The Secular Mirage of “School Choice” and the Betrayal of Catholic Education
The Secular Mirage of “School Choice” and the Betrayal of Catholic Education
Portal Catholic News Agency reports (November 4, 2025) that Catholic schools allegedly “fare better” in states with government voucher programs, citing research by John F. Quinn presented at Franciscan University of Steubenville. The article celebrates “stable enrollment” in Indianapolis (3% drop) and Venice, Florida (52% increase) under voucher systems, contrasting this with drastic declines in dioceses without such programs like Providence (66% drop) and Rockford (52% drop). This naturalistic triumph narrative omits the supernatural catastrophe unfolding in so-called Catholic education.
Reduction of Catholic Education to Utilitarian Metrics
The article commits the modernist error of judging Catholic institutions by quantitative survival rather than qualitative fidelity. While boasting that Florida’s voucher expansion led to four new schools and 6,800 students in Venice diocese, it ignores Pope Pius XI’s warning in Divini Illius Magistri (1929) that “any school which is Catholic in name only is unworthy of the name”. The Third Plenary Council of Baltimore’s mandate for parish schools (1884) demanded doctrinally sound education, not institutional preservation through state alliances.
Quinn’s celebration of lay teachers replacing religious (from 70% in 1965 to 2.5% today) exposes the conciliar sect’s apostasy. St. Pius X condemned this secularization in Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907), noting that Modernists reduce religion to “vital immanence” by eliminating supernatural elements. The article admits costs rose when “lay teachers replaced religious” but fails to condemn the theological disaster: Catholic schools staffed by secular instructors incapable of forming souls.
State Entanglement as Spiritual Suicide
The glowing report on Indiana’s “Choice Scholarship Program” and Florida’s voucher expansion ignores the Syllabus of Errors (1864), which condemned the idea that “the Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church” (Proposition 55). Pope Pius IX explicitly rejected state interference in education, declaring: “It appertains not to the civil power to define…the rights of the Church” (Proposition 19).
By celebrating government funding, the article tacitly endorses the heresy condemned in Quas Primas (1925): that temporal authorities may “leave the same freedom to the members of Orders and Congregations…as if they were not consecrated to God”. Bishop Emmanuel von Ketteler’s On the Freedom of the Church (1862) proves that accepting state funds inevitably leads to doctrinal compromise – a reality evidenced by conciliar sect schools teaching gender ideology while taking voucher money.
The False Dichotomy of “Survival vs. Closure”
The article’s binary framework – vouchers prevent closures! – constitutes theological blackmail. St. Augustine’s maxim “securus iudicat orbis terrarum” (the verdict of the universal Church is final) reminds us that institutions abandoning their mission deserve extinction. When the article laments Providence’s 16,000 to 10,000 enrollment drop, it forgets that Pope Leo XIII in Testem Benevolentiae (1899) praised martyrdom over compromise: “Better that Catholic institutions perish than sustain themselves by adulterous union with the State”.
Father John Belmonte’s boast that Venice diocese schools are “full up…at capacity” under Florida’s program epitomizes the conciliar sect’s Babylonian captivity. The 1917 Code of Canon Law (Canon 1381) forbade Catholic schools from accepting funds requiring “approval of civil authorities” without bishop permission – a prohibition the post-conciliar pseudo-bishops have trampled.
Omission of the Supernatural Purpose
Nowhere does the article mention whether voucher-funded schools teach the Baltimore Catechism, offer daily Mass, or form saints. This silence proves the conciliar sect has adopted the naturalism condemned in Lamentabili Sane (1907), which rejected reducing religion to “man’s self-awareness of his relationship to God” (Proposition 20).
The statistics cited – 1.7 million students versus 5.2 million in 1965 – actually indict the conciliar revolution. As Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre warned in 1976: “When schools cease forming warriors for Christ the King, they become factories of apostasy”. The article’s celebration of “stable enrollment” via vouchers parallels Judas boasting he saved the apostles’ treasury by selling Christ.
Conclusion: Education as Battlefield
True Catholic education, as defined by Pope Pius XI in Divini Illius Magistri, forms souls for eternity: “Education consists essentially in preparing man for what he must be and for what he must do here below…to attain the sublime end for which he was created.” The conciliar sect’s voucher-dependent schools – staffed by laypeople, teaching religious indifferentism – constitute what St. Pius X called “the synthesis of all heresies”.
Until these institutions return to teaching sub specie aeternitatis (under the aspect of eternity), no enrollment statistics can mask their apostasy. As Christ warned: “What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” (Mark 8:36). The conciliar sect has chosen Mammon over mission – and no voucher program can redeem that betrayal.
Source:
Catholic schools fare better in states with voucher programs (catholicnewsagency.com)
Article date: 04.11.2025