Curmudgeon presumes to instruct Holy Mother Church on Catholic schools: Part III of a series

For Part I, click here; for Part II, click here

The Catholic Church will survive all this, certainly.

We know this because we know that the Holy Spirit guides the Church... it's just that foolish humans seem to undermine the Holy Spirit at every turn.

Case in point: The Daily Herald's Eric Peterson reported yesterday that the Vatican's Dicastery for Culture and Education has rejected the last-ditch appeal from parents seeking to prevent the closure of St. Hubert's School in northwest suburban Hoffman Estates, Illinois.

Enrollment had dipped at St. Hubert's and the school's finances were precarious at best. Peterson's article noted that the pastor of the parish into which St. Hubert's was recently merged, Holy Archangels Parish, and the new parish finance council actually requested the closure, and Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich obliged. A coalition of school parents, opposed to the closure, hired a canon lawyer and appealed to the Vatican, looking to "present evidence documenting mismanagement of finances and poor decision-making by parish administrators leading to the closure request." They also hired a consultant, who came up with a plan to put the school back on a sound financial footing; according to Todd Fuerer's September 1 article on the CBS News website, the parents even came up with $282,000 to "help with operating expenses."

No, I don't know what happened to the money either.

Catholic grammar schools and high schools have been merging or closing, sometimes merging and then closing in the Chicago area, throughout my adult life. The unusual feature of the St. Hubert's case was the appeal to the Holy See. Usually, at least in my experience, Catholic school closure decisions are accepted, sometimes with sadness, sometimes with anger. When St. Thecla's School was closed (in conjunction with the merger of the parish church into two others), there was initially some hope that my own nearby parish school might gain a lot of former Thecla students. And we did get a few. But only a few. For the most part, from what I heard, most of the parents of St. Thecla's School students vowed to send their kids anywhere but another Catholic school. And I'll bet you that most of them are not contributing to the support of their merged parish church either.

St. Thecla's was not in financial distress. Though enrollment was borderline, the school was operating in the black. In that case it was the Archdiocese that coveted the prime real estate on which the school and church sat... and apparently continues to sit: Although the church building seems to have been sold (or at least rented out) to a Church-of-What's-Happening-Now sort of denomination, the school building... which was rumored to be sold to the Chicago Public Schools... seems to still be on the Cardinal's hands.

Not every school closing case is the same.

But the common element in all cases is money.

Even if there is no financial hanky panky, and even if the school does not sit on prime real estate, it costs a lot to run a Catholic school.

When I served on my parish school board, more than 30 years ago, salaries and benefits were 90% or more of our entire budget. Well, even way back when, we'd just about run out of nuns. Nuns weren't free labor, of course, but they were a lot less expensive than lay teachers. Even though lay teachers in the Chicago Catholic schools don't make nearly as much as their Chicago Public School counterparts. Long Suffering Spouse -- who began teaching at our parish school after I left the school board -- still doesn't make as much as a newly graduated CPS teacher. I am certain that salaries and benefits are easily 90% of a Catholic school's budget, even today.

When I started on the school board, the parish provided a subsidy to the parish school, to help keep tuition more manageable. One year the subsidy was on the order of $250,000. But the Archdiocese of Chicago put the kibosh on that practice. I suppose it would be uncharitable of me to suggest that the Archdiocese wanted more of that money Downtown... for itself... but, though I have labored mightily, I haven't been able to come up with a better explanation.

It also seems that the Archdiocese is -- if not actually determined to shut down Catholic schools entirely -- at best barely tolerant of their continued existence.

Where -- I sometimes wonder -- do they think the Catholics of tomorrow will come from?

Now, I suppose that the vast numbers of Muslim immigrants, in gratitude for the support and services provided by local Catholic charities, may choose to abandon Islam en masse and convert to Catholicism. A lot of the money that Catholic groups are putting into immigrant services comes from the American taxpayer, not from Catholics specifically, so that would be a total win-win for the Church: They could possibly gain huge numbers of converts while only spending OPM (Other People's Money). I suppose that could happen... but I sure wouldn't bet on it.

The Church needs Catholic schools.

