Thanks to Vouchers

THE WASHINGTON POST, June 14 — Washington's Catholic schools — including more than a dozen elementary schools that were slated to close after decades of decline — are attracting 61% of students taking part in a new federal voucher program that gives parents the choice to enroll their children in non-public schools.

Thanks to vouchers, St. Benedict the Moor expects to reach its capacity of 200 students over the next few years even though enrollment dropped to a low of 110 just last June.

Parents of voucher students attending Catholic schools told the newspaper that they like the schools’ moral values, discipline and structure.

Source and Summit

CHRISTENDOM COLLEGE, June 16 — “The Eucharist: Source and Summit of the Life and Mission of the Church,” will be the subject of this year's annual summer institute July 16 at the Front Royal, Va., college.

Jesuit Father Mitch Pacwa will deliver the keynote address for the one-day conference. Franciscan Father Benedict Groeschel will speak on the history and theology of benediction of the Blessed Sacrament.

Dr. Timothy O'Donnell, the president of Christendom, will speak on Mary as the Mother of the Eucharist, and Father William Saunders, a pastor and a faculty member at Christendom, will consider Eucharistic miracles and their effects on the belief in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist.

Discrimination

WESTERN CATHOLIC REPORTER, June 14 — British Columbia's highest court has upheld the temporary suspension of teacher Chris Kempling for opposing homosexual “marriage.”

Kempling defended traditional marriage in 2001 in a letter to the editor of a local newspaper in which he identified himself as a member of a Christian political group, not as a teacher.

The College of Teachers suspended Kempling after finding that his letter was discriminatory against homosexuals. According to the paper for the Archdiocese of Edmonton, he may appeal the case to the national Supreme Court.

Atheist Teachers

THE TELEGRAPH, May 29 — So “desperate is the national shortage” of teachers of religion, the British government hopes to recruit faculty from among those “who have no personal faith and who know next to nothing about the Bible,” reported the daily.

Religion remains part of the public school curriculum, but the content of the classes now strays widely from Christianity.

One clergyman objected: “Christianity has shaped so much of our culture, our heritage, our literature, as well as many of our national institutions. If we do not understand Christianity we do not understand ourselves.”

Good for Business

YAHOO.COM, June 22 — “Schools with strong faith identities with strict behavioral codes are not succeeding despite their religious mission, but because of it,” concluded Naomi Schaefer Riley, author of God on the Quad: How Religious Colleges and the Missionary Generation Are Changing America.

In a column for the webite, she said enrollment has “skyrocketed” at evangelical, Jewish and Catholic colleges like Thomas Aquinas College near Los Angeles because the colleges promise intellectual rigor, a respite from the severe secularism at other private and public colleges (where enrollment is flat), and the opportunity to feel comfortable about their faith.

Also, “the skills students absorb at religious colleges might be giving them an edge in the job market,” said Riley.