Catholic Schools Educate Rather Than Indoctrinate

Catholic Schools Educate Rather Than Indoctrinate
By David W. Kirkpatrick (4/07)

On February 20, 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments regarding Ohio's Cleveland Scholarship and Tuition Program. The Court's decision, announced four months later, upheld the constitutionality of the law.
While this settled the main issue before the Court, one point raised in the hearing, shows that even a Supreme Court Justice can make a statement without the slightest proof. Sadly, it continues to come up and it continues to be largely unchallenged.
That occurred when Justice Sandra Day O'Connor noted that the Ohio law does not permit religious schools to favor students of their faith. Justice David H. Souter said, "What difference does that make? If they are proselytizing, why wouldn't they want anyone who comes along?"   While he did say "If," he was implying that religious schools do proselytize. Yet, as noted, he presented no evidence. And, unfortunately, his charge remained unanswered, both during the hearing and subsequently.
Since Judge Souter was one of the justices voting in the minority that the Cleveland program is unconstitutional his question at least raises the possibility that his vote might have been the result of a bias rather than constitutional law. The proponents did not need to challenge the judge directly but they should have responded in their arguments to the charge of proselytizing. But they did not.
That bias may play a more important role than the niceties of the law is indicated when Catholic schools are almost invariably the ones subjected to this charge. When did you last, or ever, hear the separation of church and state (school) directed at Baptist schools, those of other Protestant denominations, schools that are Jewish, Quaker, or Muslim, or any faith other than Catholicism?
Another telling point may be the existence of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a neutral title for a group whose purpose is to oppose public aid to students in religious schools but whose actual modus operandi seems to be most concerned with Catholic schools. A more accurate identification was used from the 1920s to the late 1940s, Protestants and Others United for Separation of Church and State. But, then, that was a time when bigotry could be a bit more blatant.
As for the charge of proselytizing, it should be noted that hundreds of thousands of students currently enrolled in Catholic schools are not Catholics. In the past century and a half since the parochial system was created, the cumulative number of such students is in the millions.
The parochial schools have never been proven to have recruited them for religious reasons, to have sought to convert them when they do attend, or to have successfully converted them with a "pervasively religious" atmosphere.
Exhibit number one: a young elementary student in Arkansas who attended a parochial school because of his mother's low regard for the local public schools. Young Bill Clinton was a Baptist then and he remains one today.
On a broader scale, a few years ago a Pittsburgh newspaper featured a story of three inner-city elementary parochial schools. Originally opened when the neighborhoods contained a white ethnic population, they were maintained as their enrollments became almost 100% black Baptist. Not only did these youngsters perform better than comparable students who remained in the Pittsburgh public schools, as is often the case, there seems not to be a single recorded instance of any of these students becoming Catholic. At least no such instance was reported. And these are not the only such schools.
If Catholic schools proselytize they obviously don't do it very well.
It should also be noted that the cost of educating students at Catholic schools exceeds the tuition charged, as is generally true of tuition charges at all levels. Thus, rather than being accused of profiteering from voucher programs, as they often are, Catholics should be praised for their willingness to subsidize the successful education of students regardless of their religious beliefs or race.
As Cardinal James Hickey of Washington, D.C. reportedly said, "We don't educate these children because they are Catholic, but because we are Catholic."
It should be intolerable to permit more children to be sacrificed on an altar of ideological bias or religious bigotry.

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"It is a very dangerous doctrine to consider the [supreme Court] judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions. It is one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy."   Thomas Jefferson p. 59, Ted Goodman, Ed., The Forbes Book of Business Quotations, NY: Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, Inc., 1997

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