Dear St. Rita Families,

This week we are celebrating Catholic Schools Week in the Diocese, and it is an opportunity for us to remember what schools are about and for. A clear and regular emphasis at St. Rita School and at any school that understands its mission properly is that parents are the primary educators of their children. The reasons for this emphasis are several, and they include the fact that sending a child to school (no matter how good!) does not mitigate or remove the parents’ responsibility to teach and educate their children, especially in matters of virtue and religion. On the flip side, it is also the case that a school must respect the teaching authority of the parents. In a world of mandatory education for children, this latter point becomes quite complicated, unless both parents and educators are subject to an authority greater than themselves.

It is fitting then, that this Sunday’s Gospel (Ordinary Form) features the astonishment of the multitudes in the face of precisely Our Lord’s teaching. They exclaim, “What is this? A new teaching with authority!” (Mk 1:27). Our Lord establishes Himself as the authority over all evil, simply by His word casting out demons in this same Gospel. Demons are those entities whose fear tactics Hollywood loves to emulate in movies, playing on the lie that evil is an uncontrollable force over which we’re not really sure if anyone has authority. The Lord quashes that lie with a simple word. He responds to the evil spirit by rebuking it, presumably with anger. This is the basic meaning of righteous anger, to quash and expel quickly an evil for the sake of the one who needs freedom – in contrast to losing one’s peace over an offense and committing a second offense in response. The former brings peace, the latter discord, because one frees the oppressed person, and the other destroys him. 

You see, education is, among other things, a tool that the state can use to achieve its goals in the future generations, hopefully to better the lives of its citizens. (Hence, it is the subject of much political and social debate.) What education seems to be producing, however, is generations of people who are interested not in tweaking and healing what came before, but in destroying it (cancel culture, e.g.). Many people in today’s younger generations heavily question the choices made by their parents and grandparents (e.g. OK, Boomer). And while this discontent happens on some level in every age, it is reaching a fever pitch now, something that will lead to discord and not to peace.

So where did they learn how to respond not in righteous, but in unrighteous anger? From their forebears, of course! The project of removing every vestige of Christianity from society isn’t new, and it is ongoing. That project is necessarily destructive, because it is only Christ who casts out demons by His authoritative word (OK, He Himself is the Authoritative Word). We can and should acknowledge that Christian society had its particular – and significant – problems (perhaps we should call them demons). But for generations now, it seems that people have been trying to destroy the demoniac rather than cast out the demons. Unfortunately, such tactics only result in creating space for the demons of the present age on top of those of the previous age.  

It is no secret that public education has been co-opted by destructive forces in government, teaching kids to hide “their true identity” from their parents, imposing values that are directly contrary to much of what their parents want to teach them at home. Parents feel helpless, with government and teachers pitting their kids against them. That kind of education is not about healing what came before, but about destroying it. Unfortunately, it will not just destroy that which came before, but everything that comes after as well. Further, too often even Catholic (in name only) education has been a part of this destructive trend. Catholic higher education in particular has caved to the destructive ideologies of today’s world, but many of the elementary, middle, and high schools paved the way, serving to inoculate our children with a dead version of the Catholic faith, as if Christ’s Church were a virus to be eradicated. 

For this reason, St. Rita School (and several others in their own way) places a particular emphasis on inculcating the Faith in our students. We recognize that the fundamental truth to which both parents and educators must be subject if education is going to be more than just a means of creating more cogs in the wheel of modern society is Our Lord’s supreme authority. We are wholly given over to Our Lord Jesus Christ as the Way, the Truth, and the Life. By His authority, not only is evil cast out, but all things were made, and our students get to study and learn about those things. We want them to find the goodness not just in creation, however, but also in the Creator. We want our students to be prepared not to destroy what came before, but to heal it. You, their parents, are a fundamental and extremely important part of that preparation. Without your support, we cannot accomplish our mission. And so I thank you for your constant support of our school and truly Catholic education, but even moreso for your unwavering commitment to Christ and His Church. 

In Christ,
Fr. Christensen