, despite realizing its immorality.

“We’re so proud to present this year’s Sorin Award to Joe Kernan,” said Dolly Duffy ’84, the executive director of the Notre Dame Alumni Association in a release. “Joe has been a loyal and devoted son of Notre Dame, and his dedication to serving others is a testament to the values the University strives to instill in its students and alumni.”
“Others” would presumably not include the unborn, their parents, the pro-life movement, and the Catholic Church.

While much of Kernan’s life has been spent in creditable and even heroic activities—including time as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, his work with the St. Joseph County Red Cross, and the Special Olympics—this honor sends a message to students, alumni, and Catholics around the country that the killing of the unborn is an issue of secondary importance that can be offset by other accomplishments.

There is something terribly amiss at Notre Dame which has caused it to obfuscate, violate, and ignore fundamental Catholic teaching on the dignity of human life, time and again. Please say a prayer for the university and its leaders that they will realize the error of their ways.

Matt Archbold is a fellow of The Cardinal Newman Society. This article was cross-posted at The National Catholic Register.

What Would A Justice Kavanaugh Mean for Catholic Education?

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The nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court Justice has ignited storms of protests from the left, mostly centered around the issue of abortion. But another issue promises to be the focus of some harsh questioning in the near future — Catholic schools.

I’ve long believed that the fate of this country is tied to the strength of our faithful Catholic schools. For one to survive, the other must thrive. And let’s be honest, many many Catholic schools are currently operating on a sub-thrive basis. Why? There are many reasons including a cultural shift that not only inspires apathy about the faith but anger and ridicule. Another has been the mass exodus of nuns from Catholic schools, which forced the schools to allocate significant funds toward paying teachers which led to huge increases in tuition, thus pricing them out of many well-intentioned people’s lives. This has been a calamity for Catholic education and this country. But one of the remedies to this situation that would help families afford a Catholic education has been essentially barred by the odious anti-Catholic Blaine Amendments that exist throughout our country, preventing voucher plans from taking effect.

Here’s a very brief history: In the mid 19th century, anti-Catholic bigotry escalated in reaction to a wave of Catholic immigrants coming to America and establishing Catholic schools which requested public funding. At the time, the public school system was largely seen as protestant strongholds where children recited prayers and read the Bible. In reaction to the Catholic immigrants, many in the country became aligned with the Know Nothing movement which made one of its top priorities barring Catholic schools from receiving public funding. In 1875, President Ulysses S. Grant urged Congress to adopt a constitutional amendment to prohibit public funding of what they called “sectarian schools.” To be clear, they were talking about Catholic schools. Blaine, then a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, complied vigorously with President Grant’s request by introducing an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to do just that. Thankfully, his efforts fell just short in the Senate.

But the ball was rolling downhill and it only picked up speed. Supporters of the Blaine Amendment went local, promoting their anti-Catholic agenda in state legislatures to great effect. As of right now, something akin to Blaine Amendments exist in over three dozen state constitutions which bar public aid to religious organizations, including Catholic schools.

Blaine himself rode a tide of popularity to win a Senate seat and even was the Republican nominee for the presidency where he lost one of the narrowest elections our country has seen (mainly because he alienated Catholics). But his impact continues with the amendments still acting as barriers against vouchers for education. Those who most loudly support the Blaine Amendments no longer are affiliated with the Know Nothing movement and they don’t typically concern themselves with conspiracies of the papacy staging a coup on the country. Nowadays, supporters of the Blaine Amendments express concerns about the separation of church and state as well as those who fear that vouchers would harm public schools as many parents would inevitably opt out of public schools if given the chance. Mind you, there is also a not insignificant number of anti-Christian secularists and atheists who would simply like to see religious schools starved out of existence.

But after years of court battles, there is currently a great deal of pushback concerning the constitutionality of the Blaine Amendments and the issue could end up being decided by the courts in the near future. They argue that it is the proper role of government to be neutral on religion, not discriminating against it precisely because of its religious mission.

In fact, the Supreme Court in a 7-2 decision, ruled last year that Trinity Lutheran, a church in Missouri, could receive state funding to pave its playground with recycled tires even after the state said they weren’t able to because of their state’s constitution.

