As they raise their children, the most important responsibility that our Catholic parents/guardians have is that of transmitting the Catholic Faith to them. This can be done well in settings such as the following: that of home schooling, that of providing faith formation for children who attend public schools in a parish school of religion program, or that of having their children attend a Catholic school.
During this Catholic Schools’ Week, we direct our focus upon how Catholic schools can support parents to transmit the Faith of the Church to their children in unique ways. First, Catholic schools can never take the place of parents in regard to forming children in the Faith of the Church. Parents have the primary responsibility for the religious formation of their children. The role of a Catholic school is to support parents in regard to this most important mission.
A distinctive feature of Catholic schools is the setting in which religious instruction is offered. Catholic schools remind us that Christian discipleship is a gracious Way of Life that the Lord offers us, within which religious instruction occurs.
Catholic schools seek to express and support the Catholic Christian Way of Life in a number of ways. First, each child is valued because of Whose we are. We all have infinite worth because we’ve been created by God and are redeemed by the Life, Death and Resurrection of our Lord, Jesus Christ. Oftentimes in our culture, persons are valued on the basis of our gifts and on our perceived “usefulness.” In our Catholic schools, all are called and invited to discover, to develop and to use the gifts that have been entrusted to us as a response to being loved and not as a way of gaining love. Hopefully, our Catholic schools offer the kind of environment that motivates each student to do the best that she/he can do as an expression of that person’s love for the Lord.
This leads to another distinctive way in which Catholic schools can and do support Christian discipleship, namely in promoting what it means to be successful from the Christian perspective. In our culture, success is often measured on an individualistic basis. Catholic schools promote a spirit of connectedness, a disposition that hopefully characterizes the life style of all Christians. In this setting, it is important that each person works hard to discover and to develop her/his skills and abilities. At the same time, our Faith calls us to support one another on our common journey in this world.
Catholic schools help children to appreciate that the goal of living is to find the Lord’s rightful place for ourselves in this world and to help those with whom we associate every day to find the Lord’s rightful place for themselves in the world. In short, Catholic schools highlight the truth that we need one another to get to where the Lord wants us to be.
Catholic schools can revolutionize what it means to be competitive. At the top, as the goal of all human aspirations, there is room for all persons. Catholic schools offer a unique environment for students to support one another, in fact even to try to outdo one another in enabling each to find the Lord’s rightful place for that person in this world and in the life of the world to come.
St. Mary’s School and all Catholic schools welcome and are willing to work with parents who want the Catholic school to support them in the most awesome mission of transmitting the Church’s Faith to their children.
Sincerely yours in Christ,
Fr. Nelson Beaver – Pastor