“Catholic schools-in McQuaid’s point of view at least-were meant to help our immigrant population adjust to life in the United States and, at the same time, to preserve their faith tradition in a civic environment that wasn’t always friendly to Catholics. That environmental issue has changed over the years. Catholics are pretty well integrated into American society right now, and whereas a parent might once have sent a child to Catholic school to preserve the faith and to protect them from the incivility of culture, that doesn’t seem to be an issue anymore…” -Bishop Matthew Clark in the February issue of the Catholic Courier

“The lesson here for American Catholics is this: For more than forty years, we’ve worked to integrate, accommodate, and assimilate to American society in the belief that a truly diverse public square would have room for authentically Catholic life and faith. We need to revisit that assumption. It turns out that nobody gets anything for free. If we want to influence, or even have room to breathe in the American environment of coming generations, we’ll need to work for it and fight for it-always in a spirit of justice and charity, but also vigorously and without apology. Anyone who still has an easy confidence about the Catholic ‘place’ in American life had better wake up.” -Archbishop Charles Chaput in the February edition of First Things