While the victory was cheered by religious liberty advocates, it was ridiculously narrower than many wanted. The high court did say that “denying a generally available benefit solely on account of religious identity imposes a penalty on the free exercise of religion” but expressly added that the case was about “express discrimination based on religious identity with respect to playground resurfacing.” Thank goodness our long national nightmare over the constitutionality of the resurfacing of Christian playgrounds is finally over!Supporters of school vouchers had hoped at the time that the Supreme Court was ready to put an end to Blaine Amendments. But they didn’t take on the wider issue at all. They punted. Some believe it’s because the conservative judges on the court didn’t think they had enough votes to go ahead on the wider issue.

Enter Judge Kavanaugh.

President Donald Trump’s nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, is a product of Catholic schools who has spoken out on this very issue in favor of religious schools. In fact, before becoming a federal judge, Kavanaugh had served for a time as the co-chair of the School Choice Practice Group of the Federalist Society.

At the American Enterprise Institute in December of last year, Kavanaugh reportedly complimented Chief Justice William Rehnquist’s efforts to ensure that “religious schools and religious institutions could participate as equals in society and in state benefits programs.” He also correctly praised Rehnquist’s criticism of the modern understanding of the separation between church and state as “based on bad history.”

Vouchers have the potential to change the fate of religious schools throughout the country at a time when many are struggling financially. They can help parents whose children are trapped in underperforming schools find a way out. And finally, with Justice Kavanaugh on the bench, this country may finally cut its ties to this awful legacy of anti-Catholic bigotry.

Matt Archbold is a fellow of the Cardinal Newman Society. This article was cross-posted at The National Catholic Register.

Homeschooling as a Means to Rebuilding Catholic Culture

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The following was originally given as a talk to the Calgary Catholic Homeschooling group.

My wife and I have been teaching our kids at home for about eight years. I recall vividly when the idea of educating at home turned into a conviction. We were back in Saskatchewan, newly married, newly graduated, and preparing for graduate study in England. It was June and the days were long. My wife had recently completed her education degree and we were dreaming about how we would form our own future children. A small group of us met at a friend’s place at the edge of the city. We read together C.S. Lewis’ Abolition of Man.

On that June evening, it is not as though this was the first time we had given thought to how we would raise our children. Other people and books had formed our thinking. There was Hilda Neatby, the Canadian and Presbyterian version of Alan Bloom. Her books date from the 1950s, when John Dewey’s influence was at its height, and anticipate themes later sensationalized in The Closing of the American Mind. Dorothy Sayer’s famous essay, “The Lost Tools of Learning,” thrilled, as did Plato’s Republic, as did the books by Charlotte Mason that Anna and I read out loud together. Probably we were simply dry tinder; any number of books could’ve ignited our imaginations, but it was Lewis who threw down the first match.

I do not think every family should “homeschool”. I am grateful, I would like to add, for the seeds of faith that were planted in my young heart in the two Catholic schools I attended during my elementary years in Saskatchewan. The Church defends vigorously the natural right of parents to educate their children, and I am convinced that this may be done well among a wide variety of models. And yet, eight years into the project and our family has found homeschooling to be a beautiful means to form our children in a Catholic culture.

What makes for a Catholic culture? To build a healthy culture requires many ingredients. We need enchanting liturgies, noble art, a functioning intelligentsia, evangelical clergy, and just laws. But from the point of view of the Church, even more than these we need something more basic. From Leo XIII on, modern popes have insisted with ever-growing vigor that the health of the Church, like the health of civil society, depends upon that kingdom that is older than the Pharaohs, tougher than the nation state, more universal than the United Nations, more reliable than welfare stamps, more loving than anti-bullying clubs, and which is reborn each time a man and a woman proclaim those rash and romantic words: I do.

Those two words are our best defense against barbarism. Any culture that hopes to perpetuate itself must learn to transmit its treasure to its young. Over the last 50 years homeschooling has already proven itself a credible alternative to public and private schools; over the next 50 I predict that homeschooling will serve as a catalyst for rebuilding Catholic culture.

For the remainder, I’d like to show how the homeschooling family, as an expression of the domestic church, is uniquely situated to advance the project of Catholic culture. Just as the Catholic Church has four marks – one, holy, catholic, apostolic – so also can a Christian homeschooling family live out its educational mission by participating in these four qualities.

Just as the members of the Church are one through a common baptism and profession of faith, so also is the domestic church made one through the love of one man and one woman. A homeschooling family helps build Catholic culture by building up this unity within the family.

