Letting the school system deal with it is absurd. They are the people who created the problem. Even if they did not specifically permit these atrocities, they hired the ones that did. Clearly they are not up to the task.
The Office of Catholic Schools does not hire principals and other administrators. These are hired either by the parish, the religious order who runs the school, or the Board of Directors of the school is a diocesan school. It is not the job of the Office of Catholic Schools to hire administrators or teachers. So they are not to be blamed.
The Office of Catholic Schools deals in matters of accreditation, school and state affairs, implementation of IDEA, implementation of JLA, curriculum, and other academic matters. The bishop deals in futures planning of diocesan and parrochial schools, strategic planning and development. He does not deal in content. That’s the Office of Catholic Schools and the Principals.
This is the system of subsidiarity that has been setup by the Vatican since the 1800s.
Waiting is not an option. If someone was drowning ten feet away from you, do you stand there and do nothing until the lifeguard notices or do you take some action of your own?
I understand your concern. But you must understand the way that the Church structures work. We can’t change them. The principal of subsidiarity was claerly repeated in the rivision of Canon Law and by Benedict XVI in his recent encyclical.
You said only one of the schools belongs to the diocese. I assume the others belong to another diocese meaning that we have two bishops sitting on their hands doing nothing while our kids are being sacrificed to Molech.
As I said, many Catholic schools do not belong to the local diocese. The bishop is responsible for the care of those souls, as he is responsible for the care of your soul, but he does now own your home. He is responsible for the care of the soul of children in public schools too, but he does not own those schools. The individual student belongs to the diocese, but not the school. Therefore, the bishop has the right to take away the title Catholic from the school, because he is trying to protect his student. But he cannot touch the school, if he does not own it. He has no jurisdiction. Remember, this relationship is going to be different in each diocese. It’s going to depend on how the contracts were drawn up when the schools were chartered. For example, my community ran (past) a school that we built, but did not belong to us. The idea was to give it to the local people when the friars left. That was the way it was chartered. We were its caretakers and administrators. We promised to do so until the school became a middle class school, then we would move on. We only run organizations for the very poor.
Again, there is no time to go slowly. They’ll go so slow that the plays will go on. I refer you to the Notre Dame University scandal. Lot’s of talking but no action from the bishops and no consequences to Notre Dame.
They have no jurisdiction over ND. ND belongs to a private organization. The Brothers of the Holy Cross have no ownership. They run the university, not own it. We don’t know what the bishops, the board and the Pronvincial Superior of the Brothers have spoken about.
We have no choice but to wait and see. The bishops can’t force themselves on the university’s board. This is a slow process.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
