The struggle was a long one. It had been going on since Confederation. But it ended June 12 when Premier Davis of Ontario announced equal funding for Catholic schools in all grades.
All parties in the Legislature applauded this decision ending more than 100 years of injustice in school funding that caused a special hardship on parents of children in Catholic secondary schools and the school boards that operated them. While primary grades received increased government grants over the years, secondary grades received little or no help, forcing parents and parishes to support these schools through tuition and subsidies.
We should be grateful to Premier Davis and all who supported him in this decision to give equal financial assistance to our Catholic schools. But now that equal funding is forthcoming, we must be more vigilant than ever that our Catholic schools remain Catholic in their aims and goals and spirit which are all directed to the spiritual and moral development of the students as well as their intellectual and physical growth.
Teachers, administrators and parents must not lose sight of the whole purpose for which our Catholic schools were established and maintained over the years at great financial sacrifice. They must be committed to maintain these goals by accepting as readily the challenge of other and even more important sacrifices.
The worst enemy of our Catholic school system is not a non-Catholic teacher who may want to teach in it, or the non-Catholic children who may attend, but our own Catholic parents and teachers who are not committed enough to their Catholic faith to make the sacrifices necessary to teach it in the most effective way — by the example of living it daily.
For years the obligations that fell on parents and teachers to help maintain the Catholic school system called for a sacrifice that only a dedication to a cause could answer. Often the sacrifice was in lower wages for teachers, poorer facilities for students and extra fees from parents.
As the financial burdens are eased, however, there is the danger some will think there is no need for further commitment or spirit of sacrifice. It must be there in other ways keeping before us all the urgency to develop faith by instruction and example the distinguishing characteristic of our Catholic schools.
If this is lost our schools will become indistinguishable from any other fully tax-supported system even in moral and religious training. The financial sacrifices called for over the years now must be replaced by another, which for some may be more difficult. That is the sacrifice of teachers, parents and administrators who need to be more committed than ever to live their Catholic faith by open practice as well as inward spirit, by governing their lives by its moral principles, supporting the Church in its teaching and the local parish in its worship and efforts to make Christ present in the daily faith and love of its people.
This new financial assistance can be a good thing only if the spirit of financial sacrifice needed to operate our schools in the past continues in a spirit of commitment to maintain the Christian spirit and goals in the future.
Someone once said: “The Church is never so poor as when it is rich.” This must not happen to our Catholic schools or the whole country will be poorer.
(To explore more from The Catholic Register Archive, go to catholicregister.org/archive)