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A Message from Fr. Michael

Even as we are happy to be accepted into the bastions of power and privilege that were once closed to us, we are still called upon to fight against class assumptions of superiority. 

Our acceptance can easily cause us to forget who we are, that is, our communion in Faith with the marginalized and the outcast. Schools are places of remembrance. Remember who you are called to be is a powerful mantra. 

We Catholics need to hear such a call in terms of what Jesus said: “Who are my brothers and sisters and mother? Whoever does the will of my heavenly father is brother and sister and mother to me.” 

To remember calls us to counter the false images our culture throws at us at every turn – even as we watch a president address the nation. The gradations of power and privilege are actually put on proud display. 

It is interesting to note that Barack Obama went to a Moslem school when he lived in Indonesia. Contrary to the rumors launched against him, the school was not a medrassa, but, nonetheless, it was a religious school. 

One of the fixed ideas of our age is that the best education has no religious value attached to it, that it is possible to give children “just the facts,” and that that will be enough for them. 

But when values are left to the street, or even to the family, they can quickly turn into justification for who we are and what we are doing now. Andrew Greeley has never tired of pointing out that our schools cannot be reinvented should they disappear. 

Bishop Brazier and Rev. Leon Finney have both given up the idea of trying to have schools of their own. 

The legal requirements and the demand for unending commitment are huge hurdles in a culture whose interests continuously pass from one thing to another. 

Our teachers and the whole support staff and community that make up the school environment – from the people in the Parking Lot each morning, to the ladies in the Cafeteria - all show the great commitment they have personally to our children. You can’t duplicate that. 

Day in and day out, rain, snow or shine – they show up, ready to go. God has blessed those small beginnings from 121 years ago. 

And God is blessing us still with these wonderful people today. 

May we, the parishioners of St. Thomas the Apostle, have the grace, the wisdom, and the dedication to keep that heritage alive and well for generations to come. 

                             -Fr. Michael

Dear Parishioners & Friends, 

One of the first things Fr. John Carroll did when he became the first resident pastor of this parish back in 1887 was to open a school. 

The very first school had already begun a year earlier, in 1886 under Sr. Mary Gregory, the Dominican superior. It was located in two rooms in the basement of the small church then located at the corner of 55th and Kimbark. 

A year later Sr. Mary Edward arrived with four more Sinsinawa Dominican Sisters. They began with 100 students. Those were the years when the Baltimore Catechism was brand new. 

When Sr. Mary Gregory first opened that two-room basement school, one task was to teach those children the three R’s. 

Another task was to remind them of their true identity – no matter what the society around them thought of them, or to what degree it might exclude them. 

They needed to know that they were the inheritors of an immensely rich tradition: in thought, in the arts, and in the often neglected area of self-discipline. 

Left simply to absorb what the culture was saying about them, they could hardly have been expected to appreciate the richness of being a Catholic. 

Today we face different challenges. 

The individualism of American culture rarely gets challenged - in fact, it stands out as a huge ideal. Its mantra is: “I did it my way!” That message comes at us day and night in one form or another. 

But our belief that we are truly the Body of Christ demands that we find a living context for this in our very divided society. 

Race is one area where America has not managed to fully acknowledge or heal its own past. 

Economics is another huge divide in our culture. 

Religion, especially when attached to another culture, is emerging as an area of division. 

Ability and disability forms another barrier – whether that be seen in terms of dramatic physical or mental limitations, or whether it manifests in who is able to make the “team” and who is not. 

Catholic education today must take on all the challenges of a true secular curriculum and go beyond that. 

Many decades ago John Dewey came here to the University of Chicago with the task of educating teachers of children in terms of Greek paideia – that is, educating Americans to perform their civic duty. But that often implies accepting a set of unexamined, or assumed values. 

This often assumes that there is a ruling class and an under-class. The ruling class is educated to rule. 

Catholics today are somewhat assimilated into the assumptions of a ruling class today.