A couple of years ago some close friends of ours decided that they too would try the grand experiment. As you know, it is not for the faint of heart. How will I keep the kids busy? Will I know enough chemistry? What will our relatives say? And, by the way, can a homeschooled kid get into college? These questions and a dozen like them jump into the minds of parents considering the big move.

Well, for these friends of ours, what pushed them to get wet was a night at their church’s youth group. It was something of a family night. The church gym was filled with kids and parents all bustling around. One of the families present was homeschooling. My friend couldn’t take his eyes off of them. He watched how their children played with each other as friends; yes, friends who were used to spending all day together. He saw the parents speak to their kids; eye met eye; it was different from how he spoke to his. What hit him above all else was the manifest unity in this home. And he wanted it for his family too. “I wanted ours to be unified like that,” he told me; and so they jumped. That was about five years ago. And today that family, for me at least, provides a model for how a household can work together, on their property, in earning a common wage, and in educating kids.

Not everyone wants the family to be unified in this way. In fact, the farther governments slide toward totalitarianism, the less they will tolerate strong families. The logic is not difficult to follow. The more the state sees itself as the only legitimate political actor, the more that the state sees its aim as the imposition of, say, universal equality, even an equality of unbridled freedom, the more it has to target quasi-political associations. As the Marxist theory goes: as family recedes, as parents get out of the way, equality will finally advance.

The second quality of the Church is its holiness. In the biblical mind to be holy is to be set apart for some work. What is the distinctive work of the family? Obviously, it is bringing forth children. Monks and nuns can’t do that. Here again I think the homeschooling family is particularly suited to building up Catholic culture. A homeschooling family helps strengthen Catholic culture by building up an island of holiness within their parish.

Pope Benedict XVI often reflected on this theme. During his pontificate he constantly returned to the crisis of faith through which the West is suffering and proposed models for its recovery of faith. Even his papal name preached a sermon on this theme. Benedict predicted, to the consternation of some, that we would shrink before we could grow. Too many of the habits of piety had been lost, too many of the principles of free thought had been forgotten, too many of our institutions compromised for Christians to hope for a linear recovery. No, the Church in the West would have to take the longer road of suffering and purgation.

Some criticized Benedict for being overly negative. Some have said that his counsel has been one of despair, or charged that he is asking Christians to hide away in ghettos. It seems to me, rather, that he was simply expressing a basic truth: you can’t give what you haven’t got. In order to be salt of the world, Christians would need to regain their distinctive savor. What Benedict proposed is that Christians needed to form Islands of Holiness. Just as Benedict of Nursia’s sons had to regroup during the dark ages after the collapse of Rome, so also can Christians today come together in small groups to relearn the habits of piety, of modesty, of chastity, and of sanctity; only from that position of strength can we then turn again to the world.

How can a homeschool form an island of holiness?

When you homeschool every parent can be a principal. So, in your school, if you want Latin you do not need to convince a board, you can just open up Wheelock; if you want to celebrate Feast Days with gusto, you do not need to convince a committee, you can just find other families and invite them for a party; if you want to enforce a dress code, buy modest clothes; if you want your children to learn fasting, serve fish on Fridays. Teach chant, put on a Shakespeare play, take your kids on pilgrimages, say a daily decade, let them read the classics, and meet up with other like-minded parents. I say, in the spirit of Benedict: embrace the bubble! When you teach at home you can form a subculture. Your family will attract others. Islands need to be populated.

This leads to the domestic church’s and the homeschooling family’s third attribute: catholicity. Holiness does not in principle exclude others. The Church is Catholic in that it is universal. It embraces all who wish to align themselves with her creed. For every family, this openness is expressed first of all in the openness to new life.

We knew a homeschooling family whose parents could not have any children of their own. This was a cross. When we knew them, they already had more than our five. They had come to know one of the single mothers from whom they had adopted a child. And that unwed mother kept having more kids. This homeschooling family decided that they would keep adopting her children. And the kids kept coming, year after year. After a few years, the wife, now a homeschooling mom of a large brood began to think twice before answering the phone! She told us once that she didn’t realize before they started adopting in this way what “openness to life” could mean.…

Not all families are called to such heroism, but we are all called to embrace the profound intrusion upon our ego that is a new life. Children, by their irresistible otherness, by their stubborn resistance to our plans and schedules and sleep, by their generous love, by their friendships, by their neediness, naturally draw a homeschool family into a larger web of families.

