"How to Strengthen Catholic Identity in Catholic Schools" by Bishop Robert Barron and Dr. Matthew Petrusek at Word on Fire
Jul 17, 2025
"If Catholic schools are already Catholic, why would they need to become more so? The unfortunate reality, however, is that some Catholic educational institutions are not living up to their name. As some frustrated parents, priests, and even teachers who are afraid of losing their jobs for being “too Catholic” around their colleagues know well, some schools actively promote values that contradict Church teachings. What has led to Catholic education in some instances to deviate from its mission? And what, more importantly, can we do about it?"
How to Strengthen Catholic Identity in Catholic Schools by Bishop Robert Barron and Dr. Matthew Petrusek at Word on Fire. If Catholic schools are already Catholic, why would they need to become more so? The unfortunate reality, however, is that some Catholic educational institutions are not living up to their name. As some frustrated parents, priests, and even teachers who are afraid of losing their jobs for being “too Catholic” around their colleagues know well, some schools actively promote values that contradict Church teachings. What has led to Catholic education in some instances to deviate from its mission? And what, more importantly, can we do about it? Read
Why Government Cannot Educate by Joseph Woodard at The Imaginative Conservative. Saying that Government cannot educate is not a partisan political position, but a simple statement of fact: government cannot educate, because government cannot love. Even more bluntly, government should not even try to run institutions of love, because, slowly but surely, its administrators inevitably pervert them in their desire for security or lust for power. All this may not be immediately obvious, so we’ll lay out the facts, one step at a time. First, what is government? Then, what is real or liberal education. Third, why can’t government do it? Read
Parental Rights in Education Vindicated, Again by Dr. Kody W. Cooper at Word on Fire. In his encyclical Divini Illius Magistri—“Of the Divine Master”—Pope Pius XI reflected on the family’s God-given authority in education. The Holy Father defended the natural right of parents in education by adverting to first principles: The family holds directly from the Creator the mission and hence the right to educate the offspring, a right inalienable because inseparably joined to the strict obligation, a right anterior to any right whatever of civil society and of the State, and therefore inviolable on the part of any power on earth. Read
Should the Catholic Church Embrace Homeschooling? by J.C. Miller at Crisis Magazine. Writing earlier this year in the Wall Street Journal, Fr. Robert Sirico wrote about how homeschooling saved a dying church (and school), with a hybrid program (two days a week in a classroom) that brought more people into the school and the parish. I’ve had a child enrolled in that specific program, and it works well. My diocese has noticed and even included in its five-year plan that the diocese would: “Consider part-time Catholic school options to include more homeschooled students and families during portions of the school day.” Read
How One Catholic School Created a Folk Festival by Andrew Tolkmith at Dappled Things. When Canongate Catholic High School was founded in 2013 in the mountains of North Carolina, the Stillwater Hobos had just finished recording their full-length album, My Love, She’s in America… The short-lived band that revolutionized the Catholic musical imagination with a vision marked by folk songs left a permanent mark on the school, as one of their members joined as a teacher in Canongate’s first years, teaching literature and Latin and, yes, the songbook of tradition. Read
Teaching the Virtues review by Sean C. Hadley at ClassicalEd Review. Teaching the Virtues by David Hein functions as an introduction to the premise that virtues can be taught (though Hein adds some caveats) and that everyone ought to take this idea seriously. The book is broken up into two parts, one about schools specifically and the other about the virtues themselves. The parts overlap at points so that Hein is never in danger of abandoning one side of the debate to the detriment of the other. Read
Preserving Our Life Together: 5 Habits of Remembrance by Andrew J. Zwerneman at Cana Academy. Life under history requires great effort. Without the habits of remembering who we are, how we got to where we are today, and what personal sacrifice is required in order to maintain the social order, things slide to disorder. The habits of mind that we must exercise include: narrative knowledge, observation, and judgment. Additionally, there are habits of vision: seeing with eyes that see, as in faith and hope. Finally, there are habits we must exercise to take up our responsibility for maintaining our life together. In this post, I describe five of these maintenance habits. Read
How the Parents of St. Thérèse Can Help You Raise Children for Heaven by Thomas Griffin at National Catholic Register. Parenting advice is offered by many. You can find no lack of resources online or in books that claim to know the secret for how to raise your children best. For Catholics, we are blessed to have the witness of the saints to guide us. They shine a light on how we are called to live, and they reveal what happens to those around us when we make Jesus the center of our lives. Read
Family, Faith, and Freedom: Reclaiming the Lost Joys of an American Summer by Erika Ahern at Refine. Summer used to be more than a season—it was a shared cultural experience. American summer traditions weren’t just a pastime, but a way of life. Families slowed down, kids played freely, and faith and freedom weren’t just slogans, but living values. But in today’s fast-paced, over-programmed, and screen-saturated culture, many of these sacred rhythms have been lost. Read
A Practical Guide to Freeing Kids and Teens from Smartphones by R. R. Reno at First Things. In this episode, Clare Morell joins R. R. Reno in the First Things office to talk about her recent book, The Tech Exit: A Practical Guide to Freeing Kids and Teens from Smartphones. Listen
The STEM Education Bubble Has Burst by Rinzen Widjaja at RealClear Education. STEM disciplines have long been regarded as being more technical, quantitative, and rigorous than other fields like business and the social sciences. Investments in these degrees have produced so much hype that it has tightened the job market, leaving many recent grads unemployed and in debt. Entrepreneur magazine even reports in 2025 that the 3.2% unemployment rate among philosophy majors is around half that of computer science, which has a rate of 6.1%. Read
Supreme Court Allows Trump to Lay Off Nearly 1,400 Education Department Employees by Mark Sherman at The Associated Press. The Supreme Court is allowing President Donald Trump to put his plan to dismantle the Education Department back on track — and to go through with laying off nearly 1,400 employees. With the three liberal justices in dissent, the court on Monday paused an order from U.S. District Judge Myong Joun in Boston, who issued a preliminary injunction reversing the layoffs and calling into question the broader plan. The layoffs “will likely cripple the department,” Joun wrote. A federal appeals court refused to put the order on hold while the administration appealed. Read
Throwback Thursday
Want Stronger Catholics? Teach Poetry by Matthew Anderson at Catholic Education Resource Center on October 9, 2021. Why is there such a great disconnect among so many modern Catholics? And why can poetry help? Put simply: it is because poetry introduces students to a symbolic world that is a crucial precondition for belief in the sacraments. Oftentimes today we are trying to teach the faith to young people who possess a modern, relativistic worldview, but such an outlook undermines at its root the intrinsic nature of key elements of Catholicism, such as the sacraments. Read