I would add, as a patriot, that America needs Catholic schools: Catholic schools do a better job of educating kids than public schools -- if this isn't true everywhere in the nation, it is certainly true in our big cities. And America needs better educated citizens. Desperately.

So... my advice to the bishops is this: Recommit yourselves to Catholic education. Support it. Nuture it. Find ways not to close schools.

Also -- and I don't know if this is just a Chicago problem, or if this is nationwide -- but, in Chicago at least, stop looking at the public schools as a model to be emulated. I don't mean to be blunt about this, but (with the exception of a few selective enrollment schools) CPS sucks. We do more, with less, than public schools, and we could do better if we didn't try and ape the trends they follow. CPS should be studying our Catholic schools and trying to imitate our best practices. And, please, don't be embarrassed about teaching religion: Your future collections depend on the kids in your schools now. If you want them in the pews of your churches when they are grown, you better educate them in the Faith.

Finally, to the disappointed parents of St. Hubert's: Start your own school. The heck with the Cardinal. You obviously have resources. Use them for yourselves and your children, and I'll bet you have people lining up around the block to join you. Be unashamedly Catholic. Teach real history. Teach patriotism. Demand excellence... and maybe even a smattering of Latin and Greek. You've got a canonist on call; let the canonist guide you toward establishing an independent Catholic institution that will make you and your children proud... and which the Cardinal can't reach. Good luck.

Curmudgeon presumes to instruct Holy Mother Church on immigration: Part II of a series

For Part I, click here.

The painting is Giotto's The Flight Into Egypt.

The flight of the Holy Family to Egypt, in response to an angel's warning, saving the infant Jesus from King Herod's slaughter of all boys two-years of age or younger and born in Bethlehem, is told in the Gospel of Matthew. The story is frequently cited as an example of how Christians should respond to migrants in their midst, whether illegal immigrants, or foreigners let in by elites who claim to believe in open borders: We should be welcoming to all; after all, Jesus was Himself a (pick one or more) refugee, illegal immigrant, migrant....

Actually, the Holy Family going from Judea to Egypt would not be that much different from a modern family journeying from, say, Illinois to Iowa. Both Judea and Egypt were part of the greater Roman Empire. Judea still had some nominal independence when Jesus was born -- Herod was allowed to keep his client kingdom after Actium, even though he'd initially sided with Antony over Octavian; Herod was a pretty canny politician, but there was no question as to who was really in charge. At most, you could liken the Holy Family's journey to a jaunt from Detroit to Windsor: Until a few years ago, no passport was required, and persons could come and go across the national border freely, and as often as they wished -- like crossing from the Minnesota side of Sault Ste. Marie to the Ontario side, or going from the American to the Canadian side of Niagara Falls. Moreover, the Holy Family was not moving to Egypt; they were just visiting... until Herod's murderous purge was completed. So Mary, Joseph, and the infant Jesus were not illegal immigrants or migrants.

And, besides, elites don't really believe in open borders: They are fine with foreigners busing tables at fancy restaurants, or cutting the elites' lawns or trimming their hedges, or picking their vegetables, or cleaning the hotel rooms when the elites choose to come out of their gated compounds and travel. But, if elites believe national borders to be fluid, they are typically much less tolerant about foreigners actually living with them. Maybe as a nanny... but never as a neighbor.

There are some who would call this hypocritical. But not me. This is not hypocrisy, it is simply cheapness on their part. Proponents of open borders are cheap. They don't want to pay minimum wages to Americans, so they support the import of immigrants who will work for less... and never complain... lest someone call ICE. Big corporations like open borders, too, and for the same reasons: The presence of illegal immigrant labor holds down wages. Bernie Sanders used to complain about this all the time... though, obviously, not any more.

There are, undoubtedly, prominent Catholic clerics who believe in open borders. There are Catholic religious orders devoted to assisting immigrants. There will always be immigrants... and travelers... and refugees and it is not wrong for the Church to want to assist people in need. It may be problematic for Catholic Charities to get huge sums from the government for tending to immigrants let in without screening, without vetting, without consideration for what large numbers of immigrants will do to the costs of housing and other basic services for preexisting Americans... but the Church is responding pastorally to a problem. The problem may be caused by dubious government policies... but the wisdom or stupidity of the policies that lead to the influx of immigrants is not for the Church to judge, nor should it prevent the Church from responding in charity to the plight of the immigrants.

