Hello,

I spent practically all of last week working on making a video for a conference that is coming up on August 7. My job was to dig around different areas to find pictures that showed the diversity of our schools, as well as proto-types of what Catholic education might look like from the outside looking in. While this may seem like a pretty simple and quick task (which was what I believed when I first began the project), it was extremely time consuming because of editing and ensuring that the music went in sync with the pictures and the commencing words.
When putting together the pictures, I looked for pictures that demonstrated the striving for peace, justice, and academic achievement which are central to Catholic education. To be quite frank, such pictures are not that simple to find, since putting a picture to the abstract image of justice is quite complicated, and different people might find different means of perceiving what justice might look like objectively and concretely. Still, I attempted my best at doing such a task. In all honesty, academic achievement was perhaps the easiest picture to find and demonstrate, since finding pictures of students engaging actively in learning is quite simple.
What intrigued me the most, however, of the project were the lyrics of the songs used as the background track, Brand New Day (mentioned previously). The song was the most intriguing because it set forth for the children the reality of hope by placing before them the image of a new day, a new dawn, a new beginning. In Catholic theology, there are three cardinal virtues, among them being that of hope. That is exactly what the song offered: hope for a new day. That is exactly what Catholic education tries to do: give hope. How so? Well, for a long time, Catholic schooling of nuns (while biased in what related to God and the Church), was nonetheless, the only education that many poor children could receive. The history of this country can point to the fact that many children received education because nuns did what they could in managing classes with forty or fifty children and pouring themselves out for them. While it is true that as of late, with more and more public and private schools, Catholic education has been relegated, it still serves many children who would otherwise be stuck in public schools were teachers, to be quite frank, are not the best nor the most committed. And so, what I can say is that Catholic education, as again history shows, does a good job of serving the poorest of the poor and the weak by providing them with aide so that they may be able to attend a school where their children's needs might be met. And that is what I tried to demonstrate in that five minute video that took up my time last week.

Peace,