Trusting the Experts Is a Sign of Spiritual Decline

Trusting the Experts Is a Sign of Spiritual Decline by Aaron Ames at Crisis Magazine. Plato noted in his dialogue with Euthyphro that the very seed of hatred, the key to making enemies, is when two or more people disagree on what is just and what is unjust. It is no wonder why traditional Christians appear to be the greatest enemy of our present culture. We fundamentally disagree with the most sacred judgments that our expert class has pronounced. And so, Christianity is not despised because our present world is areligious but, rather, because it is far too zealous. People do not believe in medically transitioning a nine-year-old girl into a boy because it makes logical sense. They believe it in adherence to their religious creed. Remember that those damned to destruction in Revelation are not damned for lack of devotion and worship but rather for devotion and worship to the wrong thing, that beast which deceives. Read  

The Unplugged Life Is Worth Living by Noelle Mering at National Catholic Register. I had the opportunity to meet with the kids in the Unplugged Scholarship earlier this year. They did not seem fearful; they seemed freed. They weren’t naïve nor anxious about the modern world, but rather clear-eyed and engaged. One spoke of how he had taught himself to play piano in the time he used to spend scrolling. A young woman spoke of how she had read two novels this year for fun for the first time since her pre-smartphone days. They mostly seemed ambivalent about eventually rejoining the ranks of the plugged, but open to discerning that later. Read 

Children Have a Right to Classical Education by Kevin D. Roberts at First Things. Classical education eschews pedagogical fads…. Drawing inspiration from Greek and Roman academic traditions, classical education seeks to ground students in the good, the true, and the beautiful. Its highest aim is to form virtuous students grounded in the best of the Western canon. Classical schools instruct students through the sequence known as the “trivium,” guiding them through grammar, logic, and rhetoric. They first establish a knowledge base, then learn how to evaluate arguments, and finally how to articulately express their thoughts. As such, classical education is interested in more than forming good students; its charge is forming students who are good. Read 

Transgenderism “Is a Blatant Refusal of the Doctrine of Creation” interview of Michele M. Schumacher by Carl E. Olson at Catholic World Report. [I]n terms of its abject evil, the “transgender” movement is perhaps second only to direct abortion, and this is why it must be vigorously opposed wherever it is found, and this includes in churches, in church organizations, in schools, in school boards, in “think tanks,” in business organizations, in media and entertainment... in the military, in legislatures, and anywhere else it rears its ghastly head. Read 

Psychology Has Been Hijacked by Gender Activists by A. Marie Doherty at Crisis Magazine. Unfortunately, the influence of role modeling in identity formation is no longer considered or understood. The proof is in the explosion of kids today who are gender confused due to societal rejection of gender norms coupled with widespread promotion of gender confusion in schools, medical practices, therapy, and throughout the media. “A recent study has documented an increasing trend among adolescents to self-diagnose as transgender after binges on social media sites such as Tumblr, Reddit, and YouTube. This suggests that social contagion may be at play.” Read 

The Uprising: Families Clash With Schools Over LGBTQ Propaganda by Sarah Parshall Perry at The Daily Signal. LGBTQ talking points once focused on “equality” and wanting to “live and let live.” Now, yearlong “Pride” initiatives look more like a hostile takeover of government school systems. What with school libraries shelved with gay porn, LGBTQ curriculum, gender-neutral bathrooms, preferred pronoun policies, and gaslighting parents on the gender identities of their own minor children (frequently facilitated by school administrators), families finally have had enough. For once, the alphabet mob is back on its heels. But only because taxpaying parents and their brave kids are speaking up. As noted by Kyle Reyes, the Connecticut dad: “Parents are starting to come out of the woodwork, and it’s time to start fighting back.” Read 

UK Christian Mom Wins Appeal After Being Fired from School Job for Social Media Posts by Madeleine Teahan at Catholic News Agency. Reacting to the verdict on Friday, Higgs said: “From the beginning, despite the many attempts by the school to suggest otherwise, this has always been about my Christian beliefs and me being discriminated against for expressing them in my own time.” Read 

Maine Sued Again for Blocking Religious Schools from School Choice Program by Breccan F. Thies at Washington Examiner. St. Dominic Academy, a high school in the Diocese of Portland, and parents Keith and Valori Radonis are suing Maine for barring them from using funds from the assistance program for expressing religious belief…. Last year, the Supreme Court ruled against Maine's law excluding faith-based families from the tuition program in Carson v. Makin, but the Pine Tree State revised its law shortly before the decision came down to block faith-based schools from receiving money if they "discriminate[s] between two religions." "The new law.... gives the state's Human Rights Commission the power to determine how Catholic schools teach children about marriage, family, and gender. Read 

Education Freedom is the Blueprint for Academic Success by Marc LeBlond at Washington Examiner. [B]rand new research from the University of Kentucky supports the broader connection between educational choice and student success, finding “strikingly large test score gains for states that have adopted voucher programs and/or Education Savings Accounts (ESAs), swamping the effect of per pupil K-12 spending on test scores. …Overall, it seems that even a small measure of educational freedom has a large effect.” Read 

The Best Argument for School Choice by Robert Pondiscio at Washington Examiner. When choice is framed as simply an alternative to traditional public schools, or we look no further than measurable student outcomes such as test scores to decide whether choice “works,” we are making two unquestioned assumptions, both remarkable and neither of which captures the intrinsic appeal of school choice: first, that the purpose of schooling is merely to raise test scores, and secondly that district schools have a place of privilege against which all other models must justify themselves. Read  

Throwback Thursday 

Why Christian Children Don’t Belong in Public Schools by Aaron Ames at The Federalist on May 2, 2019. Let’s get right to the point: many Christians throughout history shared the idea that God is the fundamental source of all truth, whether religious, academic, or otherwise. But what are we to make of a student who has spent 15 to 20 years studying academics without ever considering God’s relationship to these fields of knowledge? Does this kind of education not actually imply that God is not the source of all knowledge and truth? It should really be no wonder that students so quickly abandon the faith after a year or two of university schooling. God has been left out of every meaningful field of knowledge by the end of high school, so it does not take much more prodding to decide that God never really fits in the first place. Read