Ordinariate Schools

When I was an Episcopalian, I knew a great many families who sent their children to Catholic schools, notwithstanding some were quite well off and fully capable of sending them to the prestigious Episcopalian private schools in the area. For that matter, the rabbi of the late Leonard Nimoy's temple in Hollywood went to Catholic school as a boy (he said he struggled with singing the name "Christ" in hymns and eventually determined he would lip-sync the word but not sing it).

A Catholic school in downtown Los Angeles had a wall facing the Harbor Freeway with the slogan A CATHOLIC EDUCATION IS AN ADVANTAGE FOR LIFE painted for everyone to read as they drove by. (Their mascot was the Mad Monks.) As I've become Catholic, I feel bad now that I never had a Catholic education, although some visitors would emphasize that what I really mean is a good Catholic education, because these days I'm told there is such a thing as a bad one.

But I'm puzzled that some of the communities in the North American ordinariate are spending what appears to be a lot of time and effort on what amount to shoestring startup projects to create schools attached to their groups, even though the groups themselves often haven't been able to achieve parish status, or if they have, they're among the most marginal. My regular correspondent tells me

St Barnabas, Omaha is now running a full-time secondary school on its property. Bp Lopes is very keen on getting more Ordinariate-branded educational enterprises up and running. Unlike OLA Academy the other operations have hired part-time instructors who teach in the basement or other adapted spaces.

A visitor has been emphatic with me in explaining that standards in Catholic schools have often fallen with those of public schools, and I'll accept that. On the other hand, I have a problem with the idea that a few dozen, or for that matter a few hundred people can get a school going that's any improvement. Even granting that a local Catholic school may fall very short, I can't see how a group calling itself "Catholic" but operating independently of diocesan resources can overcome the following obstacles"

• Nonexistent facilities, including gyms, audiovisual resources, language and computer labs, and I'm sure much more
• A range of experienced and credentialed faculty across all disciplines, including computers and modern languages
• The ability to pool resources across a diocese
• The ability to compete in diocesan athletic programs
• Support from diocesan staff, diocesan policies, and diocesan experience
• Parish clergy experienced in running schools
• Diocesan financial assistance where required.

I've been around the block enough times -- indeed, I've seen enough situations like the small-clique pitfalls at places like the St Mary of the Angels parish -- to be deeply suspicious of tiny groups of amateur parents who figure they have all the answers, especially if they think the answers center on learning Latin from Billy Throckmorton's mom, who minored in it 20 years ago, or for that matter having a headmaster whose main educational experience was handing out condoms in Vancouver public parks. Friendships and clique alliances will inevitably create conflicts of interest in weeding out incompetents or disciplining problem children.

We just had a Lenten mission at our parish from a visiting priest who made the point that cliques are dangerous, in that they foster and reinforce bad habits of life, and he contrasted them with communities of the faithful. I have a very hard time getting over the idea that the groups of parents at tiny ordinariate communities who want to start "home school co-ops" or some such are more likely cliques of Kool-Aid drinkers who are doing their kids no favors.

These people are reinventing the wheel. I think about a parishioner I knew at my first Episcopalian parish who now and then would say of someone, "He drives a new Mercedes, but he sends his kids to public school." This echoes the pastor at our current parish, who frequently suggests in homilies that rather than buy a new car every couple of years, families consider sending their children to Catholic schools. I'm told by parents who've been through the process of putting their kids through Catholic school that it's expensive, not just in terms of money, but in terms of the effort the school demands of parents.

I can't get over the idea that a lot of these home school co-op people are trying to do things on the cheap. Let's face it, the target market for the ordinariates is affluent former Anglicans. Even if one local Catholic school is substandard, I don't see how that justifies giving up on the whole idea and trying to reinvent the wheel with a tiny group of angries. There's got to be something better not far away -- you just might need to pay for something that's worth what they ask for it.