Quotes & Sayings About Catholic Education

Look, the communists have tried to corrupt our education system. They've tried to corrupt any number of institutions. Why wouldn't they try to corrupt the Catholic Church? It is a big enemy. — Rush Limbaugh

I was born into a working class Irish Catholic family at the brutal bottom of the Great Depression. I suppose this early imprinting and conditioning made me a life-long radical. My education was mostly scientific, majoring in electrical engineering and applied math. Those imprints made me a life-long rationalist. I have become increasingly skeptical about, or detached from, the assumption that radicalism and rationalism are the only correct perspectives with which to view life, but they remain my favorite perspectives. — Robert Anton Wilson

The difference between a regular Catholic education and a Jesuit education is the difference between the army and the marines. — Gary Reilly

The period of Catholic ascendancy was on the whole one of the most deplorable in the history of the human mind ... The spirit that shrinks from enquiry as sinful and deems a state of doubt a state of guilt, is the most enduring disease that can afflict the mind of man. Not till the education of Europe passed from the monasteries to the universities, not till Mohammedan science, and classical free thought, and industrial independence broke the sceptre of the Church, did the intellectual revival of Europe begin. — William Edward Hartpole Lecky

We saw one school-house in our walk, and listened to the sounds which issued from it; but it appeared like a place where the process, not of enlightening, but of obfuscating the mind was going on, and the pupils received only so much light as could penetrate the shadow of the Catholic church. — Henry David Thoreau

My father was Catholic, and my mother wanted me to go to Catholic school. That's what I did in first grade. But she couldn't afford the payments. I think it must have hurt her a lot, not to be able to give me a Catholic education. — Edward P. Jones

G. K. Chesterton once said that the family is a cell of resistance to oppression. Unfortunately, this was one point of Catholic theology that the communists agreed with. To undermine Polish culture, communists struck at its heart - the family. Work and school schedules were organized so that parents had minimal contact with each other and with their children. Birth control and abortion were encouraged, state-sponsored sex education was implemented in schools, and apartments were built to accommodate only small families. — Jason Evert

How decisive for the Christian educator, or for any educator of good will, is the revelation that man is made in the image and likeness of the three-Personed God? That is like asking what difference it will make to us if we keep in mind that a human being is made not for the processing of data, but for wisdom; not for the utilitarian satisfaction of appetite, but for love; not for the domination of nature, but for participation in it; not for the autonomy of an isolated self, but for communion. — Anthony Esolen

I attended Catholic school. We received a great education from the nuns ... Also, guilt. Guilt and a feeling of never being satisfied with what you've done. And a sense that you are inadequate and a big phony. All useful for a writer. I'm always being edited by my inner nun. — George Saunders

My profanity has a certain religious flavor that can only be learned through a lifetime of Catholic education. — Emma Chase

I had an Irish Catholic education. Horrible nuns, vindictive and cruel. — John Lydon

I was educated by monks - I thank them dearly for the education they gave me, but I am no longer a Catholic. — Antony Gormley

The Catholic Church - it's so difficult because I don't want say anything offensive but it makes me very angry that religious leaders from this faith have tried to respond negatively to sexual education and to the promotion of condom use — Emma Thompson

Mary has produced, together with the Holy Ghost the greatest thing which has been or ever will be - a God-Man; and she will consequently produce the greatest saints that there will be in the end of time. The formation and the education of the great saints who shall come at the end of the world are reserved for her. For it is only that singular and miraculous Virgin who can produce, in union with the Holy Ghost, singular and extraordinary things. — St. Louis De Montfort

To understand our faith -- to theologize in the Catholic tradition -- we need philosophy. We must use the philosophical language of God, person, creation, relationship, identity, natural law, virtues, conscience, moral norms if we are to think about religion and defend it. Theology has some terms and methods of its own, but its fundamental tools are borrowed from philosophy.

The growth of religious fundamentalism and the collapse of religious education mean theology is more urgently needed in universities -- especially Catholic ones -- than ever before. — George Cardinal Pell

The worst possible sexual education: a taboo imposed by the Catholic church plus romantic literature elevating love to unreal heights plus the obscene language of my peers. After all, I was nearly born in the nineteenth century, and I have no tender feelings for it. — Czeslaw Milosz

To the extent that the parents who send their children to these [Catholic] schools are parents like my own, who actually have faith in the church. Faith that it will provide their children with safety, a decent education and values about life and others. This is an institution that stands for all good in the world. — Sonia Sotomayor

[My catholic education] sticked with me. It caused the rage I had to make 'Pink Flamingos.' — John Waters

I think one of the unique aspects of Catholic school education is the opportunity to care for the material and intellectual needs of the child in a community atmosphere. — Mark Foley

Catholic schools in our Nation's education have been paramount in teaching the values that we as parents seek to instill in our children. — Joe Baca

In our friendship I had spent a lot of time telling Lucy to pull herself up, to get over the past and move on. That was my role, the best of my Catholic education in action, and I didn't worry about it because I knew that she had other friends, friends who were as close to her as I was, who were more tender. She had practical friends and emotional friends, friends with big houses to crash in and friends who were good for wild fun, and she knit us together to find the perfect balance of what she needed from all of us. — Ann Patchett

1970's was a time when English medium schools left such a distinctive impression in the field of education that middle-class parents with unexceptional income clamoured for admissions in private schools even before the birth of their offsprings. One occasion when catholicity genuinely assisted parents was when obtaining a spot for their children at catholic schools despite intense competition. — Neetha Joseph

