School choice, an important issue for Catholic families and a priority for the Church, may soon become a key issue in the presidential race.

Donald Trump has said that school choice will be a centerpiece of his platform, and his campaign this week hired Rob Goad, an advisor to Illinois Congressman Luke Messer, to develop education policy. Hillary Clinton can be expected to oppose whatever he comes up with. Although she strongly supported public charter schools in the 1990s, she appears to be backing away from that, adhering more closely to the positions of the two major teacher unions that have endorsed her.

Meanwhile, Catholic families are in the breach. Despite impassioned efforts for more than half a century to secure Catholics’ fair share of education spending, and despite strong public support, school choice programs are scattered across several states and provide insufficient help to middle-class families.

Moreover, in an age when Catholic trust of government officials has been bruised and beaten by increasing violations of religious freedom, many Catholics are rightfully nervous about school choice. Can Catholic schools ever take public aid without risking attacks on their Catholic identity?

It’s an extremely important question. Trump has touted school choice as a means of lifting up the children of low-income and minority families, but he hasn’t devoted nearly enough attention to the assault on religious freedom. And if by “school choice” he means funding public charter schools just as his opponent did, that does nothing to help families choose Catholic education and throws more money at a failing government system.

Catholics need to stand unified behind certain principles and demand that politicians and legislators support them. They include:

• Parents have a primary right and responsibility to educate their children, and therefore they must have the freedom to choose an education that teaches their faith and values without government intrusion or persecution.
• Catholic schools must have the religious freedom to teach the Catholic faith and values without government intrusion or persecution, regardless of their receipt of public funds or their participation in taxpayer-funded programs available to other private schools.
• Any public funding for education should respect the right of parents to choose the school that is best for their child, and funding should follow the child—not discriminate against religion by funding only secular, government-run schools.

But most importantly, Catholics need to stand unified in demanding faithful Catholic education from our schools, opposing any compromise of the faith for the sake of public funding or secular prestige.

The right to school choice is a clear and consistent Catholic teaching. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches, “Parents have the right to choose a school for them which corresponds to their own personal convictions. This right is fundamental” (2229).

The Second Vatican Council taught: “The public power, which has the obligation to protect and defend the rights of citizens, must see to it, in its concern for distributive justice, that public subsidies are paid out in such a way that parents are truly free to choose according to their conscience the schools they want for their children” (Gravissimum Educationis, 6).

And in 2008, Pope Benedict XVI told educators at The Catholic University of America that “everything possible must be done, in cooperation with the wider community, to ensure that [Catholic schools] are accessible to people of all social and economic strata. No child should be denied his or her right to an education in faith, which in turn nurtures the soul of a nation.”

Vouchers are the most direct means of school choice. The principle remains sound: any public funding for education should follow the child to the school of choice—Catholic or otherwise—and should not be defined as institutional aid that is subject to “strings” affecting schools. Some form of voucher is available in more than a dozen states, including Indiana, Ohio and Wisconsin.

Nevertheless, Catholics are understandably shaken by the Obama administration’s outrageous efforts to compromise our faith and values through healthcare regulations (in the HHS mandate) and education funding (by distorting Title IX regulations to demand compliance with the radical gender ideology). California recently sought to severely punish those few remaining Catholic colleges that uphold Catholic teaching on gender and marriage. For the most part, it’s student aid—not direct institutional aid—that puts Catholic schools and colleges under the thumb of secularist politicians.

So there’s due concern about government intrusion, but other forms of school choice may be safer. For instance, Oklahoma’s Education Savings Accounts are fully parent-controlled and never require a government check to be sent to a school. Many states have individual tax deductions or credits to help pay educational expenses. Some of these are refundable; in South Carolina, for example, low-income families can receive up to $10,000 per student in tax credits, including a rebate for the portion that is larger than what families owe in income taxes. Sixteen states allow tax credits for donations to private scholarship funds, which then help students attend schools of their choice.

Homeschooling, which is growing rapidly in the United States, is another form of school choice. Parents have the option, usually with minimal state regulation, to provide a faithful Catholic education at home using the curriculum of their choice (or making).

On the other hand, some forms of “school choice” are a direct threat to Catholic education. AnAmerica magazine writer recently urged dioceses to turn over Catholic schools to public school bureaucrats, making them public charter schools. That’s not saving Catholic education; that’s abandoning it. And as noted above, plans to pour money into expanding public school choices only strengthen the public school monopoly on education funding and discriminate against religious schools.

