New endeavors happening now are better equipping our teachers and students to live as authentic disciples of Christ

The Diocese of Springfield in Illinois is proud of our Catholic schools and that first and foremost, they are Catholic. Our schools should never be referred to as a “private school,” because if we think “private” first, then that means we have lost our Catholic identity. Over the past few years, the diocesan Office for Catholic Education has started new endeavors (with more on the way) that are making our schools even more Catholic, ensuring teachers, students, and even parents, are better equipped to go into the world and be authentic disciples of Christ.

Andrew Hansen, editor of Catholic Times, interviewed Dr. Mark Newcomb, Director of Catholic Education for the diocese. Here is the first part of that interview:

17. What happened in 2023 that shifted how we as a diocese and our Catholic schools go about Catholic education – ensuring they are beacons of authentic Catholic teaching and learning?

1. Bishop (Thomas John) Paprocki promulgated the pastoral letter, Higher Calling, Higher Standards, that year. This document points the way for Catholic schools in our diocese to strengthen their Catholic identity. In this signal document, our bishop makes clear that, if a school in our diocese claims to be Catholic, it will be characterized by seven key hallmarks. Those schools that are living out their Catholic identity with full integrity will be: inspired by a supernatural vision; imbued with a Catholic worldview across the curriculum; founded on a Christian anthropology; animated by a spirit of community and communion; sustained by Gospel witness; accessible, affordable, stable; and organized and governed from the heart of the Church. As a department, the Catholic Education team is clearly focused on how to incarnate these hallmarks in all of the schools of the diocese. Last year, we developed a new mission to focus our work in carrying out this charge from Bishop Paprocki:

Our mission is to share the joy of the Catholic faith – of knowing, loving, and serving God – with the people of our diocese and, through education, formation, and example, to enable them to radiate the Truth, the Light, and the Love of Christ to others.

Q. In your research for why your team is doing this revamp, what statistics did you find that showed truly authentic Catholic education needs to be beefed up?

A. Our team did a dive deep into the data on Christian belief in modern America. Today, 80 to 90 percent of Catholic children are losing their faith between adolescence and early adulthood. This is a crisis of major proportions, and we knew that we needed a determined plan of action if we were going to succeed in helping more of our students make a life-long commitment to Jesus Christ and His Church.

The General Sociological Survey has been administered every year in the United States since 1972. The most recent results indicate that only 14 percent of those who were raised Catholic identify as such when they reach adulthood.

If there is a silver lining here, we also have a lot of data on who is leaving the Church, when, and why. Many Catholic children are disaffiliating in their tweens from the influence of social media and toxic ideologies that distort the truth about human nature and sexuality. Most of these children abandon a serious commitment to Christianity by the age of 13. Another large group of children disaffiliate early in life because of a false perception that Christian faith and scientific reason are incompatible. It’s not uncommon to hear someone say, for example, “Well, I used to be religious, but then I learned about the Big Bang.” Lines like this are dropped in peer conversations to suggest that God could not possibly create the universe through a “Big Bang” even though the theory was pioneered by the Belgian Catholic priest, Father Georges Lemaître in the 1930s.

17. What new endeavors have you started to turn the corner on these issues?

1. Through a lot of prayer and contemplation about what we believe Jesus is calling us to do in our diocese, the Catholic Education team is leading a very focused and faithful renewal of Catholic identity in our schools. This endeavor aims to help faculty integrate subjects and see themselves first and foremost as ministers of the Good News of Jesus Christ and seeks to help students know their primary identity is sons and daughters of a loving Creator God.

The first phase of this work has been providing supplemental formation to Catholic school teachers so that they can be confident in handing on the beautiful heritage of their Catholic faith. The work of the Evermode Institute (based at Corpus Christi Priory in Springfield), Father Ambrose Criste, O. Praem., and all of the Norbertines, have been a signal contribution to this work. Teachers are now working their way through a fourth semester of lessons in Theology, Liturgy, and Philosophy in the online program. They also attend an all-day “Day of Reflection” annually at the priory, with colleagues from other schools, to grow deeper in their Catholic faith formation.

The Catholic Education team has also purchased supplemental religion programs to assist teachers in these endeavors. The Ruah Woods Theology of the Body curriculum has been implemented in about a third of our schools, and we aim to bring the rest of them aboard in the coming months. This striking curriculum uses captivating literature to help students see themselves first and foremost as sons and daughters of God.

We have also purchased the Sophia Institute for Teachers courses created by Father Robert J. Spitzer, S.J., Ph.D. for all of our schools. By deploying these supplements, all of our Catholic schools can keep their baseline religion curricula, while also having some common methods, vocabulary, and tools across the whole diocese. Ruah Woods and the Spitzer classes are helping us to address the two biggest threats to our children losing their faith: the Theology of the Body program highlights the fact that they are, like Christ, children of God the Father, incarnate and called to virtue; the Spitzer courses showcase the compatibility of contemporary scientific research and Christian faith.

17. Father Spitzer is a popular priest who gives talks and appears often in videos and television. He’s a Jesuit priest, physicist, philosopher, and former president of Gonzaga University, and is known for his work in philosophy, science, and faith and founded the Magis Center, which explores the relationship between science, reason, and Catholicism. Tell us more about the program that schools have already implemented from Father Spitzer and what they entail for students?

A. The curriculum that Father Spitzer has developed for middle school students, , is one part public speaking class, one part Philosophy class, and one part Theology class. It focuses on helping our students connect scientific laws and observations to the revealed truth of Scripture. The high school Apologetics course does something similar for students in grades 11-12. These programs help faculty to team-teach subjects, with deep Catholic integration between topics, breaking the “religion class silo,” ensuring that faith is not separated from our thinking about reality and human nature. We were super excited to have Father Spitzer present to all of our school leaders on April 9 for our Principals Leadership Forum.

Q. What other efforts will happen in the future?

A. We are starting a transition this year to a new accreditation structure, the Western Catholic Educational Association. This will give us an ability to connect our new programs and faculty training to measurable outcomes that we assess in accreditation visits for each of our Catholic schools.