Universities team up to help Catholic schools in archdiocese
By Alan J. Borsuk
Posted: Jan. 26, 2009
The five Catholic universities and colleges in the Milwaukee Archdiocese announced Monday they are joining in an effort to boost kindergarten through twelfth-grade Catholic schools in the area.
The Greater Milwaukee Catholic Education Consortium will be "the only instance (nationwide) where all of the Catholic colleges and universities within an archdiocese have banded together to work collaboratively and cooperatively to help the local urban archdiocese," said William Henk, dean of the Marquette University College of Education.
The goal is to provide a major shot of expertise for schools, some of which are struggling. Help will be offered with educational issues, such as improving the quality of teaching, and business issues, such as financial management and recruiting.
A three-year, $600,000 grant from the Stollenwerk Family Foundation will provide key support for the effort, and the colleges and universities will contribute both financially and with their expertise to the effort, according to the announcement.
John Stollenwerk is wealthy Catholic with good intentions in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee. I'm sure he sees his sizable grant as a worth-while investment in the formation of young Catholics in southeastern Wisconsin. With all due respect to him however, this story has me frosted because I know, from first hand experience and from discussions with many friends, how destructive and deceptive so-called "Catholic education" is in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee and across the nation. Catholic schools in Milwaukee are moral traps and the sad thing is that many well-intentioned parents work extremely hard and make large sacrifices to send their children to such schools in the hope that their kids will receive a better education and sound moral formation. Meanwhile, all the cheerleaders and poobahs for mainstream Catholic schools tell us over and over again about the importance of a Catholic education. I agree with them, but the problem is that the education offered to so many young people, generation after generation in Milwaukee, is simply not truly Catholic. Let me be specific and clear: The reality of the sacramental life is given scant, if any importance, prayer life is dumbed down and Oprahfied, and default relativism hangs in the air. The result is that a true Catholic culture, once considered an essential cornerstone in Catholic institutions of learning, is conspicuously MIA.
I attended Catholic schools in Milwaukee for many years and, looking back, I can say that I never really felt the presence of a distinct Catholic identity. The trappings, to be sure, were all there but these were seen and presented as expendable accessories. We were all just going through the motions. Nothing was explained. Nothing internalized. Nothing gained. The nadir of my dabbling in Catholic "higher education" occurred at Marquette High School. I was only there for a year before enthusiastically jumping ship but even that one year was a nightmare. There wasn't a scintilla of orthodox Catholicism there. It was a bastion of relativism, immorality, heresy and liberalism. (Among the more outlandish anecdotes: theology professors telling students that they didn't need to go to confession, on why women should be priests and how we should read the account of Christ having been pierced in the side with a lance on the cross "symbolically." "It didn't really happen.") Liturgy was made into a joke, professors were colorless, uninspired vulgarians and the theology classes offered were thinly veiled indoctrination sessions in anti-Catholic, liberal drivel. Sounds bitter? Perhaps. But I believe the bitterness is understandable. My bleak assessment may in fact come across as harsh but I distinctly remember thinking back in the day, "Why on earth do they call this place 'Catholic'?'" Again, there were the requisite, lofty overtures to the "Catholic/Jesuit tradition" but these were totally vapid and superficial; in other words, lies. One must ask: What would St. Ignatius of Loyola and St. Francis Xavier have to say about this volte face within their order? When a Jesuit school like Marquette High claims to be Catholic in its marketing but is anything but Catholic in practice, it is guilty of a terrible duplicity, a sinful moral falseness and hypocrisy. I am truly pained when I think of the generations that have passed in and out of inappropriately named "Catholic" schools, my peers among them, having received putrid, erroneous doctrines, inflicting untold damage on thousands. That which should be a secure haven for young souls in search of true enlightenment, culture and time-tested insights into holiness has been surreptitiously hijacked by cretins bent on perverting the noble tradition and aim of the kind of university Cardinal Newman had in mind well over a century ago.
For this reason, discerning Catholic parents in Milwaukee have opted to home school their children or to send them to independent Catholic schools committed to authentic, unapologetic Catholic teaching. Places such as these are educational redoubts that could benefit greatly from the support of well meaning Catholics like Mr. Stollenwerk. These are the schools that are committed to passing on the religious and cultural patrimony of our ancestors. These are the schools that seek to form its students according to the timeless principles and truths of our one, holy and apostolic Catholic Church. Marquette High and other misleadingly designated "Catholic" schools that are wholeheartedly committed to the dismantling of the high edifice of Catholic tradition and heritage, brick by brick, should certainly not be receiving the pecuniary support of Catholics, no matter how good their intentions may be. The minds and souls of youth are too valuable.
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