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In an effort reminiscent of ancient Israelites who took up the traditions and icons of their neighbors every time they were afraid God wouldn’t or couldn’t help them with their troubles, New York and Washington DC Catholic dioceses have given up their right and duty to train up children in the way they should be – in return for public funding. DC Archbishop Donald W. Wuerl, converted seven of the District’s 28 Catholic schools into secular charter schools in 2008. Now, a Catholic archdiocese in Indiana plans to change its parochial schools into public charter schools this next year.
In order to do this, the diocese must agree not to teach the kids anything at all about God, and remove every decoration or figure that is associated with Christianity. In Indiana, this includes removing large limestone crosses that are part of the outside wall of the buildings.
Now, I’m not big on statues and icons. However, I am even less big on turning ones back on what one believes for the sake of a monetary goal.
I understand from reports that the Diocese believes this is necessary in order that the schools stay open in needy communities. In other words, the Diocese has decided that a neighborhood academic experience is more important to the well-being of these children and communities than knowledge of Jesus Christ. Does this Diocese not believe in the full teaching of the Gospel? If not, perhaps they are correct that they as a team should not be teaching it.
This isn’t about Catholic bashing. This is about one group of Christian leaders making a very wrong decision. I was raised in Catholic schools. My aunt, a Franciscan Nun, taught in a Catholic high school most of her life. We, as Christians, have been instructed to teach children the Good News. Catholic schools, I had thought, were founded with the express purpose of doing just that.
I can’t believe any truly believing Christian would agree to take a prayerful school and turn it secular for the purpose of collecting government money.
“Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it.” Proverbs 22:6
“Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.” Deuteronomy 6:7
“Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.” Ephesians 6:4
In the first place, the ‘government’ can’t afford to be funding everything. Its going bankrupt, remember? As citizens, we need to be finding creative ways to make ends meet without depending on the government.
Secondly, there are wonderfully creative ways to teach children with little money. Ask any homeschooling mother. I also remember my mom telling me the story of her first year at a newly built Catholic school in the 1940′s. The classrooms hadn’t been completed yet, so they gathered in the cafeteria and separated the classes by hanging blankets. She remembered that year fondly.
In other words, get over the idea that everything that you think is needed is really needed.
But thirdly, and most importantly, God does tremendous things through prayer. Have none of these people ever heard of George Mueller? For those that don’t know, he fed hundreds of orphans through the years totally through faith and prayer. Some of the ways the Lord answered and provided were truly miraculous. There are many other examples of brave prayer warriors through out history. What Mother Theresa was able to do through faith and determination was amazing. Leaving God out of her ministry was not an option.
Haven’t any of these people read the Bible? Don’t think prayer can do the job? Believers know that God answers prayer. Sure, sometimes the answer is “no.” But if it is, then praise God for putting a hold on something that might not have been the best idea in the first place. He sees things that we don’t and has the ultimate wisdom as to how to accomplish needed goals - including the best way to teach children. But other times, when we are headed in the right direction, the answer is a miraculously yes.
Our family has had several experiences. Fifteen years ago, while my husband was driving across country, I waited at home and prayed. He was on his way to pick up four of his relatives’ children that were suddenly and unexpectedly in need a home. I prayed about how we would feed them when we could barely feed ourselves. But it was an emergency and my husband knew he had no other choice but to jump in the car and go. The next day, straight out of a George Mueller play book, a friend, unaware my husband had left to pick up children, showed up with a car full of supplies, including a summer’s worth of blue diapers. I didn’t have a small boy in my home that needed them…but my husband would be bringing an 18-month old boy home in a couple days. They were just the right size.
Apparently, a grocery store Semi had overturned at the corner in front of our friends house. The driver had told him to go ahead and gather the products strewn all over highway.
That event has always amazed me and I love to tell the story. Did I mention that the diapers were even blue, not pink? (this was during that brief period that they were selling them that way) Amazing - God having fun with even the smallest details.
