This past June, the Archdiocese of Indianapolis opened a huge can of worms when it asked two Catholic schools within the diocese—Cathedral High School and Brebeuf Jesuit Preparatory School—not to renew the contracts of two male teachers who had, in flagrant violation of the Church’s teachings, been married in 2017. This should have been a [...]

If the Church invites dialogue about gender ideology and homosexuality, does this signal a possible compromise of Catholic doctrine? This question lies at the heart of the controversy over the Vatican Congregation for Catholic Education’s recent document, “Male and Female He Created Them”: Towards a Path of Dialogue on the Question of Gender Theory in [...]

News of the conflict between a Jesuit high school and the midwestern archdiocese under which the school operates spread quickly last week through social media. For news outlets hungry for a story, the narrative wrote itself: a teacher at Indianapolis’s Brebeuf Jesuit Preparatory School had entered into a same-sex union, the Archdiocese demanded said teacher’s [...]

Recently, I have noticed an increasing amount of news reports challenging morality clauses in employment contracts for Catholic school teachers. While yet another example of a teacher breaking a morality clause popped up this spring, another one struck my eye in late 2018, a little closer to home. This latter one didn’t only challenge the [...]

There have been plenty of examples of our secular culture’s antagonism toward Catholic education: from the Covington School-Nick Sandmann debacle, to activism against the admissions policies of Kansas City’s Catholic schools, and to numerous lawsuits by employees fired from Catholic schools for moral indiscretions. The greatest danger in these situations is not the secularist’s desire [...]

I attended a private high school, a very prominent establishment in my home town, and one that prided itself on academic excellence and athletic accomplishments. It was a very expensive school, and my parents sacrificed a lot to send me there. Since it was and still is one of the best-known schools in the Southwest [...]

In what is becoming yet another scandal for the Catholic Church, Rhode Island’s governor, Gina Raimondo, joined a growing list of Catholic lawmakers embracing a woman’s access to late-term abortion. A graduate of Providence’s Catholic college prep school La Salle Academy, an institution that describes itself as “rich in history and grounded in the tradition of [...]

The other day Dan Levin, a reporter for The New York Times, went trawling online for stories from “survivors” of Christian schools. Word got out, people were appalled, and Levin ended up publishing a miserable and meaningless little piece, in which a couple of tributes from grateful students—see, even in the Sahara you can find an [...]

Canada has suffered an unreported revolution. In times past, revolutionaries first seized the radio stations thereby dominating the public narrative. Today, in the Age of Public Administration, they seize the faculties of education. Their “long march” through the Canadian schools has taken fifty years, but today their dominion seems unchallenged. In September, Alberta’s provincial Department [...]

At the beginning of the summer, an open letter by the heads of eight private schools in Washington D.C. appeared in the Washington Post and caused waves throughout education circles on the internet. In this letter, these modern-day educators announced that they were taking the supposedly radical step of eliminating Advanced Placement (AP) courses from [...]

While jihadists across the globe are busy slitting throats, American school children are taught that jihad is an “inner struggle” and Islam means “peace.” While Muslim rape gangs destroy the lives of teenage girls in England, American teenagers learn that Muhammad was a champion of women’s rights. And although American students are taught all the [...]

The other day we Americans were informed by National Public Radio that it was Easter Sunday, when Christians celebrate the fact that Jesus did not have to go to hell or purgatory, but rose straight into heaven. It is like saying that Christopher was named Columbus after the capital of Oklahoma, or that Joan of [...]

Regardless of whether you are a Catholic educator, a classical educator or both, standardized testing has an influence on what you do. Even if your school never mentions the SATs or ACTs in any classes, your students have to concern themselves with these tests for their collegiate aspirations. While some colleges have adopted test optional [...]

In the wake of the dreadful massacre at the high school in Florida, I asked, via social media, what I thought was a question so obvious that everyone was bound to miss it, just as you do not notice the air you breathe. It was simply this. Why is no one surprised that a deranged [...]

This fall, parents may notice something missing from the piles of paper their children bring home from school each day. Book fair flyers from the Scholastic company, the world’s largest publisher and distributer of children’s books as well as the leading operator of school-based book clubs and fairs in the United States, are no longer [...]

I was recently in a Catholic school assembly of about 6oo elementary students watching various children receive awards and recognition. After the various awards were given, a music video was shown on the screen and all the children began to sing the lyrics. It was here, watching this music video about how “I am great, [...]

Should a Catholic School admit LGBTQ students or refuse the benefit of a Catholic education to this particularly vulnerable subset of children? Such is the choice with which those responsible for Catholic education seem to be presented, and, increasingly, they will opt for the former. Apparently, this is the path chosen by Bishop John Gaydos [...]

The Diocese of Orlando recently reprimanded a sixth grade teacher at a Catholic school for an “unfortunate exhibit of disrespect.” What did he do? He provided printouts to students of St. John Bosco’s negative assessment of Islam. St. John Bosco called Islam a “monstrous mixture of Judaism, Paganism, and Christianity,” and explained that Muhammad “propagated [...]

My friend and former colleague Dr. Jared Staudt recently penned an article “How to Save the Soul of Our Catholic Schools” for Crisis Magazine. Dr. Staudt (as I’ll call him here) made a number of sober and valid points about the need to return to a truly Catholic education. Affirming his belief that “[t]he Catholic [...]