It has been said: “Rather send your child to a State school where s/he’ll have to fight for his/her Faith, than to a Catholic school where s/he’ll have it taken from him/her.”

Earlier this year, our bishops released a statement, “The Catholic Education of School Age Children”, wherein they acknowledged the abysmal failure of N.Z’s Catholic schools to affirm the Faith in their pupils.
They wrote:

“(28) There is plenty of data to show that Catholic schools have good academic standards and that their students receive a sound education. But provision of a sound education is not the reason for the existence of the Catholic school; such an education can equally be provided by state or private schools. The Catholic school is first and foremost a place to encounter the living God who in Jesus Christ reveals his transforming love and truth. Its primary goal is above all a question of communicating Christ, of helping to form Christ in the lives of others. That is the goal against which the effectiveness of Catholic schools must be assessed, because it is the reason for their existence.”

And they went on to write:

“…. the first and foremost goal of every Catholic educational institution, that of being a place to encounter the living God who in Jesus Christ reveals his transforming love and truth, has not been achieved.”

And the bishops confessed that the participants in a study undertaken recently,
“equated being a good Catholic with being a good person, with little else being required. They held strongly to the conviction that each individual has the right to believe as they choose – the right to shape their own version of the Catholic faith, which for most does not currently include participation in the faith community, and which may not include it in the future.”

Metro, as should be expected, has no idea of what constitutes the “best schools in Auckland”.