You don’t need to have a large family to be “catholic”. But insofar as homeschooling habituates parents and siblings to make room for each other, they win opportunities to practice charity. By the subordination of their finances and their time and their sweat to the great project of educating their children, they are particularly suited to the building up Catholic culture in our time through embracing new life and nurturing the children that come to them.

I conclude that insofar as a family manifests unity, sanctity, and universality, it will automatically and without effort be apostolic. People will come to you: Are those all your children? You sure have your hands full? What are you doing out of school in the afternoon? As St. Peter said to the early Christians, let us always be ready to give a reasonable reply (1 Peter 3:15).

books and blackboardPhoto by Debby Hudson via Unsplash

Trojan Textbooks: Beware of Government Bearing Gifts

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New Mexico’s Supreme Court is reconsidering a 2015 ruling which ended the state funding of textbooks for private schools. Is this good news?

As a publisher of textbooks produced specifically for Catholic schools, I am conflicted in answering the question. On the one hand, state money provides a large well of cash for schools to much more easily make a decision to upgrade textbooks. After all, most of our schools are woefully budget challenged. Money to alleviate the strain is a welcome relief to those schools, I am sure. On the other hand, two problems peek out of the public funds trough. One is the looming “strings attached.” We wait for the string to be pulled, and wonder what it means for a school to keep following the money on the string – what do they have to compromise? The second problem is becoming dependent on the funding source to the point of having it dictate a school’s buying decisions, even if not necessary.

The positive side seems obvious. Catholic parents pay tuition, but also pay their fair share for public education. It is only right that some of those funds come back to benefit the educational process of their own children. It is also for the good of the state and society that Catholic schools exist, for they educate well, they form a more acute conscience-guided citizen, and they save the states billions of dollars in education spending. Archbishop Chaput offers this statistic: “Catholic and other non-public schools currently save Pennsylvania taxpayers more than $4 billion every year.”

Imagine what would happen if all those schools were to close. Tens of thousands of students, $4 billion dollars worth, would show up on the doorstep of the public schools and the state would have to educate them, with not a dime of additional resources from the public, because they already receive taxes from everyone. It would break the system! And so, it seems like sound business sense for the state education funds to keep that small trickle of good will dollars going into the private schools. Curricular aid is a perfect place to do so. Textbook assistance can provide a small but important benefit, based on a per child formula, which ensures the benefit really follows the child.

The Church has repeatedly called for governments, in justice, to aid Catholic schools in some of the expense of educating children. She realizes the state has no obligation to fund religious education, as such, but she claims there is the whole other element of education, the so-called secular subjects, which the state has a vested interest in. Again, to paraphrase Archbishop Chaput, the value to our society that a good education provides, no matter who is giving it, is priceless. For this reason, it seems that states should follow New Mexico’s response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2017 case, Trinity Lutheran v. Comer, in which it sided with a Lutheran school being able to access state funds that were made available to upgrade the safety of its playground. New Mexico saw that a basic human need was being met, even if it was on the grounds of a church.

There are other ways to look at this whole issue, however, such as from a perspective of fundamental anthropology, or liberty. Government funding has become increasingly tied to a secular, anti-religious ideological agenda. One must be very wary of moving in the direction of government funding. A common argument of advocates on all sides of the aisle is that the secular subjects are just that, secular, and not subject to ideology, so it is fine for the state to fund those books. We have our history textbooks funded by a few states due to this very reasoning.

In a recent Catholic News Agency article on the New Mexico case, Eric Baxter of the Becket Law Group stated in a perfectly well-meaning way, “A science textbook is a science textbook no matter whose shelf it’s on.” The problem is that this is not true! A science textbook is not just a science textbook. Nor is a history book just a history book. To assert, or even accept the notion that publishers like Pearson, Glencoe or Prentice Hall do not have an agenda is either a lie or terribly naïve. They do have an agenda, even an ideology, and they push it.

The standard mainstream science textbook is written from a mechanistic world view. This is flawed science because the world is not mechanistic. One can be a pure and excellent scientist and still acknowledge God, creation, and the beauty of His stamp on the world. In fact, many of the greatest scientists in history were deeply religious – many of them monks and priests. They became so interested in science, and so advanced in discovery because they wanted to understand God’s creation even better, and reveal the gifts He had locked in the intricacies of His world.

