As students prepare to bid farewell to summer and head back to school, Catholic education in Ontario may be at a crossroads.
In Ontario, as in Alberta and Saskatchewan, Catholic schools are government-funded under a separate public school system. About a third of Ontario students — well over 500,000 — are estimated to attend Catholic schools, making Ontario’s Catholic system one of the largest in the world.
But the models for delivering faithful, orthodox and inspiring Catholic education differ across the country, and controversies in recent years have polarized opinions about the best approaches moving forward.
A particular flashpoint has been Catholic schools where areas of contention have included funding, budgeting, governance, management, and the struggle between education in keeping with Catholic teaching and competing secular or contemporary ideologies.
On the spiritual side, there have been repeated exhortations from Cardinal Francis Leo, archbishop of Toronto, and before him Cardinal Thomas Collins, for Toronto Catholic schools to remain true to the Church’s guidance in both teaching and conduct.
Cardinal Leo recently called Catholics and Catholic schools to greater devotion to the Sacred Heart, rejecting “trendy, misguided, and inadequate symbols” that “are contrary to God’s divine revelation.”
In 2020, after a number of controversies around the teaching of Catholic morality in Toronto schools, Cardinal Collins, then archbishop, reprimanded members of the Toronto District Catholic School Board for stopping the reading of a passage from the “Catechism of the Catholic Church” referring to homosexual behaviour.
“That a Catholic should be criticized, and effectively be prevented by Catholic trustees from reading from the Catholic Catechism at a meeting of a Catholic school board is reprehensible,” wrote Cardinal Collins.
Despite appeals from Church hierarchy, fundamental controversies remain unresolved. For instance, in Ontario, all but two of 29 English Catholic school districts fly some version of a rainbow-themed Pride flag. Meanwhile, a resolution to recite the Our Father each morning in one Ontario Catholic school district only passed by a narrow vote.
Archdiocese of Toronto spokesperson Neil MacCarthy said the strong Catholic identity of Catholic schools is beyond question. Just as parents who send their children to a French school expect classes to be taught in French, the environment and character of a Catholic school should reflect the faith fully and robustly, he said in phone interview Aug. 15.
MacCarthy said the archdiocese does not exert direct operational or managerial control over the Toronto District Catholic School Board, and a great deal rests on the shoulders of the trustees. In addition, everyone in the Church is called to advance Catholic identity in the Catholic school system.
Some of these issues are handled differently across the country. An education expert in the Alberta Catholic school system indicated in conversation that the working relationship in Alberta between the government, trustees and superintendents is typically collegial and cooperative, with a focus on helping Catholic schools carry out their specifically Catholic mandate.
One significant difference from Ontario is that the Alberta Catholic School Trustees’ Association not only promotes positive liaison among key stakeholders, it is also narrowly focused on the task of advancing the Catholic character of the system. Its mission, according to its website, is to “celebrate, preserve, promote and enhance Catholic education.”
As the Alberta expert put it: “We have the cross, the most inclusive symbol of all: Why would we need anything else?”
Apart from matters touching on the faith, Catholic schools have also had to deal with questions of temporal affairs. The Ontario government has been putting pressure on schools, Catholic and non-Catholic, to control spending, close schools where student numbers have dropped, and avoid deficit spending.
On June 27, the Toronto Catholic District School Board was placed under provincial supervision by Ontario Education Minister Paul Calandra over financial mismanagement concerns. Similar measures were announced for the Toronto Public School Board, where trustees were temporarily replaced by ministry-appointed supervisors.
MacCarthy said no one is happy to see supervisors coming in to take control and expressed the hope that the interim arrangement comes to a swift end.
Moreover, it is widely understood that Ontario’s government intervention is largely about operational concerns and administrative responsibilities, rather than ideology or concerns about curriculum.
Indeed, the positive climate at many Ontario Catholic schools has been evident even to those on the outside. MacCarthy cited a cabinet minister from a previous government who said Catholic schools “feel different” the moment a person walks in. “There is more to it than the cross on the wall,” he said.
The public funding of Ontario’s Catholic schools is an issue that not only affects Catholics. The Globe and Mail, CBC, TVO and other major media outlets have reported on efforts to abolish public funding for Catholic schools. One scenario would be if the provincial government withdrew funding; another could involve a bishop deciding not to certify a school in his diocese as Catholic any longer.
Neither of those scenarios are very likely in the foreseeable future. The demand for Catholic schooling in many districts is high. For instance, in the Toronto suburbs of Halton/Oakville, where secondary enrollment has been growing consistently for years, K-9 enrollment saw an increase this year as well. Catholic schools have the right to give preferential admission to baptized Catholic students. However, in some jurisdictions, including the GTA, schools may have open intake, accepting students from other faiths.
In municipalities, such as London, enrollment in Catholic schools has been swelling, partly due to an influx of non-Catholic students, including many Muslims, whose parents prefer a religious rather than secular education for their children.
The results, perhaps surprising to some, have included greater understanding between different faith communities.
Non-Catholic religious communities — not least Jewish and Dutch Reformed constituencies — have spoken up on behalf of educational options rooted in faith and for greater civic-mindedness, tolerance, commitment to truth and classical educational values. As reported recently in the National Post, the Jewish community has monitored with alarm the abrupt surge in antisemitic incidents, while also deploring “TikTok teaching” — a reference to the degradation of proper pedagogy with pernicious social media trends.
Amid the challenges, many of those dedicated to Catholic education in Ontario see hopeful signs. Above and beyond strong demand, many point to the difference an excellent principal can make, encouraging devotions in the daily schedule, and prompting the students to reach out to their neighbours in charity.
MacCarthy said he knew his own children’s school had succeeded in that regard when he saw they were able to recite the St. Michael Prayer from memory.
Miles Smit is co-founder and co-director of the Petrarch Institute. He wrote this analysis piece as part of the God in the City Catholic journalism seminar in Toronto Aug. 10-16.
