Opinion
Featured Image
 Shutterstock

The author of the following opinion piece is known to LifeSiteNews, but chose to remain anonymous.

February 11, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) — Our country is in dire straits and I deem it the direct fault of the weak-kneed bishops, priests, principals, and others in administrative power at Catholic schools, universities, dioceses, and parishes. For many years, due to the mass exodus of habited religious and general corruption of Catholic orthodoxy, our country’s Catholic schools have led the nation in a precipitous moral decline.

What can save our Catholic schools in these United States of America from complete destruction? While some have noted a recent spike in enrollment in some Catholic primary and secondary schools due to the purported pandemic and assured fear-demic that has paralyzed government school districts into remote non-education across the nation, Catholic schools will go extinct very soon if one virtue is not inculcated and propagated in their classrooms. That virtue is unadulterated courageous zeal for souls.

A recent event in my classroom illustrates what is needed — and was one of the highlights in my educational career of some 20 years. At our decidedly conservative school whose name will have to go unmentioned for the author has mouths to feed, we have recently celebrated Catholic Schools Week, an annual excuse to have “happy fun time” while supposedly championing authentic Catholic Education.

This past Wednesday was “Patriotic Day,” and I immediately thought, “Sweet, I can wear my Trump shirt one time.” However, the prior day, my class and I received the pusillanimous and politically-correct announcement that partisan paraphernalia would be banned. The students probably saw the utter disbelief and negative body language consume me as the man who moved millions of the indifferent to become patriots was now canceled on “Patriotic Day,” even after his term of office expired.

Why was he canceled? He was canceled at my school for the exact reason why the Church is in the position of scandal it has been in since the summer of shame, or since 2002, or earlier: The hierarchy and administration of churches and schools are petrified of losing the monetary support of some left-ward leaning stakeholders.

In the case of a school, a few big-donor parents who watch CNN and have caved into all the modernist lies of the church of nice and the local health department, might just leave. God forbid if we lose them and their money. The Church has been in this damage control, protect-the-assets mindset for much too long and I believe that the next generation of young people, my students for example, can create a blockade of this cesspool of greedy fear-mongering in the public square. How so?

This past Wednesday, five gutsy students that I admire and will forever remember decided to don their Don hats in an act of blatant civil disobedience, even after being corrected by administrators. While their math instructor attempted to teach a lesson on solving quadratic equations, they sported their MAGA hats as they took notes. It was relayed to me that a “power that be” had already admonished them once in an earlier class, but I playfully looked the other way in this next period.

Another “power that be” stopped by to relay a message about a student in another class, but I think she was really coming to chastise the students again for their boldness. They nonchalantly put their hats on their desks to momentarily appease her, only to place the red hat squarely back on their bold noggins shortly thereafter. After another quadratic equation was solved by the class, the first higher-up knocked on the door and requested to see three of the five students in the hallway to confiscate the contraband and ream out the offenders for their disrespect of authority.

One of the three admitted disappointment that she did not receive a detention for her bold and sincere act of patriotism. Her teacher was ready to volunteer to proctor the detention to join her and others in prayer and penance for our beloved country.

I have never seen such zeal, intensity, and heroism in my 20 years of teaching. It was a top moment in the classroom of a 19-year veteran of Catholic schools. True Catholic kudos to these students! As a baseball coach, my hat is tipped in their direction. If Catholic education is to be saved and redeemed, it is through future leaders and saints-in-the-making like these eighth-graders.

Catholic schools are worried about losing tax-exempt status; they are worried about losing a few families who are abusing the Catholic school to set their children up for worldly success, caring little about their formation in Catholic truth; they are worried about offending the sensibilities of their bishop who refuses to ruffle any feathers as he wades through scandal after scandal trying to protect his assets; they fear that their survival as a Catholic school is dependent on keeping quiet about a stolen election that has elevated a heretical fake Catholic to the presidency.

They fear that outwardly supporting the most pro-life president of all time after he has left office will somehow tarnish their credibility in the eyes of present benefactors and future stakeholders. They cower to the thought that allowing a well-formed Catholic conscience to permeate every aspect of the students’ lives — as St. Paul taught — might somehow be unconstitutional and leave the school’s tax-exempt status in jeopardy.

I ask, when are we, as Catholic educators, going to practice the only legitimate servile fear under the sun? That fear is the seventh gift of the Holy Ghost, the fear of God’s judgment. When are we going to fear His judgment for refusing to politically stand up to the unimaginable evil of abortion, homosexual so-called marriage, euthanasia, gender ideology, and dozens of other heinous abominations that cry to heaven which are unequivocally supported by this new Satanic administration?

My prayer is that these five gutsy and emblazoned students and others like them continue to practice and propagate this zealous courage.

A few days prior, these same students were on the main road outside of our school, marching and praying the Holy Rosary for the end to the Satanic baby sacrifice of abortion. This mini-march was a great experience for the students, even as they received the one-finger salute from some passer-by!

The reader must know that the classroom demonstration of willing resistance against an unlawful attack on liberty and the frigid outdoor march to end abortion were motivated by one and the same spiritual end game: the Truth that is Jesus Christ and a willingness to stand up for what He and His Church have taught. Why was one permitted, championed, and publicized in the local Catholic newspaper and the other rejected, canceled, and deemed a threat to the good name of the school?

In the answer lies the secret antidote to the imminent collapse of Catholic schools in the U.S. and abroad. Satanic, servile, effeminate, cowardly fear of loss: loss of employment, loss of revenue, loss of ease, and a most dangerous indifference to the loss of souls.

To save genuine Catholic education, we need heroic pastors, administrators and teachers who are willing to suffer and die for the authentic, traditional teaching of the Catholic Church; who are willing to put everything on the line for their students in the spiritual, social, and political arenas; who refuse to run after the stakeholders who will not submit to Church teaching because it is too hard; who gladly pursue the lost sheep who are trying their best; who know and believe that Christ must permeate all organs of Catholic school culture; who defy the modernist dictate to be diplomatic with devils in human clothes who desire that the school waters down the faith and never speaks out in the public square; who realize the mission of the Catholic school is the glory of God and the salvation of souls.

I know a few eighth-graders who might be able to help!