Mirror of Justice

A few days ago, Mark posted a call for thoughts on Catholic Social Thought and the City.  And, over the course of the last few days, this post has prompted a wide range of thoughts, questions, proposals, and - -perhaps --disagreements, about schools, parishes, cities, suburbs, and so on.  If you have not checked in here at MOJ for a few days, keep scrolling down, to get the flavor of the entire discussion.

I just got back from a lunchtime talk, by Fr. Andrew Greeley, on the Catholic school as social capital.  He hit the point pretty hard:  The parish school has been, in the United States, one of the most important social-capital institutions in our history.  When these schools close (or are taken for granted), we lose something very important to the common good, and to the faith.  I wrote, in this USA Today op-ed last year:

[U]rban Catholic schools and their teachers do heroic work in providing education, hope, safety, opportunity and values to vulnerable and marginalized children of all religions, ethnicities and backgrounds. Similarly, Catholic hospitals have long cared for underserved and disadvantaged people in both urban and rural areas, and helped to fill glaring gaps in the availability of health care. It is too easy to take for granted these and similar contributions to the common good. We should remember that, as these institutions fold, the burdens on and challenges to public ones will increase.

We might also care about the closings for slightly more abstract but no less important reasons. In a nutshell: It is important to a free society that non-government institutions thrive. Such institutions enrich and diversify what we call "civil society." They are like bridges and buffers that mediate between the individual and the state. They are the necessary infrastructure for communities and relationships in which loyalties and values are formed and passed on and where persons develop and flourish.

Catholics and non-Catholics alike can appreciate the crucial role that these increasingly vulnerable "mediating associations" play in the lives of our cities. Harvard University Professor Robert Putnam and others have emphasized the importance of "social capital," both to the health of political communities and to the development of engaged citizens. In America's cities, it has long been true that neighborhood churches and schools have provided and nurtured this social capital by serving as places where connections and bonds of trust are formed and strengthened. As Joel Kotkin writes in his recent book, The City: A Global History, healthy cities are and must be "sacred, safe and busy." If he is right, Catholic parishes, schools and hospitals help make America's cities great.

I'm sure I'm not the only MOJ blogger who has been getting loads of interesting feedback from readers.  I thought I'd pass on some of this feedback, and also some other comments.

First, here is a long post, which references our MOJ discussion, by Patrick Deneen on "Catholicism and Suburbia."  Here is a bit from that post:

[It] seems to me that Catholicism as a whole cloth may not be best expressed in either setting, though I'd give considerable preference to a rightly ordered urban setting over a suburban one. The best setting, it seems to me, is a town of a reasonable size, ranging from one that might be considered to be a small city to modest town. I have in mind Aristotle's definition of a polis as a place that is to some extent self sufficient and is of such a size that one does not need to voice of Stentor to be heard through its environs. It should be a place where one can reasonably expect to rule and be ruled in turn, that is, to learn the discipline of liberty and self-rule. It should be a place where culture, as an accumulation of habituation and practice, can be passed from one generation to the next, starting in the family but continuing and being reinforced in the community at large. It should be place where people from various classes and professions can interact, and thereby with greater ease and willingness overcome the resentments or disapproval that can form in the absence of interaction between people differently placed. It should be a place where one's work and one's contributions to the common weal can be discerned and remembered. It is a place, therefore, that allows for the creation of communio, the passing on of culture, the formation of tradition, and the continuity of memory.

The suburbs, it seems to me, were formed for reasons that permitted, nay encouraged, the avoidance and escape of all these conditions. . . .

Alan Jacobs has this post, on urbanism, over at "The American Scene."

Kevin Somok -- a former participant in Notre Dame's (wonderful) "ACE" program -- writes, in response to my statement, in an earlier post, that "the Church should be doing what it takes -- whatever it takes -- to make it really possible (and by "possible," I mean to include "possible given the special needs of many children") for all -- rich, middle-class, and poor -- urban and suburban Catholics to send their children to Catholic schools, which is where all Catholic children should be":

This seems to be still be consistent with the teaching of the Magisterium.  Perhaps, however, we ought to qualify this with something like the following:

"The Church should be doing whatever it takes to make it really possible... for all urban and suburban Catholics to send their children to schools of authentically Catholic character and academic excellence..." As you are aware, I suspect, both of these items are quite difficult for most schools
to pull off. Here's part of the problem, as I see it.