Similarly, an honest historian cannot tell history without a significant part of the story being wound up with the Church, and religious motivations for discovery, improvements of economy and government, and yes, some not-so-rosy things, too. But to write the Church’s involvement largely out of history is profoundly poor scholarship. Yet that is what they do. The Church is written out, and Ellen DeGeneres is written in, along with Harvey Milk, Jose Sarria and Gavin Newsom. These are prominent characters in the new lower elementary social studies books in California. These characters are important to history because of their stand for “gay rights”. Of all the stories to share with our children about the great arc of history, are these the ones my seven or eight year old really need to be learning? And yet, this is what we get when we follow the state textbook.

What have we done? We have traded our liberty to teach truth and form our children in right teaching, for free textbooks. Beware of states bearing gifts.

If, as in the case of a few states, your state will fund textbooks such as the Catholic Textbook Project’s history series, by all means, use those funds. That is a right and proper use of the citizens’ taxes. Just be ready to also pay for good, true and beautiful materials by yourself if the state stops funding such products. After all, most Catholic schools in the country do not benefit from state funding of textbooks anyway, and they still find ways to pay for it. It is a nice perk if you have it but please do not let it prevent you from having a textbook that is in line with the core principles of our mission of Catholic education. Sometimes liberty comes at a cost!

The Way, the Truth, and the Life

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Editor’s Note: The Cardinal Newman Society recently announced Sarah Niblock of St. Pius X Catholic High School in Kansas City, Missouri, as the winner of the Society’s second annual Essay Scholarship Contest for Catholic college-bound students.  Niblock will receive a $5,000 scholarship toward her education at Thomas Aquinas College in Santa Paula, California, this fall.  Below is the full text of Niblock’s winning essay.  More information about the Contest can be obtained here.

I closed the door to my room, sunk into my plush wicker chair, and let out a deep breath as a mixture of anger and exhaustion swirled within me. “What if I made the wrong decision?” I asked myself. My unease spread as I recounted the comments I had heard from well-meaning family and friends, after telling them that I would be attending a faithful Catholic college. “Are you sure your family can afford that?” one friend asked. “Will a Catholic school shelter you from the harsh realities of the world around you?” my dad questioned. As I replayed these scenes, I began to pray, asking God to open my heart so that I might hear His voice. After restlessly praying for a few minutes, my eyes wandered around my room until they rested on a holy card of Jesus that laid on my dresser. Staring at it for a few seconds, I recalled the words that were written on the back, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). These words seemed to pound in my ears as my eyes closed, and the details of my visit to a faithful Catholic college came rushing back with incredible vividness.

“I am the way.” Chapel bells begin to toll, and I watch as dozens of students appear from dorm rooms and classrooms, hurrying to Mass on a Wednesday afternoon. I gaze around a busy dining hall to see students bowing their head before diving into their midday meal. I listen to a chaplain preach from the pulpit, encouraging and advising students about dating. I pass by sign-up sheets for students to pray at a local abortion clinic. I glimpse an elderly priest sitting with students at lunch, laughing and asking them about their day.

“I am the truth.” My head whips back and forth as I watch two students debate Rousseau’s ideologies regarding the role of government. I hear the patter of a chalkboard as I see a young student jump up to prove a Euclid proposition. I listen to a freshman class discuss how to logically discover the validity of an argument. I pass by a student who is intently studying his Bible, doing some extra research for his theology paper. I notice a smile on my dad’s face, and tears in my mom’s eyes, as my family listens to the president address a Thanksgiving speech to students, asking them to “rededicate yourselves to what you came here for in the first place… not the triumph of your own opinions or the esteem of tutors and students, but rather things of far greater worth and enduring importance: deeper relationships with Christ our King and the beginnings of Catholic wisdom and virtue.”

“I am the life.” I see professors, along with their spouses and children, attending Sunday Mass at the campus chapel. I smile as a young man spots me heading to a classroom building, quickly pulling open the door for me to pass underneath. I overhear conversations between students, telling each other how former alumni have gone on to become doctors, lawyers, priests, sisters, engineers, and missionaries. I talk with an upperclassman who tells me her plans to become a lawyer, and how she turned down two full-ride scholarships in order to attend her dream school. I sit in a quiet dorm room as my hostess tells me that these four years have been some of the most challenging in her life, but she wouldn’t trade them for the world. Opening up to me, she tells me that through her deep friendships and the rich spiritual life on campus, she would be answering God’s call for her to enter the religious life.

