A dissenting view on Catholic schools

As long as we're throwing bombs in the spirit of Christian fellowship, I'll try one of my own. I agree with Rick's non-endorsed proposition that Catholic schools are important. I do not agree that making it possible for all Catholic kids to attend Catholic schools is the most important business of the parish. Rather, I believe that the most important business of the parish is shaping Catholics to be followers of Christ. That process should not stop at high school graduation. If there was one-tenth of the emphasis placed on Christian education for adults in the average parish as there is on keeping the parish school afloat, lives would be dramatically transformed. Further, we should never mistake the true objective here (and I'm not accusing Rick of doing so): the goal is not to have all Catholic kids in Catholic schools; the goal is to facilitate every Catholic's walk with Christ. Some Catholic schools, in my limited observation, seem so market-driven that I am not altogether certain what sort of spiritual formation occurs there. If we're talking about providing kids with a deep grounding in their faith tradition, I'll take my evangelical Sunday School / youth group upbringing over what goes on in most of the parishes I've experienced, including those with schools. My kids' education in the faith has to be more than a periodic crash course in whatever sacrament is up next. I don't mean to knock Catholic schools, but sometimes I think we are so focused on institution-preservation that we can lose sight of the reasons why we have the institutions in the first place.