Last Updated:Friday - 09/24/2010

WCR Letters to the Editor

Schools require co-operation

The March 10 WCR ran a letter to the editor under the headline, "Who runs Alberta Catholic schools?" The letter, signed by John Zyp of Edmonton, went on to answer the question with the statement that "trustees have the final decision."

It is clear to the trustees responsible for the operation of Catholic schools in the Red Deer area that the traditional group of home, school and parish share the responsibility. Catholic schools are operated for the benefit of the greater Catholic community.

Canon law governs the acts of trustees as well as the acts of bishops. Canon 800 requires "Christ's faithful to do everything possible to establish and promote Catholic schools." Canon 802 requires a bishop to ensure that Catholic schools are established. Canon 804 requires trustees and bishops to work together to ensure that their operation is to a reasonable standard.

While Catholic schools have traditionally educated 20 to 25 per cent of the students in Alberta, 50 per cent of the growth in student numbers in the last 10 years has gone to Catholic schools. Obviously, parents increasingly want Catholic education for their children.

Alberta's bishops have a long tradition of strong support for Catholic education. The simple fact that, at the time of the creation of Alberta, our forefathers enshrined government-supported Catholic schools is a testament to the work of our bishops.

Our present bishops continue that tradition through their involvement in the Alberta Catholic School Trustees' Association, by political involvement and through their encouragement of priests' roles in our classrooms.

Recently, Alberta's bishops and Catholic school trustees have collaborated to develop a position on sharing school buildings within which all boards the bishops can work. It is a position that reflects the responsibility of boards to make reasoned decisions for their communities and also respects the role of bishops to meet their canonical responsibilities to shepherd their flocks.

To suggest that a Catholic school board could build or operate a Catholic school without the support of the local bishop is absurd.

To suggest that a bishop might withhold support for any education-related initiative without good reason is equally absurd. And to suggest that there is something wrong with requiring school boards and bishops to develop consensus for new initiatives is irresponsible.

Bishops and school boards need to mutually respect each other's roles. Our success depends on our joint commitment to support Catholic education and openness to dialogue on our mutual mission to serve children.

Gord Bontje
Red Deer Catholic Regional Division
Red Deer

Negotiate needed space for Catholic education

The WCR 's March 10 front page headlined that Edmonton Catholic School Board was considering the possibility of closing another three elementary schools. Several months earlier, the headlines proclaimed that the board had reaffirmed its policy of not "sharing educational space" or school facilities with the public school board.

Not to "share educational space" with its public neighbour is a very valid policy for a Catholic district. Any "shared space" necessarily becomes "public school space" because it is against the public school district mandate to have religious icons or faith-related practices within their schools.

Unfortunately neither the administration nor the board of Edmonton Catholic Schools see the innate contradiction between refusing to "share space" and the decision to provide "no space." The mission of a Catholic school district is to provide a Catholic education for the Catholic students within its jurisdiction.

Catholic school districts must become champions of the small urban or rural school; our mandate and the reality of the sparsity of our school level population makes it mandatory.

In order to provide a Catholic education for our children we must be willing to take advantage of every facility available to us, even basements of our churches, let alone existing small schools.

Ron Patsula
Edmonton

Conversion 'coming home' questioned

"From Baptist to Catholic: Former minister and his wife feel they have come home," (WCR, March 10).

The story about Dale and Trish Peterson left me feeling saddened. I would hope that we had moved beyond such triumphalistic stories of conversions, especially coming from other sister Christian churches. It is not that some feel more at home in one community more than in another - this is even true among Catholic parishes and the people today do feel the liberty to vote with their feet when they find the style of another parish more "home" to them than perhaps the parish where geographically they belong according to old medieval norms.

If Dale and Trish in their own spiritual journey have come into the Catholic tradition, they should be welcomed as brother and sister in the most authentic of Christian traditions by the new community. But just in the same manner - another couple might go the other way as they may find the Baptist tradition more "home" to them, and they should be able to do so without the old stigma and rejection characteristic of attitudes of past generations.

Phil Little
Toronto

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