But does that mean that the Church, institutionally, is in favor of open borders? I understand why some might see it that way....

The Church's response to mass immigration is further complicated by the presence of so many Muslims among the immigrants admitted. It may be worse in Europe, but the exponential increase in the American Muslim population in recent years cannot be denied. Dearborn, Michigan is often cited as a leading example of this phenomenon, and areas surrounding Dallas and Fort Worth, Texas, but Muslims are becoming predominant in southwest Cook County suburbs from Bridgeview to Oak Lawn at least, and in Oak Brook and surrounding towns in the western suburbs, and in Morton Grove in the northern suburbs. I see women in hajibs daily on my walks in northwest Chicago; I see women in chadors and even niqabs in my local Costco.

On X (the website formerly known as Twitter) you will see any number of posts suggesting that today's Muslims are attempting to accomplish, through migration and demographics, the conquest of Christendom that the Arabs and, later, the Turks could not achieve by force of arms. I do not here stake out my position; you, Dear Reader, must decide for yourself if this is just a paranoid conspiracy theory or if there might be something to it.

But, seek some data from your children or your grandchildren before you arrive at your own opinion: Which of them, if any, have heard of Charles Martel and the Battle of Tours in 732? Which of them can explain the Reconquista? Can any of them tell you about how Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent was turned back from the gates of Vienna in 1529... or how, on September 12, 1683, Polish King John III Sobieski led his Winged Hussars to lift the second siege of Vienna brought by the Ottoman Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa Pasha and 90,000 to 300,000 (depending on your source) of his best friends?

If you, Dear Reader, are a Millennial or Zoomer, did you know about any of this stuff? Our educational system has been in decline for decades.

Even when I was a boy -- and that was a long time ago now -- schools did not emphasize the fact that the Crusades in the Holy Land were launched with the intention of restoring Christian rule to those areas of Asia where Christianity first took root. Granted, there were other motives for the Crusades as well... wealth and fame and fortune and a handy way of pruning the family trees of noble families who might otherwise terrorize the peasants in their own hometowns... but those were just happy side effects, not the entire raison d'être. And now...? Who is even allowed to say anything positive about the Crusades? Sports teams have had to change their names, etc.

I would not be surprised if a great many priests and bishops, and a great many laypeople who work for Holy Mother Church, especially in the area of migrant resettlement, are just as ignorant of history as most people today. I suppose that's how you can get a Muslim prayer room in the Vatican and 25 or 30 mosques in Rome. By the way, don't try looking for a church in Mecca -- there isn't one.

But the Church itself remembers the Muslim threat. There is an institutional memory that may, one day, save Christianity.

Pope Leo XIV has held a number of titles in the course of his career, both in the Augustinian order, and in the episcopacy. His first assignment as bishop was as Apostolic Administrator of the Peruvian Diocese of Chiclayo. This was in 2014. Because of an agreement between the Vatican and Peru, the future pope could not become the actual Bishop of Chiclayo until he became a Peruvian citizen, which he promptly did. In the meantime, however, Robert Prevost, as he was then known, could not function as a bishop without being given a "titular see" over which (in theory... and only in theory) he would preside. This was the Diocese of Sufar, a North African diocese overrun by Arab invaders.

Bishop Robert Barron, who may be well known to Americans because of his media presence and service on the Trump Administration's Religious Liberty Commission, is now the Bishop of Winona-Rochester in Minnesota. However, Barron began his episcopal career as an auxilliary bishop in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. That meant he had to be appointed to his own titular see, in his case, Macriana in Mauretania, another north African diocese abandoned to the onrushing Arab invaders.

We could go on... but, hopefully, you see the point already. There are more than 2,000 titular sees recognized by the Catholic Church, and nearly every bishop winds up being assigned to a titular see at some point in his life. The loss of these dioceses, mostly in Asia, including Asia Minor (or we know it today, Turkey), and North Africa, is a scar on the body of the Church. The Church knows the injuries it has suffered. Whatever soothing words its leaders may use in addressing migration generally and Muslim migration in particular, the Church cannot be blind to the institutional threat posed by uncontrolled Muslim migration.

