In the early 1980s my parents faced a quandary: I was the oldest child, and it was time to enroll me in kindergarten. My dad, a history teacher, was recently laid off from the local public school. While both parents were baptized Catholic and my mother attended Catholic school through 12th grade, they had married civilly and long ago abandoned any practice of faith. With public school out of the question, they had one option: the nearby Catholic school.

In Providence’s design, Catholic education opened doors for my parents to return to the Catholic faith. That journey didn’t happen quickly or easily. Little by little, God planted seeds and disposed their hearts to grace. By enrolling their child in a Catholic school, they were suddenly confronted with the need to consider their own relationship with God and His Church. This changed not only my parents, but our whole family.

One incident was particularly decisive. My younger sister, in second grade at the time, came home and asked Mom if we could pray the rosary, since she had been learning it in school. Mom didn’t have a good reason to say no. So, we prayed. I’m not sure what we prayed that first evening. My parents didn’t remember how to pray the rosary, so it was led by my little sister. It was probably punctuated by a good bit of yawning, interruptions and bickering between siblings. But the family rosary became a habit. With time, family prayer led us to God and to friendship with Our Blessed Mother and bound us together in a new way.

In his abundant goodness, God called me to follow Him more closely as a consecrated religious, and to a congregation serving Catholic education. I have been blessed to be in Catholic schools all over the country and internationally, and I am convinced that we need Catholic schools more than ever.

I don’t need to tell you that data on religious practice in this country is not promising. Each generation shows higher rates of either disaffiliation or no religious belief at all. Attendance
in Catholic schools has declined for nearly 60 years. Other indicators of religious practice, such as marriages, baptisms and Mass attendance, have likewise trended downward for the same period. In a time such as this, the Church needs to support its schools more, not less.

When religious practice is declining and God is more and more eclipsed from many of our contemporaries’ vision, we need schools in which the Catholic faith is taught and lived with dynamism, joy and hope. When confusion about what it means to be human is widespread, we need education founded on the Christian vision of the human person, made in God’s image and likeness and endowed with inalienable dignity. When society is rent by divisions and brokenness, we need students who know that Truth is real. He is a Person, Jesus Christ, who alone can heal our wounds and teach us to love as He has loved us.

There are many American parents today who might hesitate to enter a church, but choose to enroll their children in a Catholic school. Even if they can’t articulate it, they recognize that it offers something that public education can’t. And their children, immersed in a rich environment of faith and intellectual development, will start to learn the Gospel, and, please God, see it lived out around them.

These children, evangelized seven hours a day, five days a week, cannot help but start to evangelize their parents and those around them in small ways. Perhaps, one day they will come home and ask mom if the family can pray the rosary. I pray that God will open their hearts as He opened my parents’ hearts. I know that I am forever changed from the ways Catholic education shaped my life.

Sister Mary Agnes Greiffendorf, O.P., PH.D is a Dominican Sister of St. Cecilia Congregation of Nashville, TN. She has taught at all levels of Catholic education and served in numerous administrative positions, including as the President of Aquinas College in Nashville. She is currently the principal of St. Gertrude School in Madeira.