Catholics should demand school choice, because it’s our right—but we must never lose sight of our own responsibility to provide our children a Catholic education at any cost, without compromise. Whatever the circumstances in which we live, it’s necessary that we ensure the formation of mind, body, and spirit that prepares the young to serve God in this world and the next. Religious freedom is our right, and faithful Catholic education is our obligation. May God grant us both.

This article was originally published by The National Catholic Register.

In hindsight, what they did was appalling.

But when several Catholic university leaders gathered in the summer of 1967 at a remote retreat in Land O’ Lakes, Wisconsin, did they fully anticipate the consequences of their vision for “modern” Catholic education? Hopefully not.

It was 49 years ago, on July 20-23, when Notre Dame’s Father Theodore Hesburgh, C.S.C., gathered his peers to draft and sign the “Land O’ Lakes Statement,” a declaration of the independence of Catholic universities from “authority of whatever kind, lay or clerical, external to the academic community itself.”

Over the course of just a few years following the statement, most Catholic colleges and universities in America shed their legal ties to the Church and handed their institutions over to independent boards of trustees. In the quest for secular prestige and government funding, many went so far as to remove the crucifixes from their classroom walls and to represent their Catholic identity in historical terms (such as, “in the Jesuit tradition”).

The wound of secularization deepened over the next few decades: many Catholic colleges and universities weakened their core curricula in favor of the Harvard model of electives and specialization, adopted a radical notion of academic freedom, embraced relativism and political correctness, and largely abandoned the project of forming young people for Christ outside the classroom.

It wasn’t until 1990 that the “Land O’ Lakes Statement” was soundly repudiated by Saint Pope John Paul II in Ex corde Ecclesiae, the apostolic constitution for Catholic universities. Although not yet accepted in its entirety, Ex corde Ecclesiae turned the tide toward renewal of Catholic identity and gave prominence to those faithful institutions that never accepted the Land O’ Lakes mentality. In the meantime, however, Fr. Hesburgh’s declaration did much damage.

It’s for good reason, then, that the “Land O’ Lakes Statement” has become a focal point in American Church history. It’s sometimes described as an explosive, revolutionary act that changed the trajectory of Catholic higher education, which may be an exaggeration. But it certainly was a watershed moment, evidenced by the rapid changes that followed the statement. It was also the culmination of years of unrest in Catholic universities — in many respects, a moral struggle with the temptation to pride and prestige at the expense of Catholic identity.

With the “Land O’ Lakes Statement,” that struggle was momentarily lost. It represented a public, deliberate choice for opportunity over mission, resulting in a voluntary exile from the once-lush gardens of truth and wisdom that had distinguished the world’s Catholic universities.

The Allure of Prestige

For most Catholic university graduates and educators before the late 1960s, alma mater was still as much Mother Church as her academic institutions. But more than a decade before the “Land O’ Lakes Statement,” influential academics were already expressing disappointment with the public status of Catholic universities in the United States.

This was argued forcefully by Monsignor John Tracy Ellis, a Church history professor at the Catholic University of America, whose lament was published and disseminated by Fordham University:

“…in no western society is the intellectual prestige of Catholicism lower than in the country where, in such respects as wealth, numbers, and strength of organization, it is so powerful. …Admittedly, the weakest aspect of the Church in this country lies in its failure to produce national leaders and to exercise commanding influence in intellectual circles, and this at a time when the numbers of Catholics in the United States… and their material resources are incomparably superior to those of any other branch of the universal Church.”

Note that Msgr. Ellis did not claim that Catholics were intellectually lacking, but only that they lacked academic “influence” and “prestige.” The prior claim would have been astonishing, given that Ellis’ university colleagues included (until 1950) then-Bishop Fulton Sheen — who not only was known for his radio and television preaching, but also was described as a highly gifted philosopher.

The Thomas Reeves biography of the Venerable Sheen reveals a much earlier battle, in which the saintly professor testified to Catholic University’s board of trustees against attempts to make the institution a “Catholic Harvard,” with emphasis on secular prestige. At a 1935 trustees meeting, Sheen called for the “primacy of the spiritual” in Catholic education:

“The task of integrating the supernatural with the natural, of infusing human knowledge with the divine, of complementing our knowledge of things with our knowledge of God, of making all things Theocentric, is the business of a Catholic university.”