I opened my eyes as these visions finally ceased flowing. Letting out a deep breath, I finally found the words that God had been whispering in my heart. “Here, at this college, you will find me. ‘I who am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.’”

National Essay Contest Winner Seeks the ‘Way, Truth and Life’ at Catholic College

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Sarah Niblock of St. Pius X Catholic High School in Kansas City, Missouri, is the winner of the Society’s second annual Essay Scholarship Contest for Catholic college students and will receive a $5,000 scholarship toward her education at Thomas Aquinas College in Santa Paula, California.

“I finally found the words that God had been whispering in my heart. ‘Here, at this college, you will find me,’” writes Niblock in her winning essay, titled “The Way, the Truth, and the Life.”

The contest was open to high school seniors in the United States who participated in the Newman Society’s Recruit Me program and used The Newman Guide, which recommends faithful Catholic colleges, in their college search. The winning scholarship must be used for education at one of the 28 Catholic colleges and higher education programs recommended in The Newman Guide for their strong fidelity and Catholic identity.

With the innovative Recruit Me program, high school students can invite Newman Guide colleges to compete for them and provide information about their programs. Rising high school seniors who wish to enter next year’s essay contest can sign up for Recruit Me online at https://cardinalnewmansociety.org/the-newman-guide/recruit-me/.

As a junior in high school, Niblock was exploring college scholarship opportunities online when she stumbled upon Benedictine College’s release about the winner of the Newman Society’s first Essay Scholarship Contest. To be eligible for the contest the following year, Niblock signed up for the Newman Society’s Recruit Me program.

It was through the Recruit Me program that Niblock first learned about Thomas Aquinas College and was contacted by the College about its various offerings. Niblock was especially impressed with the College’s Great Books program and its Socratic, discussion-style courses. In the end, Niblock decided to attend TAC and told us that she’s “very grateful for the Newman Society’s programs!”

The topic for this year’s contest was to reflect, in 500-700 words, on the following question: “How will a faithful Catholic college education prepare you for life?”

Essays were judged by how well they demonstrated appreciation for faithful Catholic education, as well as the quality of the writing.

“Sarah Niblock impressed us with the picture she painted of a faithful Catholic college in her winning essay,” said Kelly Salomon, editor of The Newman Guide. “She shows how a strong Catholic environment can provide students with the formation they need for life.”

Niblock relates how she’s faced challenging questions from well-meaning family members and friends about the value of attending a faithful Catholic college.

After finding the answers, Niblock is eager to join a campus where she is confident she will find Jesus, who is the “Way, the Truth, and the Life.”

She describes her visit to a faithful Catholic college campus:

I watch as dozens of students appear from dorm rooms and classrooms, hurrying to Mass on a Wednesday afternoon…

…I listen to a freshman class discuss how to logically discover the validity of an argument…

…I overhear conversations between students, telling each other how former alumni have gone on to become doctors, lawyers, priests, sisters, engineers, and missionaries.

The spiritual life offerings, academic environment, and overall formation provided by a faithful Catholic college convinced Niblock of its value.

Niblock’s entire essay can be read here.

Her $5,000 scholarship is made possible thanks to the generosity of Joe and Ann Guiffre, supporters of the Newman Society and faithful Catholic education.

“We are grateful to Mr. and Mrs. Guiffre for enabling this scholarship,” said Reilly. “They understand the unique value of a truly Catholic education, and they are thrilled to help a student experience all that a Newman Guide-recommended college can provide.”

Essays were submitted from students in 40 states. Most attend Catholic schools, about 30 percent are homeschooled, and the remainder attend public schools.

Students who participated in the contest applied to every U.S. residential college that is recommended in The Newman Guide, plus Holy Apostles College and the University of Navarra in Spain.

Although there can be only one winner, many students submitted outstanding essays, including Maylee Brown of Iowa City, Iowa; Celine Gaeta of Van Nuys, California; Anna O’Leary of Fredericksburg, Texas; and Isabelle Thelen of Traverse City, Michigan. These will be published by the Newman Society on its website, NewmanSociety.org.