Youth Blog

 

As I look back upon the years that I have just completed in Hamilton’s publicly funded Catholic school board, I question whether “Catholic” is a term that can even be used to describe them.

 

When most people think of a Catholic school, they think of Holy Mass, prayer times, and a carefully structured environment, not realizing the death of conscience that often results from government funding.  While schools in the Hamilton Wentworth Catholic District School Board might claim to be Catholic, they are full of wrongful teachings and disguised slashes at the tapestry of faith.

 

In the first year alone, my faith in the board was shattered by the teaching of health in my required gym course. When we entered health, we began with the normal teachings of exercise, and healthy eating, but eventually it became time for sex ed. Sex ed began with basic biology but quickly moved into being told about “safe sex” and the use of contraceptives. Not only were grade nine students being told about the idea of contraceptives like they were A-okay, but the words “safe sex” was being used to trick them into forgetting what sex is for. Through the wording of sex into the categories of safe and unsafe, sex is made to appear as something that is fine to do as long as it is in a safe way instead of being taught as something for marriage and procreation.

 

Throughout the rest of my high school career, I found many things to be no closer than this to the teachings of the Catholic Church. Throughout high school, Mass was not only infrequent but was also fairly sacreligious.  At my high school we had projectors showing a slideshow to the students of what they should do, with things such as the “Our Father,” and when to sit and stand. One thing that I never saw on the projector though, was the instruction to kneel. Kneeling is, in my opinion, one of the most fundamental and important parts of Mass. We kneel when the body of Our Lord is out, not only to show respect and reverence, but to show love and how we look up to Jesus. Not only is it plain wrong not to kneel, but it keeps students from learning to look up to Our Lord, and to love and understand more deeply the mystery that takes place before them.

 

In a later year of high school, as my classmates failed to understand the Mass; I failed to understand a specific song choice that took place at one of them. At a Mass while I was in Grade Eleven, “Don’t Stop Believin'" was played by my school’s music students during Holy Communion. It shocked me to my core when it happened, and it partially ruined the song for me as I would always remember how it was used in an act so irreverent. Throughout my high school years I saw many things at Masses that were incredibly sacrilegious and wrong. The worst part of this was the failure of my school to educate its students about Mass, and yet calling itself Catholic. At quite a few of these Masses, students would clap politely after the priest finished his homily. My horror at this is not that these peers of mine were attempting to be polite and respectful, but that the Catholic school board had failed them so badly that they though that they were supposed to clap at the end of a homily. With Mass being a cornerstone of the Catholic faith, HWCDSB failed to be Catholic in its teaching to students.

 

Not only do these schools fail to teach what they should, but at government direction they go as far as to indoctrinate students with LGBTQ ideology against Catholic teaching. Pride has managed to worm its way into Catholic high schools in many ways and forms. The pride flag flying in June (the month of the Sacred Heart), and signs around the school saying how inclusive we are, all work to slowly undermine Catholic teaching by slowly pulling at the strings that hold our faith together. While as a Catholic I believe that I should treat all people with respect and love, that does not mean that students should be taught that it is good to sin or even have a club for it in the school. And yes, I mean that my school had and still has a pride club. Not only does this club work to foster a safe space for anti-family indoctrination to grow, but they also are given time on the announcements to talk about how famous people in history were gay, further try to normalizing what is an abomination against the Lord.  Not only was gay ideology made to look good by my school, but in any instance where it would be classified as wrong, they made a point to say that it wasn’t. When I was in Grade Twelve at our Ash Wednesday liturgy, instead of talking about Ash Wednesday our chaplain decided to instead give a talk on the seven deadly sins. And when she reached pride, she specified, “not the club at our school”. According to Brittanica, pride is defined as "an excessive love of one’s own excellence.” When something is as prideful as believing oneself to know better than God, it is surely what is meant as the sin of pride. Through this decision to claim that the two are different, not only did she warp family and life centered Catholic values for students, but also made it harder for them to understand what it means to fall into the sin of pride.

 

Throughout my years in high school I realized the school's failure to properly teach the Catholic faith is not only coming from the top, but from many of the teachers. When a teacher teaches their own worldly beliefs instead of those of the Church, not only does it lead students astray, but it points out that these teachers aren’t Catholic. Why at a Catholic school would we have teachers that are not Catholic? How does this model decisions for students? The cornerstone of a Catholic school is the teaching of the Catholic religion, so it would be assumed that those that teach religion at the very least would be members of the faith. However, in my Grade Twelve year, the teacher I had for religious studies came out as gay on Instagram, in the very semester that I was in his class. How can we expect a teacher to properly instruct on the Church's beliefs, when they openly live a lifestyle that contradicts these teachings?

 

But, truly, one of the most offensive things that took place during my high school years was what one teacher placed on their "getting to know you" sheet handed to students for the beginning of the course. It started off as expected, asking for basic name and age details, but then moved on to asking students for a preferred name, and preferred pronouns. At the time I had shook my head, left it blank and moved on, but the next question stopped me dead in my tracks. The question asked if the preferred name and pronouns of a student could be used when communicating with home. It was not a question of what misguided youth believed was best for themselves, but a question of if they should keep something from their parents. Parents who love and raise their children try to teach and choose what is best for them. In sending them to a Catholic school, these parents may not want their children perverted by gay ideology, but it seems that they'll get it either way. The choice to exclude parents from what happens in schools not only goes against helping the students keep to the commandment of honouring their father and mother, but also works to keep parents from realizing that the teachings of these schools no longer coincide with, and often contradict the teachings of the Church.

 

From the all of the pride garbage, to the lack of knowing how one should conduct themselves at a Mass, the HWCDSB is shown to have forgotten what the "C" in their name is supposed to be for. While, at the moment, our Catholic school system has slipped from being the great institution that it once was, I have hope that we can work to turn it around. With municipal elections coming up next year, I ask that you help to put the "Catholic" back in Catholic School, and sign the CLC petition to remove pride flags, as well as our petition to keep pornographic content out of school libraries. 

 

Why where children laugh and play, 

Must the darkness grow, 

Causing their laughter and fun, 

To quickly turn to woe, 

Why can't the young, 

have time to learn and enjoy, 

Instead of being taught to question, 

being a girl or boy, 

Why in our schools, 

Must they be led astray, 

As more is taught of wrongs to do, 

And less of how to pray, 

Why don't we stand up and speak, 

Teach them right from wrong, 

For the more time left to go downhill, 

The more the climb gets long.