Catholic schools were not founded to be neutral. They were not founded to serve public opinion or bend to the dominant cultural winds. They were founded to serve the mission of the Church – to assist parents in the cultivation of virtue, the proclamation of Truth and the formation in the Faith of their children.
Today, however, that mission faces growing challenges, from outside and from within.
Recent political developments in Parliament demonstrate just how radically the cultural landscape in which we toil has shifted. In one week, surely destined to be remembered as the epitome of parliamentary ignominy, politicians voted to decriminalise abortion up to birth and to legalise state-assisted suicide. What was once unimaginable now evidently falls within the bounds of the socially acceptable – decisions of vast moral consequence, greeted too often as mere political disagreement rather than as moral catastrophe.