I, Curmudgeon, just a dummy in the pews, implore my betters among the Church hierarchy: Listen to the institutional memory of the Church. Learn your history. And be guided accordingly.

You know, the other Bible story that some people throw out when people voice even the most modest reservations about Muslim population growth, is the story of the Good Samaritan. The Jews of Jesus' day despised Samaritans, but the parable leads even the most mutton-headed Pharisees to realize that the Good Samritan was a better neighbor to the wounded Jew by the side of the road than the other Jews who (for reasons 1st Century audiences would have understood as pretty sound) passed the poor man by.

The Samaritan interrupted his journey, and, from his own pocket, made arrangements to have the wounded man cared for. He promised to stop on his return journey to see if he needed to do more.

But you know what the Samritan did not do? He did not condition aid on the Jew's conversion. He accommodated to the customs of the country through which he traveled, rather than impose his customs on his neighbors. He assimilated.

Before you throw that story in someone's face who expresses concern with Muslim immigration, think about that. Please.

We are most certainly called to be good to our neighbors. But who is our neighbor? The one who wants to help, to get along, to accommodate, to assimilate? Or the one who would forcibly convert us, demand we observe their laws and customs, and abandon our own? Even the most mutton-headed Pharisee should be able to answer this one, too.

Starting a new series: Curmudgeon presumes to instruct Holy Mother Church on the proper form of the Mass

I'm not the Pope, although Pope Leo XIV is a kid from the Chicago area about my age. And a White Sox fan, just like me. We both completed our undergraduate degrees in 1977... but the similarities end there.... The Pope completed his math degree... I foundered on the shores of probability and statistics. The Pope didn't get kicked out of Altar Boys; I did. One reason -- almost certainly the primary reason -- was that I was no way going to get up for a week of 6:00 a.m. Masses... or 6:30... whatever. But, also, we both were supposed to learn some prayers in Latin in those days. No one told me that I could mumble my way through it. From what I've read, the future Leo XIV didn't need to mumble; he learned the Latin.

Anyway, bringing up Latin here is not random. It's actually foreshadowing. But, first, I have to get a couple of things out of the way for any non-Catholics who may stumble upon this page.

The picture here is Leonardo Da Vinci's The Last Supper. That's where Jesus broke bread and gave it to his disciples, telling them, "This is my body." When supper was ended, He took a cup of wine -- a chalice, we say -- and gave that to his disciples also, saying, "This is my blood." He also said, "Do this" -- reenact this distribution of bread and wine -- "in remembrance of me."

Catholics believe that, when the priest consecrates the bread and wine at Mass, reenacting that Last Supper, Jesus is actually present in the bread and wine: It is His body. It is His blood. Smart people call this the Real Presence. I don't pretend to know how this works, and I can't prove to you by logic or argument that this truly happens, but I accept it. I acknowledge it. I don't have to understand it in order to believe it.

So that's one thing. The other thing you have to understand about Catholics is Apostolic Succession. We believe Jesus gave his Apostles the power to transform ordinary bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Jesus; moreover, we believe that Jesus gave his Apostles the ability to confer this transformative power on others. Every priest ever ordained in the Catholic Church has received this miraculous ability because the bishop who ordained him received that ability from a bishop who obtained that ability from a bishop who obtained that ability... over and over again... down the centuries... but ultimately from one of the Apostles themselves.

Note that the priest's ability to perform this miracle does not depend on him being a good person. Or on the good character of the bishop who ordained him. No one -- not even my contemporary, the Pope -- will dispute that there have been some awful priests. And bishops. And a few popes, too. See, e.g., the Borgias. But, if we have to know the content of a man's heart, or the cleanliness of his conscience, before we can determine if the sacraments he performed were valid, we'd have chaos. You'd never know whether you'd been properly baptized. Was the priest even properly baptized? And, if the bishop who ordained him was a stinker, was the ordination valid? The whole chain of Apostolic Succession would collapse, irrevocably and irretrievably broken.

