Alternative to Overpriced Cleveland-area Catholic High Schools

Just received this message in my inbox, so I thought I'd spread the word here at Est Quod Est. The parent-run Catholic school we send our kids to, Padre Pio Academy, is starting 9th and 10th grades in the fall. The cost is going to be very reasonable, especially compared to St. Edward's and St. Ignatius and it will also be 100% Common Core-free, so that's awesome.

EXTRA! EXTRA!

Who: Parents & Students Interested in High School

What: Meeting tomorrow (Thursday May 22)

When: 7:30 PM

Where: Padre Pio Academy - 12920 Madison Ave, Lakewood, OH 44107

Why: To find out about the PPA high school coming fall 2014

Hear a presentation about the High School curriculum and learn about registration, tuition, elective courses, clubs, activities and much more!

Staff members will be on site to talk to parents and students.

Don't forget — Special discount on tuition for registration expires May 30th. $900 Savings!

Spread the word!

*If you cannot make the meeting but would like to arrange a time to learn about the program, please call (216) 571-0174.

One of the reasons I feel extra motivated to post this is that a friend sent me this link noticing that the summer reading list at St. Ignatius High School in Cleveland once again includes the truly insipid book The Absolute True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie. I blogged about this last year and though I realize that our combox discussion featured cordial disagreements about how concerned parents and Catholics should be about the reading list, I think my argument is a little bit stronger now that the book is once again on the list. Assuming you really want to have a book which has been recently authored on your list — for whatever reason — can you really expect me to believe that there has been nothing written in the last year that is better than this book? I've read better Bazooka Joe comics. And Bazooka Joe doesn't make fun of Jesus Christ.

Church Militant reports on Padre Pio Academy

Yes, my kids are in this. Joe specifically noted to me how he is "not actually jumping rope" at the end.

Gilbert is sitting in the back of the class "pretending to read". Every once in a while he breaks into a grin.

Liberals dislike of good news is telling

Bill Donohue shows how liberal Catholics dislike good news about their own church.

Peter Steinfels, who wrote the obituary on Father Andrew M. Greeley in today’s New York Times, notes that “there was resistance among liberal Catholics to his [Greeley’s] positive findings about Catholic schools.”

This is striking. Steinfels, himself a liberal, is writing about Greeley, another liberal (on most subjects), about the way liberal Catholics react to good news about Catholic schools. Which raises the question: Why do liberal Catholics treat good news about Catholic schools as bad news? Would they prefer they fail?

Steinfels went on to say that Greeley’s “research debunked the received view at the time that Catholics had low college attendance rates. He found instead that white Catholics earned bachelor’s degrees and pursued advanced degrees at higher rates than other whites, and he attributed their success to the quality of education in parochial schools, a controversial assertion in a time of public-school ascendancy.”

Conservative Catholics cheer such news. Apolitical Catholics cheer such news. So what’s wrong with liberal Catholics that they resist such news? Is their craven need for acceptance by secular elites so debased that it drives them to resist good news about Catholic education?

Of course many of them also dislike good news about the abuse scandal in the church. The proposition that there are a finite number of child abusers in the church or that the problem is at least under control disturbs them for some reason.