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ILEARN results show Catholic schools help student development

The Indianapolis Star has indirectly given Catholic secondary education schools some well-deserved credit for its role in development of student accomplishment by publishing the most recent results of Indiana’s ILEARN testing in English and Math across all school districts of our state.

The July 15 issue of The Star documented test results in English, showing the top schools in Indiana were dominated by Catholic schools, including schools in Indianapolis, Lafayette and Evansville. These schools represented eight of the top 10 statewide school districts cited in this category!

In the category of accomplishment in both English and Math, diocesan schools represented 50% of the top 10 statewide school districts!

These results are a true tribute to American Catholic education, and the great sacrifices by a Catholic Church which more than two centuries ago established what is today a public education system open to all—thanks to visionaries such as St. Elizabeth Ann Seton and others.

I am still struck by the irony that many of today’s public education advocates argue that Catholic schools somehow violate a “separation of Church and state” when in fact it was the Catholic Church in America in the 19th century that in effect brought free public education to the state.

- Dr. David A. Nealy | Greenwood
 

When it comes to unborn children, there is nothing hard to understand

What is so hard to understand?

Apparently, the word “infant” is. To what or to whom does the word infant refer?

We speak of “the infant in the womb,” a “newborn infant,” “the unborn infant.”

Quite simply, an infant is a human being in its beginnings, whether in the womb or outside. The Catholic Medical Association has stated that life begins at conception. And that life has never, never resulted in the birth of anyone but a human being.

And when a pregnant woman is murdered and the child’s death also results, the perpetrator is charged with two murders. What is so hard to understand?

When an abortion is “botched” and the infant killed afterward, why is that not murder?

We have laws prohibiting murder; are there any defining and prohibiting infanticide? What is so hard to understand?

When I was a child, my parents—with the entire country—were horrified at the wholesale slaughter of baby girls in China, wondering what sort of people could do such a terrible thing to their children.

Well now we know: we are those people. Aren’t 61 million children enough?

What is so hard to understand?

- Richard Ryan | Indianapolis
 

Reader: The foundation of love is the Trinity, and we must all live in love

To say that “love is love” depreciates authentic love—the love that wills the good of another.

Love is not whatever you want it to be. To say that “love is love” is both meaningless and weightless, unable to accomplish anything or persuade anyone who doesn’t already agree with such an assumption.

If it’s indeed true that “love is love,” then it’s also true that we’ve become love’s negotiator, and our intuitions about it are above reproach, beyond the prying tentacles of laws and institutions and others’ esoteric opinions.

“Love” is becoming a universal term for nothing in particular, which makes conversations about it arduous. Some say that love is blind. Love is not blind. Love sees more, not less. Because love sees more, it is often willing to see less.

Love is all about God. Love originates in God. Love originates in and is exhausted by our triune Maker: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Love descends. Love ascends. Love extends to others. Love is relational and communal. Behold love. Love between the eternally loving, eternally secure and eternally complete Godhead.

The foundation of love is the Trinity. God is love. Live in love.

- Kirth N. Roach | Order of Carmelite Discalced Secular Indianapolis