Juan Diego hosts Catholic educators conference

IC photo/Linda Petersen

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Bishop Edward K. Braxton of Belleville, Ill., gives the keynote address during the National Catholic Educational Association's 2021 Catholic Leadership Summit, held at Juan Diego Catholic High School.

DRAPER — Catholic school superintendents from across the country met at Juan Diego Catholic High School Oct. 25-26 for the annual National Catholic Educational Association leadership summit, following a two-day new superintendent academy at the school.

Participants also attended a Mass celebrated by Bishop Oscar A. Solis at St. John the Baptist Catholic Church on Oct. 24. “We’re excited and honored to host the Catholic leadership from across the country,” Utah Catholic School Superintendent Mark Longe said prior to the summit.“We’ve been working with the National Catholic Educational Association to plan this event for several months.”

Because of the pandemic, many of the sessions were livestreamed, and there were fewer attendees than usual at the national event, Longe said. NCEA President Lincoln Snyder said about 50 superintendents came to Utah for this year’s summit; normally about 300 to 400 people attend.

The Most Rev. Edward K. Braxton, Bishop of Belleville, Ill., opened the summit with a keynote address on “Catholic Schools and the Racial Divide.”

“Catholic schools can play a needed role in bridging the racial divide in the United States and in the Catholic Church in the United States,” he said.

Referencing the 1979 USCCB pastoral letter Brothers and Sisters to Us, which condemns racism as a sin and a heresy that endures in both society and the Catholic Church, Bishop Braxton lamented how few Catholics have read it. He also spoke of the 2018 USCCB pastoral letter against racism, Open Wide Our Hearts: The Enduring Call to Love, which “urged all Catholics to acknowledge the scourge of racism that still exists in our hearts, our words, our actions and our institutions.”

The pastoral letter “said racism can be individual when Catholics fail to recognize people of a particular race as created in the image of God in dignity,” the bishop said. Catholic schools exist for one reason, he said: “to inform, form and transform young people in Jesus Christ and guide them on the path to Christian wisdom. If we do not do this, there is no hope of bridging the racial divide. Our schools are Christian schools whose primary goal is to help our students to attain the joyful vision of life that comes from Christian wisdom.”

While Bishop Braxton said he doesn’t believe most Americans or most American Catholics are racist in the strict sense of an overt hatred and wishing ill on people of different racial backgrounds, he cautioned the superintendents about the language they use in their schools, particularly the use of the word “minority” when describing students of different ethnicities who are not white.

“It does not take a particularly critical analysis to recognize the fact that words like ‘minorities’ and ‘minority groups’ are used quite selectively in American society, and they are not applied consistently in reference to all groups that make up a statistically small number of citizens,” he said. “Majority/minority language is not neutral language; it controls meaning and the way people perceive themselves in social context.”

He related a story that reflected the alienation African-American and some other Catholics can feel in the Church that primarily features Eurocentric art in its buildings. Many years ago, he said, he took a group of African-American Protestant children who were studying in a Catholic school to visit a Catholic Church to explain the role of art in Catholic worship. After viewing all the artwork in the building, one child asked, “Does the Catholic Church believe that only white people are in heaven?”

“If the Catholic Church cannot make the small step of diversity in its iconography, it might be understandable if African-Americans feel they do not matter to the Catholic Church,” Bishop Braxton said. “It’s a basic truth as Christians that we believe all lives matter,” he said, referring to the Black Lives Matter movement. “‘All lives matter,’ however, is sometimes used as a way to divert attention from the urgent concerns of African-American people.”

Addressing another current issue, he said critical race theory is a university-level theory suitable for discussion in a graduate level class on human sociology, politics, social justice and the history of racism.

“There is no reason for Catholic educators to speak about critical race theory in the classrooms of elementary school students or secondary school students,” he said, adding that the term has become so loaded that any mention of racial prejudice, the civil rights movement or Black Lives Matter is often seen as teaching critical race theory.

“I hope you as superintendents of schools will do all you can to model appropriate behavior and speech when addressing issues of race in our Catholic schools,” he said in conclusion. “Our students spontaneously absorb the attitudes and vocabularies of the leaders around them.”

In addition to hearing the keynote address, the superintendents attended different sessions to learn about innovations in Catholic schools. In one session, Longe and Associate Superintendent Nikki Ward shared Utah Catholic Schools’ and Juan Diego CHS’s success with blended learning over the past eight years.