This is something I had to read to believe. It appears that there is a legal battle going on between the University of California (UC) and religiously affiliated high schools. Basically would not accept the credits earned from students of religious high schools in certain subjects (biology, religion, etc.) because the views that the students were presumably taught were too narrow and thus not acceptable for the UC system.
In the past, there was a concern by the bishops of this country that our nation was becoming anti-Catholic. Thus they decided at the Council of Baltimore that every Catholic parish must have a parochial school to allow the Catholic children to receive a full education, including the Catholic understanding of our world. It seems that with this decision from a public university, we are entering into a similar time. It is different in one major way, however. This proposal is not anti-Catholic, but is anti-religious and I might also use the term anti-spiritual (used here with the colloquial understanding).
I am NOT proposing that we resort to requiring all of our parishes to reopen parochial schooling. What this should cause us to do initially is to redouble our efforts to help the world to understand that religious beliefs, especially Catholic beliefs are not a "threat", but are, in fact, a great joy! This is not going to happen in the way that it is necessary by some well structured homily from the priest on Sunday. It will not occur from some caffeine induced blog post (though I am sitting at a coffee shop right now). This necessary recognition of the pure joy of Catholicism will only happen if we Catholics of the world engage our neighbor, starting conversations, choosing to go out of our comfortable sphere and actually work to transform the world.
Yes, this seems like a daunting task and one to which we can create a million excuses. But it is so necessary as put forth by the Second Vatican Council. It is not in our best interests OR in the best interests of the world if we isolate ourselves and simply let the world go to hell in a handbasket. Rather, we are our brothers' keepers. We have an inherant responsibility to proclaim Jesus Christ to the world, to bring the GOOD NEWS of Jesus to all people. I will probably have another blog post soon regarding the topic of "how" we proclaim Jesus to the world, but I will save that.
So let us not hide from this horrible proposal from the University of California. Let us not run away. Let us not be content with a legal decision that defends our rights. Rather, let us recognize the truth...the world NEEDS Jesus Christ, and God has asked us to bring him to the world...especially UC.
Here is the link to the article: http://www.standardnewswire.com/news/569165421.html
-Fr. Gjengdahl