In the absence of large, vital religious communities, it's extraordinarily hard for schools to retain qualified teachers. Although I didn't believe I had a lifelong vocation to teach middle school students, if I did, it would have been very hard to stay in a Catholic school much longer, given the fact that salaries are low ($29,000 for a third year teacher with a master's degree in Austin, TX, and a ceiling not much higher than that), health care is lousy, and pensions are largely non-existent. This last item, I think is particularly detrimental to teacher retention efforts. . . .

The Church could do a much better job to help religion instructors do a better job of transmitting the Faith. Textbooks are approved by the bishops to ensure they are free of doctrinal error, but this does not not mean that they will be effective instructional materials. . . .  With over 6,000 grade schools in the U.S., it's reasonable to expect that the Church could expend the resources necessary to develop solid religion textbook series that convey the full richness of Catholic belief and practice.

In spite of the imperfections in the system, I believe Catholic schools represent a great hope for the U.S. Church. Once-a-week CCD or CEP programs seem to be almost completely ineffective at transmitting a critical mass of Catholic doctrine in spite of the valiant efforts of DREs and parish volunteers (and I'm a person who went through such a program, having been at public schools K-12). [Note:  The research clearly establishes that students who attend Catholic schools are much more likely than students who attend public schools and attend CCD to become active adult Catholics.  RG.]  Catholic school students, in spite of instruction that is less than completely effective at times, still are receiving religious instruction daily and develop the habit of praying throughout the day. . . .

I do believe that it is a grave injustice that many Catholics are unable to send their children to Catholic schools because of finances, and the Church at both parish and diocesan levels needs to rethink education as a mission and ministry of the Church. Parishioners who complain about the "parish subsidy of the school" need to be told by bishop and pastor that this is akin to complaining about the parish subsidy of a soup kitchen or food bank.  The content of this framework of conceiving education as a ministry is buried in official documents, but the average person in the pew on Sunday morning hears very little about this. . . .  [Note:  So true!  RG.]

My friend and colleague at Notre Dame, Ed Edmonds, sends this:

As a suburban dweller for most of my adult life, I have read with interest the recent MOJ material on that theme.  I find life here in the Midwest – Minneapolis, St. Paul, and South Bend -- to be different from Kenner, Louisiana and Williamsburg, Virginia.  Some of it is the urban aspect of those places, or lack thereof, and I think some of it is the dominant culture of the region.  My perspective of a city like Richmond, Virginia, is that only those with a long family history in the city will ever be part of the true inner circle.  I also think there is a real cycle-to-life aspect.  When we had young children, we had baby-sitting co-ops and pre-school co-ops that created a social network.  I have to say that [my wife] was far more involved in these activities than I was.  When they were in school or involved in sports or dance or art, the social interaction changed.  I wonder, however, if the reliance on the automobile and its particular American variation is as strong as Eduardo’s portrayal.

. . .  A new report from the United Nations notes that over one-half of the world population now lives in an urban area. See http://www.unfpa.org/swp/.  I think that this report might be worth considering as part of this conversation.

Responding to my own and Rob's earlier posts, Jon Watson writes:

. . .  It strikes me that in your discussion, you haven't mentioned what the role of a Catholic parent ought to be. In my formative Catholic times (still ongoing), my best education hasn't been through RCIA classes or even Church attendance, but through various "parental" mentors - my sponsor, my wife, good priests (where I have been truly blessed), and the Catholic authors and journals I read. How much more important then, than a Catholic school, is the Catholic parent? It strikes me that no school or parish, public or private, will compensate if the parent at home doesn't teach the essentials (and beyond) of the Faith. No parish can teach a follower of Christ as effectively as a parent - no school can educate the follower of Christ as effectively as a parent.

With that, I also think that the "butter or guns" dichotomy between a parish creating followers of Christ and educating young Catholics is a false one. The entire mission of a parish is to create and educate followers of Christ in  metanoia, a continual turning and conversion to Christ, and that mission necessarily includes education about the Faith. Therefore, I think there is room for Prof. Garnett's statement that a parish's most important role is to start Catholic schools (thus educating the community of the faithful) and Prof. Vischer's thought that it is critical to create followers of Christ (the entire Church's role), for one necessarily entails the other and the latter consumes the former.