There is certainly an irony in the fact that one issue on which both secular humanists and a certain cohort of Catholics can find common cause is the desire to close Catholic schools. From one direction, they are bastions of privilege and brainwashing, working to indoctrinate children into the murky rituals and dogma of the Catholic faith; from the other direction, our schools do not do this anywhere near enough, and pass on barely a semblance of the Faith.
Both are wrong, of course, and while I would not wish to dwell too deeply on the illiberal instincts of humanist pressure groups, I do think those Catholics sceptical of the value of our schools are more pessimistic than they need be.
Not that there are not significant challenges, though tell me when this has not been true for Catholics in the United Kingdom. We are a recusant people – we have always walked the fine line between what the State allows and what the Truth demands.
But when we do what we do well, we do it very well indeed. And in so doing, we plant and nurture the seeds of faith not only in the minds of those who are already imbued, but also those who may not otherwise have ever known that there was even an alternative to consider. So we tread carefully, we act wisely. School leaders are skilled at navigating this tension, between a wider culture that refuses our Good News, whilst nonetheless remaining faithful to that Good News in our work.
And prudence, in this context, is not weakness. We are dealing with real people, after all; complex and messy, in a society in which we are not always seen as welcome partners. In other words, our schools stand in the piazza and call those they find there forth to narthex, nave, and sanctuary.
But the piazza is not always a comfortable place to be. There is no point denying that there are those in our schools who not only do not accept the teachings of the Faith, but vocally oppose them. This is the nature of mission at the margins – it starts from where your interlocutor is, not where you would wish them to be. We exist to offer Christ and His Church to all who come to our schools, but we know that for some it is an invitation left unheard, or even unwelcome.
Which brings with it an operational risk to which we should remain vigilant. When engaging with those who may be reluctant to engage, it is both common and sensible to find areas of agreement, and in the name of prudence – or perhaps friendship – to focus first on those.
In contemporary society, this often boils down to two areas in particular where our message is seen not only as acceptable but positively welcome: our teachings on creation (“environment”) and poverty (“social justice”). Here, we surmise, we can find the shared foundations of a fruitful engagement that might, in time, flourish into faith.
What’s the problem? Well, the risk that we prioritise the dialogue over the destination and let the initial focus become the exclusive focus, thus forever leaving the more difficult conversations aside. It may well be that our thoughts on the environment and social justice can win us a hearing and maybe even plaudits, but stray beyond it, the thinking can go, and we risk losing our audience.
Sometimes, therefore, we recoil. We determine it to be more dangerous territory, to be left alone, except perhaps for academic study. Rerum Novarum fine, Laudato Si’ great, but don’t you go mentioning Humanae Vitae.
The problem is not that we risk politicisation – the Church is inevitably political, since it calls for social action, and we should embrace this – but that in doing so we risk plucking such concepts out of the ideological ecosystem which gives them proportion and sense, rendering them limp imitations of what they actually are: part of the seamless garment of revealed truth and tradition that it is the job of the Church to preserve and to preach.
And so we may inadvertently give the impression that aspects of the Faith can be siloed off from the source from which they spring, standalone policy segments consumable apart from the less desirable calls on our conscience and our action.
In this telling, there is “Eco Jesus” and there is “Socialist Jesus”, and everything else is optional. The broad path: the Church as NGO. The cautious voice may intervene here and ask: can people not come to the love of God a bit later? Must we not first convince them, against the slurs of the world, that we are decent people to be trusted, to be heard?
Well, perhaps, except the gamble is that it never does. We risk instead confirming in the mind of those we walk with that Christ is not really the source and summit, but instead an optional bolt-on we can dispense with in the name of good manners, such that the core of what we offer – when done badly – can come to look something more like Citizenship with some festivals thrown in.
In the words of Clodovis Boff, commenting on declining Mass attendance in Brazil, “It is necessary for the Church to once again emphasise Christ as priest, as master and Lord, and not just the fight against poverty and the climate crisis … These are important questions, but without drinking from Christ, who is the source, everything dries up, everything dies.”
So we must have the courage to preach it all. And to do so, we must hold as true two key claims. First, that in doing this we are proclaiming the Good News, and that this News is good and true and beautiful, even if its reception is not always welcome in all quarters.
Secondly, that in so doing we are not only serving those who stand before us but also wider society, present and future, by preserving something essential and keeping it safe for those who slowly come to reject the other options the world has to offer.
This second goal is no small matter, especially just at that moment when the creed of secular liberalism is under greater strain than at any point in my lifetime. Issues that seemed closed are being slowly questioned again, and not from those within the Faith but from those who know little about it, who have been formed outside it, those who have drunk deep of all the world has to offer and yet find themselves thirsting for something more.
In this sense, if we do things right, our schools are and can be the modern-day equivalent of the medieval scriptorium, serving society by busily preserving, in our own dark ages, the moral and spiritual and artistic treasures contemporary society has decided, in its hubris, to cast aside.
So we must have the courage to resist the balkanisation of Church teaching, to avoid restricting our Catholic life and action to areas of least controversy, of least threat. The environment and social justice are important aspects of the Faith – but they are only authentically understood in reference to the rest of it.
Doing so may risk discomfort. But as Pope Benedict XVI said, we were not made for comfort, but for greatness. We must share that invitation to greatness with all we meet, yes, even to the ends of the earth.
Michael Merrick is director of education for the Diocese of Lancaster.
This article first appeared in the February 2024 issue of the Catholic Herald. To subscribe to our multiple-award-winning magazine and have it delivered to your door anywhere in the world, go here.
This page is available to subscribers. Click here to sign in or get access.
Areas of Catholic Herald business are still recovering post-pandemic.
However, we are reaching out to the Catholic community and readership, that has been so loyal to the Catholic Herald. Please join us on our 135 year mission by supporting us.
We are raising £250,000 to safeguard the Herald as a world-leading voice in Catholic journalism and teaching.
We have been a bold and influential voice in the church since 1888, standing up for traditional Catholic culture and values. Please consider donating.