Do Catholic schools evangelize to their non-catholic students?

[Country_Gal]

I looked up, for another thread, and 16% of Catholic school students are non-catholics. This percentage is increasing year by year.

My impression is that the schools steer clear of evangelizing, but I am unsure.

Do they? Should they? For statistics click below.

ncea.org/news/annualdatareport.asp

 

[itsjustdave1988]

They should. That is their mission. Some do. Some do not.

 

[itsjustdave1988]

Benedictine College is where my daughter went to school. Very good at evangelization.

Here’s what Paul VI taught:

‘We wish to confirm once more that the task of evangelizing all people constitutes the essential mission of the Church.’ It is a task and mission which the vast and profound changes of present-day society make all the more urgent. Evangelizing is in fact the grace and vocation proper to the Church, her deepest identity. She exists in order to evangelize, that is to say, in order to preach and teach, to be the channel of the gift of grace, to reconcile sinners with God, and to perpetuate Christ’s sacrifice in the Mass, which is the memorial of His death and glorious resurrection. (Evangelii Nuntiandi)

 

[itsjustdave1988]

Also, from Paul VI:

Feeling very keenly the weighty responsibility of diligently caring for the moral and religious education of all her children, the Church must be present with her own special affection and help for the great number who are being trained in schools that are not Catholic. This is possible by the witness of the lives of those who teach and direct them, by the apostolic action of their fellow-students, but especially by the ministry of priests and laymen who give them the doctrine of salvation in a way suited to their age and circumstances and provide spiritual aid in every way the times and conditions allow. [Gravissimum Educationis]

 

[Country_Gal]

Do Catholic schools have mandatory religious ed classes for all?

 

[SMHW]

I looked up, for another thread, and 16% of Catholic school students are non-catholics. This percentage is increasing year by year.

My impression is that the schools steer clear of evangelizing, but I am unsure.

Do they? Should they? For statistics click below.

ncea.org/news/annualdatareport.asp

I would point out that there is a difference between evangelizing and proselytizing.

The former is sharing what the Good News is. The latter is actively trying to convert. (The distinction is probably lost on a lot of people.)

Most Catholic schools require at least some Catholic religious instruction for their non-Catholic students. The nature of that instruction should be clearly defined in the school handbooks provided to the parents.

 

[LegoGE1947]

Do Catholic schools have mandatory religious ed classes for all?

Some Protestant-based schools do.

 

[itsjustdave1988]

Do Catholic schools have mandatory religious ed classes for all?

All those I attended did. My wife taught in a Catholic HS, which also had religious ed classes for all. I went to Gonzaga University, and it also had mandatory religion courses. So did my daughter’s college, Benedictine College.

When my son was in his rebellious years in HS, he told me that he didn’t even believe in God, so why did he have to attend religion courses? I told him that I made him take math classes, even though he didn’t intend on being a mathematician. It’s important to learn about those things that have predominantly formed civilization as we know it. Catholicism has had the most impact on Western civilization (arguable the whole world) than anything in human history. Even if you don’t agree with or want to be Catholic, you should have some understanding of what more than 1 out of 6 people in the entire world claim to be their religion.

He didn’t like my answer (at the time). However, he returned to the Catholic Church years later, thanking me for making him continue religion classes.

 

[SMA_12]

Do Catholic schools have mandatory religious ed classes for all?

They did at the schools I went to. And they did not stray from Catholic teaching.
We also would go to Mass as an entire school quite often.

 

[Country_Gal]

I wonder what percentage of non-Catholic students end up converting down the road?

 

[laircy]

Do Catholic schools have mandatory religious ed classes for all?

They did at the schools I went to. And they did not stray from Catholic teaching.
We also would go to Mass as an entire school quite often.

Yep

 

[itsjustdave1988]

I wonder what percentage of non-Catholic students end up converting down the road?

I don’t know about the world at large, I can only say my son-in-law was an atheist when he enrolled in Benedictine College, and is now Catholic. I was a fallen-away Catholic and the Jesuits at my Catholic college worked hard to teach me to think, under the presumption that the better I was at thinking, the more likely I’d be able to think rightly about Christ. It took a while (I’m a slow thinker), but I too returned to the Church. I thank God for good Catholic schools.

 

[LegoGE1947]

I don’t know about the world at large, I can only say my son-in-law was an atheist when he enrolled in Benedictine College, and is now Catholic. I was a fallen-away Catholic and the Jesuits at my Catholic college worked hard to teach me to think, under the presumption that the better I was at thinking, the more likely I’d be able to think rightly about Christ. It took a while (I’m a slow thinker), but I too returned to the Church. I thank God for good Catholic schools.

Aren’t there some “bad” Catholic schools? I have heard stories…

 

[savedbygrace71]

Do Catholic schools have mandatory religious ed classes for all?

I can only speak for the catholic school my kids go to, but not only do they have mandatory religious Ed, everything is taught from a catholic perspective. Spelling words, math problems, handwriting etc. it is all church based. It is a wonderful way for my children to be immersed in faith

 

[itsjustdave1988]

Aren’t there some “bad” Catholic schools? I have heard stories…

I think there are some bad teachers, even at very good schools. And good teachers, even at very bad schools. For instance, I love Prof. Peter Kreeft, who teaches at BC (Boston College), which he has called “Barely Catholic.”

