Throwing your children to the hyenas

On the necessity of good Christian schools:

I am overwhelmed at the thought of the tremendous weight of moral responsibility that Catholic parents accumulate upon their shoulders by not sending their children to Catholic schools. Those who are not of the Church have no understanding of this. They cannot be expected to. As far as they can see, all this insistence on Catholic schools is only a moneymaking device by which the Church is trying to increase its domination over the minds of men, and its own temporal prosperity. And of course most non-Catholics imagine that the Church is immensely rich, and that all Catholic institutions make money hand over fist, and that all the money is stored away somewhere to buy gold and silver dishes for the Pope and cigars for the College of Cardinals.

Is it any wonder that there can be no peace in a world where everything possible is done to guarantee that the youth of every nation will grow up absolutely without moral and religious discipline, and without the shadow of an interior life, or of that spirituality and charity and faith which alone can safeguard the treaties and agreements made by governments?

And Catholics, thousands of Catholics everywhere, have the consummate audacity to weep and complain because God does not hear their prayers for peace, when they have neglected not only His will, but the ordinary dictates of natural reason and prudence, and let their children grow up according to the standards of civilization of hyenas.

– Thomas Merton, The Seven Story Mountain, p.50

And this recently from Bob Myers, a pastor and Boar’s Head Tavern fellow:

My congregation mostly thinks that sending their children to schools where Jesus is never considered and fairly often slammed, letting them immerse themselves in popular culture movies, music, etc. is basically neutral, and an hour or so of exposure to Jesus every couple weeks is potent enough to tip the balance in Jesus’ favor.  Then, they are sometimes horrified, other times in denial, when their children start expressing unbelief and expressed resistance to their one hour every week or so.    I want to tell them, “don’t come crying to me”… but then again, who do I want these parents to come crying to? (emphasis mine)

Both my wife and I had a mix a private and public schooling. I was also home-schooled for a time. We would like to send both our children to a private Christian school. There are several good ones here in town. Now I just have a couple of years to come up with the extra $600/month to pay for it. Gak.

Photo credit

The best parenting quote ever (Capon again)

I find that my fine generalities have dashed themselves to pieces against the six very concrete children that I have. I live surrounded by a mixture of violence and loveliness, of music and insensitivity. I take my meals with clods and poets, but I am seldom certain which is which. Nowhere is my life less reducible to logic than in my children; nowhere are my elegant attempts at system ground more violently to powder than under the stumbling stone of the next generation. Far from having advice to give you, I am dumbfounded by them and admit it. And yet I rejoice too, for nowhere is there so much to keep me sane. I apologize in advance but I know only one word to describe it: It is absurd.

– Robert Capon, Bed and Board