He added that the bishops’ national university:

“…is to education what the Catholic Church is to religion, namely, the leaven in the mass. The Church is not one of the sects, it is the unique life of Christ; the Catholic University is not one of the American Universities, it is their soul.”

The Deck is Stacked

It would be wrong, then, to assume that Catholic identity was suddenly under assault by the participants in the 1967 retreat at Land O’ Lakes. It had endured through many trials. The appeal for academic independence from “all authority” had perhaps found its time, when society itself seemed to have turned against tradition and values.

Two other false notions about the Land O’ Lakes meeting deserve to be corrected. For one thing, the retreat was not an isolated gathering of independent reformers; it was surprisingly “official,” one of several regional meetings around the world to help draft a statement by the Vatican-affiliated International Federation of Catholic Universities (IFCU), of which Fr. Hesburgh was then president. The final Vatican-influenced document, “The Catholic University in the Modern World,” was far more traditional in its understanding of Catholic education, and in fact it is quoted in Ex corde Ecclesiae.

Second, although the Land O’ Lakes meeting was identified as the North American regional delegation to the IFCU, it was never truly intended to represent all of the region’s Catholic colleges and universities. Subsequent histories and Notre Dame’s own description indicate that the participants were focused on large, research institutions — an odd emphasis, since none of the represented universities had truly attained that status, but perhaps they aspired to it.

Moreover, it seems the deck was stacked with Fr. Hesburgh’s allies: only 10 universities were represented, including six from the U.S.: Boston College, Catholic University of America, Fordham, Georgetown, Notre Dame and Saint Louis. (The rector of the Catholic University of America was alone in publicly criticizing the resulting statement.) Of the 26 signers, seven were from Notre Dame and its sponsoring Holy Cross Fathers, and ten were Jesuits or leaders of Jesuit institutions.

Some of the signers were especially notable: Archbishop Paul Hallinan of Atlanta, Father Theodore McCarrick (then president of the Pontifical University of Puerto Rico and later Archbishop of Washington) and Father Vincent O’Keefe, S.J. (later Vicar General of the Society of Jesus).

Also intriguing is the signature by John Cogley, a leftist scholar representing the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions. It’s not clear what he was doing at Land O’ Lakes, except that he was a celebrated intellectual in certain circles. He had been religion editor of the New York Times and a principal writer of John F. Kennedy’s 1960 speech advocating the separation of church and state. He later dissented from Humanae Vitae and became an Episcopalian.

For a Few Coins

I leave it to the reader to explore more of the statement itself, but I’ll make one more claim about the motivations behind it. Above I accused the signers of succumbing to the temptation for worldly prestige. But closely tied to secular prestige is the desire for money, which seems also to have been a related factor.

In 1987, Sister Brigid Driscoll, former president of Marymount College in New York, offered a defense of the “Land O’ Lakes” mentality:

“In the 1960s and early 1970s, most Catholic colleges severed even tenuous ties to the Church…

“We became independent and named lay trustees because of accreditation, the increased sophistication of higher education as a major enterprise and because of the demands of growth…

“Those decisions meant a windfall for the schools a few years later when the federal government offered financial aid to independent colleges…

“Any indication that these schools were under ecclesiastical authority could cast doubt on their independence and thus jeopardize that aid…”

The same year, in the New York Times (Jan. 16, 1987), Fr. Hesburgh made a similar claim:

“Catholic colleges and universities receive a large amount of financial help in different forms from the public monies of the state.

“…if there were no academic freedom and institutional autonomy for Catholic higher education, it might very well be that the [U.S. Supreme] Court would rule that public funding for Catholic institutions of higher learning is unconstitutional.”

In fact, however, the Supreme Court has ruled quite differently in support of religious institutions. Today some of the most faithful Catholic colleges like Franciscan University of Steubenville and Thomas Aquinas College participate freely in federal student aid programs, as does the “ecclesiastical” Catholic University of America.

It’s sadly true that, for the Catholic universities that embraced Land O’ Lakes, secularization has been rewarded with large endowments and state aid. But it’s simply not true that federal aid would have been unavailable to universities that maintained formal ties to the Church. Ironically, Notre Dame still is under some legal control by the Holy Cross Fathers; its students receive grants and loans, and it has received numerous federal grants from the Obama administration (albeit after giving the President an honorary degree).

For many smaller Catholic colleges, secularization has not benefited them financially. They struggle to distinguish themselves from state universities that provide the same job training at less cost.

