One of the most important questions facing Catholic schools today is how can these schools meet the needs of today's and tomorrow's culture and become a living faith community. Evidence suggests that Catholic high schools have a common mission of academic excellence, faith development, and a sense of community; academic, co-curricular, and…

In 1987, the Graduate School Center for Excellence in School Administration, at Xavier University of Louisiana, initated a program to stimulate interest in the Catholic school principalship and to enhance professional development among practicing school-site Catholic administrators. The curriculum, staff, and regular admission requirements are…

To meet the needs of undergraduate seminarians attending St. John's University in New York who are required to take speech communication courses and to appeal also to nonseminarian undergraduates, a Religious Communication minor was proposed. The minor consists of 18 credits in speech. In addition to arranging currently offered courses into a…

This paper discusses why the Roman Catholic community should be united on the desirability of school choice without financial penalty. It describes what the Catholic motives should be and the political warrant that can be employed. It then asks whether there is sufficient will in the Catholic community to fulfill its proper motivations and…

In this study, parents' reasons for school choice were explored at four inner-city school sites by means of a questionnaire distributed to parents by their children. The sample for this study consisted of the parents of over 2,300 students who attend the four schools studied. All are inner-city Catholic high schools located in four different…

The declining number of priests and nuns as teachers in Catholic schools, combined with the increasing emphasis placed on the role of the laity is shifting responsibility for leadership in Catholic schools to lay persons. The impact of this shift is being experienced in three areas: a new vision of the "ministry of teaching" which places lay…

The Christian Brother organization, faced with a decreasing number of workers and forced to reassess the allocation of its resources, conducted a survey of its members. The survey solicited the brothers' views of the organization's direction and sought to discern whether the brothers' beliefs and actions were in agreement. The survey, with 93…

A study examined the historical development of the Cathedral Basic Readers (a.k.a. the Dick and Jane readers), a special edition used to teach reading in Catholic schools. Three questions served as a guiding framework: (1) what factors led to the creation, development, and discontinuance of this Reader series? (2) what were the differences between…

Flaws in the literature regarding the use of schools by German Roman Catholics in Western Canada as vehicles to perpetuate the German language and Catholic religion are pointed out and corrected. The educational system in St. Peter's colony was not uniform, as portrayed by many scholars, but pluralistic. Three types of schools were in use--two…

This collection provides transcripts of remarks delivered by five participants in the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities' meeting at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. They include: (1) "The Catholic Intellectual Tradition" (Margaret O'Brien Steinfels), which focuses on the willingness of Catholic…

This paper examines the "Populorum Progressio," Pope Paul VI's 1967 encyclical on the "development of peoples," for a condensation of the chief tenets of Catholic social thought and for curricular guidelines. The author takes the word "development" to mean the concrete realizations of justice and peace. Fundamental…

This monograph includes six papers presented at a meeting sponsored by the Departments of Religious Education and Secondary Schools of the National Catholic Education Association. The papers include: (1) "What Makes a School Catholic?" (William J. O'Malley); (2) "Catholicity: A Tradition of Contemplation" (Thomas Keating); (3) "Catholic Identity…

This study was undertaken to determine the value and belief patterns of Catholic elementary school principals and teachers in the context of the school as a faith community. It was believed that some educators, particularly lay teachers, would value secular and noncommunitarian purposes and characteristics more than religious and communitarian…

Studies suggest that historically Australian Catholic schools have existed not only to reproduce Catholic traditions, but also to advance the children of the Irish working classes socially. Data collected at the highly academically oriented Christian Brothers College (CBD), Newburyport, support the idea of educating for upward mobility as a means…

Rarely when single-sex Catholic secondary schools convert to coed school organization is the potential loss of gender-specific benefits addressed. Since the movement to coeducation is seldom accompanied by the return of a "converted" school to single-sex status, the incalculable loss to the traditional gender diversity of school organization is…