No, a priest who skims the collection, or takes a mistress, or even one who diddles with children, is still a priest (unless and until he is laicized -- kicked out of the priesthood). Ordination does not make a man better. If he was a jerk before ordination, he will likely still be a jerk after -- he may change after ordination -- I hope we can all improve as long as we are living -- but the improvement is probably not caused by ordination. Maybe it helped -- but there's no guarantee. Did you know that, in the Byzantine Empire, a general defeated in battle might not only lose his job, he might be ordained a priest and banished to a monastery? The sacraments this ex-general might administer, following this not-entirely-voluntary ordination, would be just as valid as those adminstered by a priest who (like Leo) felt the call to service from a very young age.

So any priest -- every priest -- in the Apostolic Succession can transform ordinary bread and wine into the actual Body and Blood of Jesus. He can bring about the Real Presence.

That, in turn, means that the lowliest priest in the poorest church in the most poverty-stricken diocese can summon the Real Presence of Jesus to the altar. Jesus is there just the same as he is in the bread and wine consecrated by the Pope, assisted by a gaggle of cardinals, in the splendor of St. Peter's in Rome. If you accept the Real Presence, then you must also accept that Jesus is not more present in a Mass at the Vatican than He is in a Mass offered in a country church in the middle of nowhere.

Now... and I think I am on very solid ground to this point... from here I presume to instruct the Church on a matter of seemingly never-ending controversy: The form of the Mass.

The Church has, down the centuries, approved many different forms of Mass -- all of them legitimate then -- sufficient to permit the priest officiating at that Mass to transform bread and wine into the Real Presence. If the form of Mass was legitimate then, even though the Church promotes and prescribes a different form now, it is legitimate still. If it is no longer legitimate, then it never was. However, the Mass in the vernacular, which the Church has made the norm since the mid-1960s, following Vatican II, is legitimate, too. How can we be sure? Because the authorities, who are authorities because of and through the Apostolic Succession, say it is legitimate.

The overwhelming consensus among the Catholic hierarchy is that the modern Mass -- the Novus Ordo -- is the form of Mass that all the Catholic faithful should attend. Some religious authorities go so far as to want to suppress the once-familiar Latin Mass -- the Traditional Latin Mass, or TLM -- despite the fact that the TLM is increasingly popular among younger Catholics. Pope Francis was clearly in sympathy with these views. A prominent Jesuit recently wrote that he "hates" the TLM.

I say this is all irrelevant and immaterial. It doesn't matter if the priest faces the congregation or the high altar only. It does not matter if the priest speaks in the language of the congregation or in Latin. The minor differences in the structure of the TLM and Novus Ordo are of no moment. Nor does it matter if the congregation sings. (Personally, I think congregational singing is a relatively harmless, but obviously Lutheran, innovation: Pope Leo, having grown up in the Chicago Archdiocese at the same time I did, can surely recall that most of the hymns in the missalettes, when these started to be published in the 1960s, were indeed written by Martin Luther. Of course, Luther was an Augustinian before he broke from the Church... but I digress.)

High churchmen have a preference for a the modern form of Mass. Some Catholics prefer a different form. It is still a matter of preference -- and, if the Pope feels closer to God when the Novus Ordo is said, that's great. Others among the faithful feel God speaks to them more clearly in the TLM. It's all window dressing -- and arguing over it detracts from the miracle that is at the core of any legitimate Mass. So my advice to Holy Mother Church, offered sincerely, is simply this: Let the faithful find God in any form of the Mass that they can. But always teach this: It is the miracle of the Eucharist that is important, not the orientation of the priest, his language, or the singing in the pews, or the incense, or any of the other myriad of details which you should stop fighting about. Immediately. Let both forms of Mass be offered freely.

Oh, my... another year has slipped by without an update

If anyone remembered I was out here, and missed me, I'd feel bad about this.

But no one does -- or should -- let's be real, here -- why should anyone keep following someone who doesn't update for a year at a time?

Of course, I didn't set out to ignore the site for a year... I, uh, fell into a health challenge... and now I'm looking at another one. And there are so many other things I'm trying to do, too.

But I am still using this site... in my real life... this has been a helpful repository for me... so I think I'd better publish this brief update while I am visiting... lest this site wither away from neglect.

Maybe I'll even come back regularly... but not just yet....