Marymount College in New York is a case in point. Recall that Sr. Driscoll seemed proud of her institution’s choice to sever “tenuous ties to the Church,” bringing a “windfall” of taxpayer funds. The College closed its doors in 2007 for financial reasons.

This article was originally published by The National Catholic Register.

A nightmare scenario has further developed in California, threatening to severely harm Catholic colleges as legislators pursue a radical “gender ideology” and the dismantling of religious freedom.

New amendments to an anti-religious education bill working its way through the California legislature clearly impact Catholic colleges’ employment practices, effectively forcing them to drop out of the state’s financial aid programs for students.

Previous versions of Senate Bill (SB) 1146 made religious colleges, except for seminaries and similar programs, subject to the nondiscrimination clause in California’s Equity in Higher Education Act. That clause forbids discrimination against students with regard to “sexual orientation,” and its prohibition against sex discrimination has been interpreted to include self-declared “gender identity.”

The bill also punishes religious colleges that have legally obtained exemptions from the federal Title IX law, which bans sex discrimination in education but has been interpreted by the Obama administration to require accommodations for “transgender” students. It requires those colleges to publicly declare their exemption in a variety of ways to a variety of audiences, including prospective students and employees.

It is, in effect, a modern “Scarlet Letter” for faithful Christian educators.

These provisions apply only to colleges accepting state funds. But nearly all religious colleges in California participate in the Cal Grant program, which provides students up to $9,084 if they attend a private four-year college. Exclusion from the program would make attendance at a Catholic college unaffordable for many, and Catholic colleges would be at a severe disadvantage in competing for students.

All of these terrible elements remain in the new version of the bill. But according to the legal experts at Alliance Defending Freedom, recent amendments added by the state Assembly Judiciary Committee make the situation worse.

The bill now amends not only the Equity in Higher Education Act, but also the state’s Government Code 11135, which clearly concerns discrimination in employment as well as student policies. There was some ambiguity as to whether prior versions of the bill applied only to student policies, but the Government Code clearly references employment practices including hiring, firing, faculty expectations and health benefits.

This is unacceptable for a faithful Catholic institution, which must ensure that its professors uphold Catholic teaching in the classroom and by their personal example.

With regard to students, there has been some helpful clarification in the new version of the bill. A religious college is explicitly permitted to enforce moral codes, mandatory religious practices and housing policies that are applied universally without consideration of a student’s claim to gender or sexuality. Also, a religious college may refuse the use of its facilities for purposes that violate its religious mission — presumably including same-sex weddings.

However, the new bill is explicit in its requirement that religious colleges make single-sex facilities and residences available to “transgender” students, regardless of their biological sex. And if a college offers housing for married students, it must include legally married same-sex couples.

Should this bill become law, I see no option for faithful Catholic colleges but to withdraw from the Cal Grants program. The campaign to force a radical “gender ideology” and sexual immorality on religious colleges could shove them into second-class status. And the campaign likely will not end here; we can expect efforts in California and elsewhere to pass even more draconian laws against religious schools and charities.

Worse — and this is what I fear most — the persecution will tempt California’s less faithful Catholic colleges to capitulate and further erode the foundations of Catholic education.

The precedent for capitulation has already been set. Although Loyola Marymount University and Santa Clara University waged brief but noble battles to remove abortion coverage from their employee health insurance, they fell silent in the face of new state rules forcing that coverage even on religious institutions. And only Thomas Aquinas College and John Paul the Great University have been strong in opposing the Obama administration’s HHS Mandate.

The campaign to rid California of religious education must be fought vigorously. But the future looks bleak: encroachment on Catholic education at both the state and federal level may soon require faithful Catholic schools and colleges to withdraw from government aid programs.

This should be quite possible for Catholic schools, but I don’t know how many of the Catholic colleges can survive financially, unless the forced corruption of moral standards at other colleges will have the happy effect of driving donors and paying students to the few remaining bastions of moral education. How many Catholic colleges choose to compromise their Catholic beliefs rather than give up taxpayer funds is a question of great importance to Catholic families.

What they do in response to this bill, now and if it becomes law, will have lasting consequences for their institutions and for Catholic families. I believe that capitulation might give up the project of Catholic education altogether for all but a few colleges. The time is very late to oppose California’s campaign against religious education, but Catholic college leaders should be fighting it with all the effort they can muster.

This article first appeared at The National Catholic Register.