Educators taking up Catholicism to get teaching jobs

[St_Francis]

I don’t really agree with post #12. In the Catholic schools that I attended as a child & teen, the nuns were amazingly holy role models, and prayer was integrated into the school day. (No one but me remembers holy water fonts inside every classroom door? Daily visits to Chapel?) You were aware of the presence of the Holy Spirit pretty palpably. I’d call it something of an immersion – something that a busy mother of many children, whose husband was not Catholic and a naval officer, and who therefore was often busy moving us – could never have maintained on any consistent basis on her own. I’m so thankful for that school altmosphere of my youth.

The First Communion preparation of my own children was done by their Grade 2 Catholic lay teacher who is herself an ex-nun who married, but remained very true to her faith. We felt blessed in this environment, as well. The preparation was truly special.

Perhaps unlike many on CAF, I see faith formation as something that requires a triangulation: home, school, parish – or at least benefits from that Modern lifestyles being what they are, I don’t see faith formation as being contained or limited to home and still being effective. It didn’t work that way when I was a child, and I see that being even less true now. I think there have to be serious contact points outside of the home as well.

Through my reading about Catholic education as a result of my homeschooling, I can see that the ideal would be wonderful. But to me the ideal is: small Catholic parish (ie, most of the people in the parish are Catholic), everyone or almost everyone can easily walk to the centralized church “campus,” children are not forced to go esp at younger ages, school does not waste time all day, and there is lots of interaction between the school and the parents–the teachers (who are almost all practicing nuns) are well aware and responsive to their goal of helping the parents rather then superceding them.

The school does its job so the parents don’t end up “teaching” for 2 or 3 hours a day (the situation with a family whose 3rd grader went to Catholic school), and the goal is not stuffing the children’s heads with information and getting them past tests but getting them into Heaven.

Unfortunately, circumstances are so rarely ideal… and certainly in our current culture, for most parents the only way to maintain a thoroughly Catholic culture is to homeschool.

 

[jmcrae]

Sounds like a call for missionary teachers. Canada. The new mission field.

Actually, we’ve always been considered a mission field - at least, here in the West.

 

[jazzy_987]

The whole story sounds fabricated. The writer implies that Catholic school principals hire people to spy on each of the school’s teachers over the weekend to make sure that they are all going to Mass and confession. Absurd.

In Australia and Iguess also in Canada, you don’t have to be a Catholic to get a job in a Cathollic school. You just have to promise not to do or say anything contrary to Catholic doctrine in front of the kids. Unless he is one of the one or two teachers in the school who actually teaches religion, he doesn’t even have to know the details of what Catholicism teaches.

Well I don’t know about other parts of Canada, but in Ontario, for elementary school, either the kids or a parent has to be Catholic just to attend a Catholic school… And most elementary schools wouldn’t have separate religion teachers. When I went to Catholic school the teachers had to be Catholic. Even the custodians were Catholic, although I’m not sure if that’s required.
But yeah I don’t understand the weekly confession and mass part =/ You would think they would stop all that once they got their documents/certification, if they’re faking conversion.

 

[jmcrae]

Well I don’t know about other parts of Canada, but in Ontario, for elementary school, either the kids or a parent has to be Catholic just to attend a Catholic school.

Here in Alberta, if there are spaces left after as many Catholic children as want to have signed up, they will then start taking non-Catholic students.

In high school, teachers, and even principals, aren’t required to be Catholic, other than the Religion teachers, as long as they support the idea of Catholic education, take the kids to Mass at their territorial church at various times of the year, and that sort of thing.