{"id":3725,"date":"2007-08-07T13:25:44","date_gmt":"2007-08-07T18:25:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/2007\/08\/07\/wanting-catholics-at-a-catholic-school\/"},"modified":"2007-08-07T13:25:44","modified_gmt":"2007-08-07T18:25:44","slug":"wanting-catholics-at-a-catholic-school","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/2007\/08\/wanting-catholics-at-a-catholic-school\/","title":{"rendered":"Wanting Catholics at a Catholic school?"},"content":{"rendered":"

CARDINAL George Pell is among a group of Catholic leaders calling on the church’s schools to maximise their enrolment of Catholic children.<\/p>\n

According to News Limited today, Dr Pell and his group want preference given to children from a school’s parish, followed by other Catholics, then other Christians and then finally to students with other religions.<\/p>\n

The schools have been urged, in an edict reportedly signed by Dr Pell, to “re-examine how they might maximise enrolment of Catholic students”.<\/p>\n

They have also been urged to increase the proportion of school staff who are “practising and knowledgeable Catholics”.<\/p>\n

Catholic families will also be urged to “maximise their participation”.<\/p>\n

The letter, with Dr Pell as head signatory, said: “Half the students of Catholic families are enrolled in state schools and a growing proportion go to non-Catholic independent schools.<\/p>\n

“Another enrolment trend of particular concern has been the decline in representation in our schools of students from both poorer and wealthier families.”
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

I think that you could write a program to determine the bias in a news story based on the words used. Certainly the word "edict" would be a highly weighted word in this context. A document you like is called a letter or instruction, one you don’t like is called an edict.<\/p>\n

I wonder how long it will take before some Australian columnist links this to the new CDF document as another attack on non-Catholics. What the Cardinal is requesting is of course common sense and when you get a high index on non-Catholic students and teachers you are usually going to end up with a non-Catholic school or one with a "Catholic Identity" but hardly any actual Catholic content.<\/p>\n

A writer in another column that gives two views on this writes<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Catholic schools exist not only because of a percentage of government funding, but also because of sacrifices and donations made by previous generations of Catholics, many working class.<\/p>\n

The more non-Catholics they take, the more Catholic schools risk weakening the importance of the Church’s teachings and philosophy alongside academia.<\/p>\n

While the opposing writer says:<\/p>\n

But at the risk of getting into a biblical slanging match with any member of the clergy, there seems to be a pretty convincing argument that Jesus wouldn’t be falling over Himself to endorse the Church’s present line of thinking.<\/p>\n

In the Gospel of St Mark, His views on the issue seem pretty unequivocal: "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners," he said.<\/p>\n

No one is suggesting Catholic children shouldn’t be brought up in the faith, or that Catholic parents shouldn’t enrol their kids in schools catering to their beliefs.<\/p>\n

But to encourage the inclusion of some children more than others seems to fly in the face of everything I was taught at school.<\/p>\n

I was not surprised to see her ending line to be "As a product of the Catholic education system, I find that pretty extraordinary." I find her scriptural argument to be rather weak since as every Catholic parent knows their children are sinners also. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CARDINAL George Pell is among a group of Catholic leaders calling on the church’s schools to maximise their enrolment of Catholic children. According to News Limited today, Dr Pell and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-punditry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3725"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3725\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}