4/20/2007
Faith Matters, by Bishop Alexander Sample
With this issue of The U.P. Catholic we are releasing the work of the Bishop’s Task Force on Catholic Schools in the form of a Strategic Plan that we hope will secure the future of our diocesan Catholic schools. I want to express my sincere gratitude to the members of the Task Force for the important work they have accomplished.
As you will note, the Strategic Plan addresses five areas related to our Catholic schools. I want to emphasize that the most important priority for me as bishop is the Catholic identity of our schools, as an irreplaceable means for passing on our faith to our children.
I could not in good conscience ask the faithful of the diocese to support our Catholic schools without stressing the need to safeguard and improve the faith dimension of the educational experience received in them.
That part of the Strategic Plan should come as no surprise. One of the bolder proposals of the strategic plan, however, is the expectation that all of the parishes and missions of the diocese will be asked to contribute to the support of our Catholic school system. Even parishes and missions which do not have a school will be asked to help with the financial support of our schools.
Some may very appropriately ask why this should be the case. It does require a significant shift in our thinking. We need to see the Catholic schools in our diocese as part of the mission of our diocesan Church, and not simply the mission of an individual parish that directly supports a school. This way of viewing our Catholic schools is supported very strongly by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Congregation for Catholic Education at the Vatican.
Why should we see the support of our Catholic schools as part of the mission of our whole diocesan Church? I would hope it would be because we believe in the mission of our schools to pass on the faith to our children. When all is said and done, the intense faith formation experience in a truly Catholic school can be an irreplaceable and very effective means of forming our children in the ways of the Lord, making them effective disciples of Christ and good citizens.
The fact is we support many works of the Church beyond our own parish borders. We support the work of Catholic Relief Services which aids the poor throughout the world. We support many missionary activities of the Church which affect people far from our local parish community. Some of us even support Catholic institutions outside our own diocese precisely because we believe in the mission of those institutions, even though we and our own families may not directly benefit from the good work that they do. It is my hope that we will see our own Catholic schools in the same light, even though the children of our own parish may not be able to benefit directly from the good work done in our Catholic schools.
A very legitimate question is: What about the vast majority of our children who do not have the benefit of attending a Catholic school? What are we going to do to help them receive and be formed in the rich heritage of our faith? I want to assure the faithful of the diocese that I am equally concerned about the faith formation and education of our children and young people who participate in the faith formation programs of our parishes and missions. It is to these young people that I will next direct my attention. It was actually a matter of triage that had us looking at our Catholic schools first, because of the critical financial peril that some of them are in at this time.
I will soon be charting out a new direction for the faith formation and education programs across the entire diocese. Of concern is the adequate, substantive, sequential, and systematic faith formation and education of our children and young people. But we must also not forget adult faith formation as an important priority, especially supporting and equipping parents in their primary role as the first educators of their children in the ways of the Lord. Through the Legacy of Faith, financial assistance to the parishes in implementing these new programs will be made available.
All of the above is to achieve the primary purpose of passing on the faith, the greatest legacy that we have to share with one another and to pass on to the future generations.
END.
