The "Catholic" in Catholic High Schools

The summer of my first year as headmaster of Pope John Paul II High School, I wrote a letter to parents, introducing myself, and attached a simple card, asking parents to tell me what was best about our school in their eyes, and also, their top concern. When the results came back, the #1 area of concern was “We’re not Catholic enough.” The #2 concern? “We’re ­too Catholic.”

Those results, of course, reflect a polarization in our contemporary Church of what it means to be “Catholic,” ranging from those who believe we should be hosting daily Marian devotions, to those who are more interested in social justice initiatives, to Catholics who don’t really care deeply either way. The results also reflected the estrangement of our non-Catholic families (40% of our school). How then, do we Catholic high school principals navigate these divides?

I think there are several wrong approaches.

The first wrong approach is to steer the school to a “lowest common denominator” Catholicism that emphasizes its “Christianity,” while de-emphasizing its more distinctively “Catholic” elements: Less frequent masses, less Marian devotions, less emphasis on the liturgical season and celebrations of that season, a singular emphasis on Scripture vs. a broader inclusion of the writings of the saints, popes, or doctors of the Church.  The problem with this approach is that it reduces Catholicism to a banal, uninteresting faith that very few students find attractive. It’s the weirdly odd people, celebrations and liturgical practices that give Catholicism so much flavor, so much “style,” and makes the faith memorable, distinctive and appealing to our students. 

When I came to JPII, for example, we had an Ash Wednesday mass, but no Mardi Gras celebration. Growing up in Mobile, Al (site of the first Mardi Gras celebrations--New Orleans take note), this was unacceptable to me, so now, as a small thing, students know that at some point during Fat Tuesday, I will come to their classrooms with bags of candy and throw candy at them. Lest students think our namesake Pope John Paul II was all work and no fun, we acquired the pope’s ski jacket as a gift from the Vatican, and put up a display in our hallway, emphasizing that JPII was not only a pope, but a skier, kayaker, poet, soccer player, linguist, and playwright. The ancient Catholic practice of veneration of relics supports this. Our  six “Houses,” the very framework of our students’ social life, are named after six popes, and once/year, the lives of each pope is celebrated, with students in those houses able to take a “dress down” day.  We built an outdoor “Stations of the Cross” path in adjacent woods, encouraging our students to pray the “Via Crucis.” 

I believe one of the real problems for our Church in the intermediate aftermath of Vatican II was that many Catholics became embarrassed by our more unusual celebrations and moved away from them, unwittingly reducing our faith to something that was trite and boring. We should do the opposite in our schools!

The second wrong approach, in my opinion, is to attempt to walk a middle path between liberal and conservative Catholicism and keep careful “score” that our schools are not veering off into either direction. I believe this is wrong-headed in that is continues to measure our Catholicism with the wrong metric.  “Liberal” and “Conservative” are political labels that carry a lot of baggage, and if that is the lens through which we allow ourselves to be understood, we’re likely to carry those bags with us and encourage those polarities to fester.  Instead, “orthodoxy” should be that lens, and that means, I think, embracing the FULL tradition and history of liturgical practices, past and present. 

Many Catholics have far too narrow a vision of their faith, often a function of their preference, upbringing and sensibilities. But one of the beauties of Catholicism is its all-inclusiveness of a variety of traditions, and we should be open to all of them! So, for example, during our weekly Masses, we want to expose kids not only to contemporary praise worship, but also to the ancient songs, chants and hymns of our tradition. The way we do this is alternate music groups every other Mass, with our choral program leading one week, singing the more traditional hymns, and a student led folk group leading us the next week, singing more contemporary music. We once hosted a Tridentine Mass for our student body, but we’ve also hosted a youth rally which culminated in a Christian rock musician, Matt Maher, leading the music for mass--two entirely different experiences!  We’ll do Eucharistic adoration once or twice a year, but we also have a strong service requirement, where kids are asked to work with the under-privileged. We frequently recite the Our Father and Hail Mary as part of our common life together, but we also encourage students to pray contemporaneously.  Quotes from scripture, the saints, various popes, decorate our hallways. We’re not trying to "balance" the various polarities of our faith as if they're in competition with each other. We’re doing these things in faithfulness to the "both-and-ness" of our wonderfully diverse tradition, hoping that students see and experience the fullness of what it means to be Catholic. 

I think, too, we need to be much more imaginative and bold in defining the mission of our schools and discussing this mission with others. John Paul II, Benedict and Francis have each articulated the faith in powerful, evangelical ways that are deeply appealing to youth and to their parents, regardless of where they stand on the theological spectrum and regardless of church affiliation. Here are three examples:

JPII once told youth:  “It is Jesus who stirs in you the desire to do something great with your lives, the will to follow an ideal, the refusal to allow yourselves to be ground down by mediocrity, the courage to commit yourselves humbly and patiently to improving yourselves and society, making the world more human and more fraternal.”

Benedict once said: “Young people, the world promises you comfort, but you were not made for comfort.  You were made for greatness!”

And Francis, recently, speaking to young people about marriage, had this to say: "Today, there are those who say that marriage is out of fashion... They say that it is not worth making a life-long commitment, making a definitive decision, ‘for ever’, because we do not know what tomorrow will bring. I ask you, instead, to be revolutionaries, I ask you to swim against the tide; yes, I am asking you to rebel against this culture that sees everything as temporary and that ultimately believes you are incapable of responsibility, that believes you are incapable of true love."

This way of talking about the Catholic faith, challenging young people to be cultural revolutionaries, to strive for holiness and seek greatness for their lives, cuts across religious divides and digs down to the heart of the gospel message. The gospels have the power to change lives! When we proclaim them boldly and creatively, we too, speak powerfully of our Catholic mission.

May we have the vision and confidence to so lead our schools!