Archbishop: Failure to Fund Catholic Schools = Communism?

For a long time now, Catholic Church leaders have been actively working for greater government funding of Catholic schools. This has mostly been avoided, with only limited funding for incidentals being achieved. Perhaps because of Bush's faith-based programs, however, the rhetoric is being ratcheted up.

Americans United reports:

Archbishop J. Michael Miller, secretary of the Vatican Congregation for Catholic Education, blasted U.S. education policy during a speech at Catholic University of America in Washington. Miller said Europeans are “absolutely amazed” by the lack of private school funding in America and said that policy puts the country “in the company of Mexico, North Korea, China and Cuba.”

It can be claimed that having a police force and laws also puts America in the company of Mexico, North Korea, China, and Cuba. That’s not an argument for why the policy is wrong. Let’s see why Miller is so fired up to have the state fund Catholic education:

Miller, a native of Canada, said Catholic schools make “enormous contributions to society” and called government funding of them “so fundamental to the life of the church that this struggle cannot be given up,” reported Catholic News Service and the far-right Catholic paper The Wanderer.

So, state funding for Catholic schools is fundamental to the life of the church. Not to the state or the nation generally, but to the Catholic church. He doesn’t want such funding because it serves the public good, but because it serves his understanding of the Catholic good. His demand is entirely selfish, self-centered, and self-righteous.

Aside from the gross immorality of the demand, it’s worth wondering why he thinks that this connection is true. I can imagine thinking that such funding is necessary if Catholic schooling is to continue (if we imagine that it’s so poor today that it cannot compete with the alternatives and therefore cannot survive on its own), but why is such funding necessary for the life of the church overall?

He said Catholic schools should be marked by “a profound Christian anthropology” and asserted that in a Catholic school the church’s theology should be “what anchors the system.” Added Miller, “Catholicism should permeate not just the class period of catechism or religious education, or the school’s pastoral activities, but the entire curriculum.”

Ah, I think I see now: state funding is necessary for the life of the Catholic church because, without the continued presence of a strong Catholic school system, there either won’t be enough Catholics in the future or, if there are, they won’t have the proper grounding in Catholic beliefs which Catholic schooling provides. So, it appears that Archbishop J. Michael Miller is ultimately seeking government aid to ensure the continuation of his brand of Catholicism in America.

Can anyone explain to me why the U.S. government should even care whether his brand of Catholicism continues, much less should get involved with funding it so that it doesn’t wither and die?

 

Read More:

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