I was picky about where I sent my daughter. I chose Benedictine College over my alma mater, Gonzaga University, because Benedictine had a better reputation with regard to holding fast to Catholic doctrine.

 

[jmcrae]

Do Catholic schools have mandatory religious ed classes for all?

In my location, it is expected that all students will attend Religion classes from kindergarten to Grade 9.

 

[300WhiteKnights]

I went to a Catholic high school, and now I attend a Jesuit College. Mass was mandatory at high school. Religious education was a joke though. We hardly ever opened the Bible. We also studied things that were not essential. Social Justice? Christian Morality? “Being Catholic”? C’mon people! The students just treated the religion classes as study-halls.

I had one professor in particular that was tenured. He seemed to embrace a “New Age” form of religion. We studied Joseph Campbell’s philosophy extensively, (which excluded the truth of Christianity.) I was disappointed.

I also remember watching Morgan Freeman’s “through the wormhole” in religion class. In that documentary, Freeman tried to dismiss the existence of God with scientific hypotheses. The most troubling thing about this was that my teacher never tried to refute Freeman in any way! This was my “Christian Spirituality” class by the way. The students were left to defend the faith to themselves after class!

We also watched this documentary in my physics class… twice.

In my World Religions class, we were given the option to watch “Jesus Camp.” That was especially infuriating. How do you think students will define a personal relationship with Jesus after watching a bunch of people screaming fanatically?
Granted, there were dedicated and orthodox teachers at my high school that were teaching the faith, (although watered down at times). But my high school was making a lot of mistakes in terms of religious education and evangelization.

The faculty seemed to be in most need of evangelization at times. In my “World Literature” class my teacher was hinting that Christianity is a rip-off of Egyptian mythology. He was saying “isn’t this aspect of Egyptian mythology similar to the Trinity?” and "Doesn’t the flood in this ancient myth parallel the flood in Genesis? (He is now the president of the high school btw).

My other “World literature” teacher was a protestant that seemed to be somewhat anti-catholic. He gave us handouts explaining with the support of scripture that Hell was a myth. When we learned about Dante’s inferno, he taught us that Dante was an immoral person and a hypocrite, and that if he is putting all these political figures in hell, he should put himself in there too. What?!

After my senior year of high school, I wondered how anyone of lukewarm faith could come out of that school with their faith still intact.

 

[Micosil]

…

When my son was in his rebellious years in HS, he told me that he didn’t even believe in God, so why did he have to attend religion courses? I told him that I made him take math classes, even though he didn’t intend on being a mathematician. …

He didn’t like my answer (at the time). However, he returned to the Catholic Church years later, thanking me for making him continue religion classes.

…
I also remember watching Morgan Freeman’s “through the wormhole” in religion class. In that documentary, Freeman tried to dismiss the existence of God with scientific hypotheses. The most troubling thing about this was that my teacher never tried to refute Freeman in any way! This was my “Christian Spirituality” class by the way. The students were left to defend the faith to themselves after class!

We also watched this documentary in my physics class… twice.

…

Not only is Through the Wormhole an affront an actual, proper academic science per se, it seems to be following the same fate as Stephen Hawking.

 

[Brendan]

They should.

We have a family friend who was a non-Catholic who went to Catholic schools, an inner city Detroit schools staffed by Benedictines.

After graduating High School, he moved away and fell in with a party crowd. He came to realize that he was not being satisfied by that life, and thought of the Benedictines who taught him at school. They all seemed very content with life.

So he converted and is now a Benedictine monk himself (and recently asked by his Prior if he would study for the priesthood, which he is now doing).

So even if it is not from the theology taught, there can still be great fruits involved.

 

[VivienneJ]

I looked up, for another thread, and 16% of Catholic school students are non-catholics. This percentage is increasing year by year.

My impression is that the schools steer clear of evangelizing, but I am unsure.

My paternal grandmother, a staunch member of a Calvinistic church in which my uncle was a pastor, was shocked when my parents chose to send me to the local Catholic high school, as they had heard bad reports of the government high school in town. She was particularly concerned that the “Romans” would try to convert me. I attended Catholic high schools from 1966 to mid 1969 and ended up in a government school for my final year and a half simply because the Catholic school in the town we moved to only offered half the subjects I was doing for matric and it was too late to change that many subjects.

Do Catholic schools have mandatory religious ed classes for all?

The first Catholic school I went to did not even “allow” us non-Catholics to attend Mass, so we always had the first period on Fridays free I really don’t remember if we had any religious education classes though. The second Catholic school was very small (120 girls in the whole high school) and we were all expected to go to Mass together. Again I have no recollection of specific religious education, but I do remember the nuns sharing many ‘life lessons’ with us and having sharing a truly Catholic world view with us. The love and caring I remember at this school was tremendous.

I wonder what percentage of non-Catholic students end up converting down the road?

And 41 years after my grandmother’s anxiety, I did, indeed, become Catholic - I’m sure what I experienced in those Catholic schools contributed something to my ultimate conversion. How I would like to contact those nuns and tell them the effect their example had on my life, even so many, many years later.