Five years later, we were praying that if the Lord wanted our family to help at a Children’s home in Juarez, Mexico, he would provide a comfortable way for my husband, who was dying of bone cancer, to travel. That little boy with the blue diapers, now six, prayed that the Lord would give us an RV. After the prayer, I gently told him that we could pray for help, but it’s not right to ask for things so bluntly. A week later, a woman called and asked if she could give us a huge, 10 bunk RV. Needless to say, we went on that Children’s home in Mexico.
Others might doubt God’s providence, but those experiences, as well as a few others, spoke quite loudly to me.
That isn’t to say that I’ve never forgotten, gotten scared, and gone ahead without prayer – making a bad decision that I later regretted. But…at the very least, I would be terrified to take a step such as the one these dioceses are making – To decide government funding is a priority over teaching Jesus Christ to the children. I would be terrified as to the consequences that the leadership is bringing on themselves.
Even the thought of taking such a step is stomach turning. I pray that the Indiana diocese prayerfully rethinks turning its back on the spiritual needs these children have. One would hope that the faithful of the church in Indianapolis will not follow in the ways of New York and DC, but would instead pray for God’s providence, leaning on the Lord rather than turning their back on Jesus and depending on the government.
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Why did Liberal ‘Christians’ attack Tea Party Christians?
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I have heard that the Obama Administration has recently back-tracked on the plan to label Conservative Christians as “non” Christians….but that doesn’t make what’s already been said go away. Misconceptions and, well, slander should still be addressed.
So…in the statements below, Mr. Jim Wallis appears to be judgemental, angry, intolerant, and impatient with fellow Christians …and doesn’t appear to even like Americans of light skin tone. But this is who our President asks to speak into the Spiritual lives of Americans… so he must have a warm heart and ability to love his brothers and sisters in the Lord, even if they disagree with him.
As Christians, would Jim Wallis and David Gushee be willing to sit down and just listen to a few of their conservative Brothers & Sisters in Christ – just sit down, with love, patience, respect and tolerance, and listen, with a heart open to understanding and without trying to correct or instruct? Just as they would with Wallis’ friend, the Imam in charge of the planned Mosque near Ground Zero?
World News Daily: ‘Christians’ set to attack tea partiers
Author warns of next assault after failed attempt to define group as racist
“With recent attempts to portray tea-party members as racist backfiring, a renewed attack is being launched, warns the author of “The Tea Party Manifesto,” and this one is from progressive Christians who claim the movement lacks Christlike charity.
Progressive Christians with ties to the Obama administration – whose policies of government expansion over private-sector industries gave rise, in part, to the tea-party groups – characterized the movement as unbiblical.
In one of his regular columns on the Huffington Post, Gushee wrote,
Gushee’s biography boasts of being “contacted by candidate Barack Obama and remain(ing) in conversation with the religious-affairs office of the Obama administration.”
The Rev. Jim Wallis, founder of the Washington-based social-justice group Sojourners and a key member of Obama’s faith council, is “even blunter in his assessment of the tea party’s approach to giving,” reports Religion News Service.
How “Christian virtue” and “the common good” jibe with Wallis’ own documented radical associations and stances, including support of violent extremists, oppressive regimes and anti-American sentiment, warrants examination, critics say.
While the Associated Press described him as a “politically progressive evangelical,” Wallis reportedly served as Michigan leader of the Students for a Democratic Society – out of which Bill Ayers’ domestic-terrorist group the Weather Underground sprouted.
Wallis’ magazine Sojourners, reports WND, “actively lobbied for communist regimes that seized power in Latin America in the late 1970s.” His 1976 book “Agenda of Biblical People” called America “the great power, the great seducer, the great captor and destroyer of human life, the great master of humanity and history in its totalitarian claims and designs.”
Wallis got involved early in the racism offensive against the tea party.
Farah, who wrote a book as far back as 2003 predicting the circumstances that would foster the tea-party movement, advises resisting attempts to narrow its scope to tax reform and fiscal issues. Subtitled “A Vision for an American Rebirth,” Farah’s “The Tea Party Manifesto” argues for following the Framers’ example in defining the movement’s spiritual core.
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