Catholic Answers census: Your Catholic education background

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Augustine said:
I’m inclined to agree with them and my theory about this is that seeing the Catholic faith washed down or contradicted at public college can actually strengthen the faith, whereas at a Catholic college it can scandalize the youth.

I wonder if your priests and nuns friends had this in mind, as well as Our Lord’s admonition to those responsible for scandal… :eek:

May St. Thomas Aquinas pray for our colleges.

:blessyou:
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Seems to me that it was / is popular [right word??] to be “cool” in Catholic “higher education” institutions by bringing up seemingly sophisticated cute smarmy arguments … “what if Mary wasn’t the first woman to be asked to be the Mother of God … what if another girl was asked previously and turned it down” … “what if Jesus had been executed by electrocution, would we be wearing little electric chairs around our necks” … those sorts of digs and vain suppositions.

Not to mention the poo-pooing of miracles, such as the loaves and fishes. “well, the people there just shared their lunches”]

These little digs and jokes coming from Catholic teachers in a Catholic environment create doubts in the minds of students.

The students are young and inexperienced and not equipped to research and explore and refute these stab-in-the-back arguments.

When the sly, twisted, veiled criticism comes in a secular institution from non-Catholic teachers, we almost become innoculated against it and just blow it off. But coming from supposedly Catholic teachers, the criticism becomes insidious.

They think they’re being cute; but they are scandalizing their students. Jesus had harsh things to say about elders and teachers who scandalize young people.

One priest who raised one of these issues in public * just happened to drop dead during Mass one day. I have always wondered if God had lost patience with this fellow and “recalled him” for judgment right then and there.

These “cute” teachers don’t seem to have any idea of who they are dealing with … of what the Nature of God is. God is not just one of the guys at a “symposium” [glorified named for a bull session]. God is Infinite … with a capital “I”. He is not “mathematically infinite” … with that little “8” symbol laying on its side. God is all-powerful. God is all-creative.

A few years ago, some Anglican bishop challenged the divinity of Christ in a sermon. Shortly thereafter, a cloud suddenly appeared, maneuvered against the wind to over the bishop’s cathedral and a lightning bolt came down and blew out the roof of the building. As if, God was expressing His Displeasure.*
 
I really don’t consider myself a cradle Catholic in the traditional sense. I spent nearly 20 yrs separated from the Catholic Church. I went to Catholic schools and public schools for elementary, high school, and college. (I’m very eclectic;) )
I feel more like a Catholic convert, even though I was baptized Catholic as a baby, so I checked “Other.”
Hope that helps your research. 😃
 
Augustine said:
I’m inclined to agree with them and my theory about this is that seeing the Catholic faith washed down or contradicted at public college can actually strengthen the faith, whereas at a Catholic college it can scandalize the youth.:
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Seeing the Catholic faith watered down and ineffectual at a Catholic University is what made me leave. I was one of those scandalized youth. Extravagent gay alcoholic agnostic priests did it for me, I’m ashamed to say. 😊
 
I went to public grade school and high school. Graduated from Catholic seminary, and am currently very happy attending a Unitarian Universalist church.
 
I went with other. I went to Catholic school for just over a year and… things got interesting, so I left. It’s not easy to explain and no one would believe me.
 
graceandglory said:
Seeing the Catholic faith watered down and ineffectual at a Catholic University is what made me leave. I was one of those scandalized youth. Extravagent gay alcoholic agnostic priests did it for me, I’m ashamed to say. 😊
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This is one of the reasons I attended a private, non-Catholic University after spending the first eighteen years of my life in Catholic schools. It was not an ideal spiritual setting, but at least none of the gays, alcoholics, and agnostics were Catholic priests!
 
I’m an adult convert. I was 28 when I was Baptised and Confirmed.

I went to a number of grade schools, all secular.

High school was also secular. Although it had originally been founded by non-denominational missionaries, it was no longer a missionary school and did not promote any religion, although it allowed for the free expression of whatever religion we might profess, or none, as was my case.

University was secular.
 
went to public school…then graduated from st francis college in loretto pa
 
cradle catholic-practicing(still trying to get it right:D ) Catholic school.

St. Leo’s catholic school
 
I went to a Catholic grade school and then onto a Catholic high school which at the time was all girls.
 
I voted for the other option. I am a Catholic convert who went to a secular/non-Catholic grade school. However, I did also go to RCIA (before crossing the Tiber) and I think that counts too.
 
Practicing Cradle Catholic.