In search of a complete education with the ideals of trust, faith, understanding and compassion, many families are turning to the structure, discipline and academic standards of Catholic schools. — Mark Foley

By what route the infant Hansen found his way to the Jesuits, the file did not relate. Perhaps the mother converted. Those were dark years still, and if expediency required it, she may have swallowed her Protestant convictions to buy the boy a decent education. Give the Jesuits his soul, she may have reasoned, and they will give him a brain. Or perhaps she sensed in her son from early on the mercurial nature that later ruled his life, and she determined to subordinate him to a stronger religious discipline than was offered by the easy-going Protestants. If so, she was wise. — John Le Carre

I was born in Paris in 1950. I had a strict upper-class Catholic education but I never really fitted in the system and revolted against it quite early. — Francois Gautier

This is the heritage of Catholic education ... one which those who went to Catholic schools always recognize in each other, members of a secret society who, when they meet, huddle together, temporarily at truce with the rest of the world, while they cautiously, untrustingly, lick each other's wounds. — Sonia Orwell

My parents, neither one of them went to college. That wasn't available to them. But, you know, we had a wonderful life. You know, it - you know, we lived in what would now be considered poverty, but, you know, it didn't feel like poverty when I was living it. I had a great time and got a - had a great experience. I went to Catholic school through high school. I had a wonderful education. — Tad Devine

There was no known cure for a Catholic education. — Lisa Scottoline

Before playing football, I didn't fit in anywhere. My parents didn't have a lot of money, which they spent on our education to send us to Catholic private school in Oakland, mostly black. The other kids had more money than I did. I started school early; I was young. So I'd come back to my hood and read. — Ryan Coogler

Catholic education aims not only to communicate facts but also to transmit a coherent, comprehensive vision of life, in the conviction that the truths contained in that vision liberate students in the most profound meaning of human freedom. — Pope John Paul II

My children have gone to Catholic school ... Part of their whole education is talking about the inner life and looking at your life, even though you're only 15 or 16 - thinking about your mortality, thinking about the value of your life, thinking about your obligations. — Alice McDermott

Education is the key to perpetuation of the [god] virus for the Taliban, Baptist or Catholic. If the virus cannot control public education, it will seek to divert resources from public coffers to fundamentalist school funding. From the madrassa schools of Pakistan to the Christian push for school vouchers in the United States and the religious home school movement, religions seek to control education or to control the resources for education. — Darrel Ray

I went to Catholic school throughout my whole academic life. In fact, my children - my husband and I and our children in my own family now have over 100 years of Catholic education among us. — Nancy Pelosi

As a proud Catholic, I know the impact that faith-based education can have in our society and have witnessed it first hand in my district. — Joe Baca

I am and have always been a strong proponent of public education. But by the virtue of its very nature - publicly funded schools cannot offer the type of spiritual education that Catholic schools have long provided. — Mark Foley

At home, she toed the party line: "The greatest calling for a woman is to be a Catholic wife and mother." But I sensed that she hated the 1960s convention of stay-at-home motherhood. In my thirties, when my father shipped me my old Barbie-doll cases that had been sealed in storage since my mother's death, I found evidence of her unhappiness. My Barbie stuff was a mirror of her values. She never told me that marriage could be a trap, but she refused to buy my Barbie doll a wedding dress. She didn't say, "I loathe housework," but she refused to buy Barbie pots and pans. What she often said, however, was "Education is power." And in case I was too thick to grasp this, she bought graduation robes for Barbie, Ken, and Midge. — M.G. Lord

At his funeral the priest's words applied signally to him: 'The Christian Brothers are a body of men who live without luxury, labour without emolument, and die without notice, that they might stamp God's image on the soul of youth. That surely is a splendid vocation. — Edmund Campion

Respect for the dignity of others includes treating them as rational creatures capable of being persuadad by rational argument, even in the face of frequent evidence to the contrary. — Richard John Neuhaus

My career still strikes me as miraculous. That a boy raised on Marine bases in the South, taught by Roman Catholic nuns in backwater Southern towns that loathed Catholics, and completed his education with an immersion into The Citadel - the whole story sounds fabricated, impossible even to me. Maybe especially to me. — Pat Conroy

A good school provides a rounded education for the whole person. And a good Catholic school, over and above this, should help all its students to become saints. — Pope Benedict XVI

By offering an education centered on values, the faculty in Catholic schools can create an interactive setting between parents and students that is geared toward long-term healthy character and scholastic development for all enrolled children. — Mark Foley

We're pupils of the religions - Catholic, Protestant, Jewish ... Well, the Christian religions. Those who directed French education down through the centuries were the Jesuits. They taught us how to make sentences translated from the Latin, well balanced, with a verb, a subject, a complement, a rhythm. In short - here a speech, there a preach, everywhere a sermon! They say of an author, "He knits a nice sentence!" Me, I say, "It's unreadable." They say, "What magnificent theatrical language!" I look, I listen. It's flat, it's nothing, it's nil. Me, I've slipped the spoken word into print. In one sole shot. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

[Taken from a BBC documentary]
Tariq was born in Lahore, now in Pakistan, then part of British-ruled India, in 1943. A Catholic school education did nothing to shake his life-long atheism, which he shared with his communist parents. — Tariq Ali

You see, some non-Catholic friends of mine have questioned the depth of my faith because of the fact that I have a good education. — Robert Vaughn

Thankfully, I was able to go to Marquette University and get my education, a Catholic education, so I could please my family, because I think they wanted me to be a priest. — Danny Pudi