There were 2 schools (grades 1-9) in our village and which one you attended depended on where you lived. Due to its location, my school was attended primarily by Catholics who had built homes within a mile or two of the church. We had catechism every day and until my last year at that school there were 2 sisters teaching and one was the principal. The other school was attended primarily by Protestants and had no Catechism. Both were run by the same school board, in accordance with the provincial curriculum, but ours had a strong connection to the Church. The school I attended was bilingual (English kids were taught in English, French kids (the majority) were taught in French and both were taught by the same teacher in the same classroom), the other school had only an English curriculum because 99.9% of those attending were Anglophones.

In my first year of high school, in the neighboring town, a priest came to teach us Catechism once or twice a month. That school (Notre Dame) had just ceased being staffed by the Christian Brothers and I can remember winter carnival that year including a Folk Mass (remember, that would have been 1969, the height of the Kumbaya Masses) in which many of the students participated.

By the next year there was no longer any mention of religion in that school and my last year of HS was spent at the new regional HS that took in students from 15 communities. As I understand it, my province ceased to allow religion based schools in the late 60s. Remember, all these school were ‘public’ schools, supported by the local tax base, not private Catholic schools supported by the Church although most would have been established by the Church decades before.
 
Proud Practicing Cradle Catholic!🙂

I was born and raised as a Catholic. I went to a Catholic preschool, grade school (Benedictine) and high school (Benedictine). I am currently enrolled in a Catholic college (LaSallian).

We’d go to mass every Wednesday (my school had a chapel inside its grounds), had monthly confessions, say prayers before and after each class, had the Angelus, had recollection/retreats, pray the rosary during the rosary month as substitute for the usual daily prayers, etc. In my college, we’d still have the before and after prayers, Angelus, daily Masses (optional), monthly confessions (optional), etc…
 
Practicing cradle Catholic - Mom started teaching Catholic school when I was in 4th or 5th grade, and I started Catholic school in 6th - so I guess Catholic school from middle school on (I went to a Catholic high school as well).
I think that my grandmother, more than Catholic school, prepared me to remain Catholic - though school taught me some more prayers, there was lot of emphasis on the "don’t"s and not a lot of emphasis on loving God and doing His Will. I never got the sense that God really, really loved me in particular, and though I did pray, it was much more of a exercise a lot of the time.
I didn’t become really Catholic until much later in life, when I came back to the Church during grad school - thanks to a trip to Ireland. DH and I climbed Crough Patrick and did the prayers along the way. He said he decided to convert on that climb, and said his first rosary in Ireland.
So thanks, St. Patrick, for keeping an eye on us - even if we’re not Irish!
 
I am a practicing cradle Catholic who went to a Catholic grade school from K-2. So, I chose “public school”.
 
Cradle Catholic, practicing, Catholic (Christian Brother’s) High School.
 
Convert

Baptist school K-4, Public school 5-8, Catholic home school 9-12, Catholic university for undergrad, public university for graduate school
 
[Other] Cradle Catholic, more of a revert really - fell out of the Church completely after an on/off relationship with God in a nominally Catholic family. Studied about Christianity in general and found Catholicism to have “made sense” - last week I had a conversion experience which prompted me to get confession after four years. Happy to be back in Church and back to God!

Public grade school (except for my Catholic grade schooled first two years, also had my first communion at that school’s mother parish)
Catholic High School (not very Catholic honestly, those who didn’t teach religion taught contradictory stuff regarding morals, and the religion teachers were as far as I can tell pretty orthodox but seemed to just “go by the book”. The teaching wasn’t very deep and they were rather indifferent)
Secular University (fell away from Church, later to be evangelized by non-denominational charismatics on campus. Returned to the Church six months later, I never saw it coming. Deo Gratias!)
 
I went to public school. I converted when I was 17. So I was too old for my parents to bother about switching me to a Catholic School at that point.

My cousins, however, attended Catholic School. The oldest, who was in high school, had a horrible time of it. The grade school wasn’t quite as bad, but in the area I grew up, The Catholic High School was not a good place to send your kids. Why? Even though it was a “Catholic” school, most of the kids who went there weren’t really Catholic. They were just rich kids and the rich parents were sending them there for the better education- but honestly I don’t see how it was better. The Catholic school lacked programs that were pretty standard in most high schools (such as band even). The other kids were the biggest problem though. My cousin got picked on horribly for actually being Catholic. Even the other kids who were raised Catholic rebelled and claimed it was all stupid. The Catholic School in my area had the worst drug problem. Most the people that I met who went there were reallly really snobby and incredibly rude.

So naturally I’m a little torn on whether or not to send my own children to Catholic School. At first I had really wanted to… but if Catholic Schools are like this everywhere… I think they’d honestly come out better Catholics going to public school (or maybe even home schooled).

So my question to those of you who attended Catholic School is- was it bad? I mean- were the students rich snobs who weren’t even Catholic?
 
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