Northern VA Priest Helps Families Afford Alternatives to Woke Public Schools
Northern Virginia is infamous as a hotspot for critical race theory and other woke propaganda in schools, but one Catholic priest is fighting back. Fr. John De Celles of Springfield, Virginia’s St. Raymond of Peñafort Parish has expended a good deal of time and effort on making Catholic school and homeschooling viable and affordable alternatives for the families of his parish.
Fr. De Celles understands how vital education is to the formation of the body, mind, and soul of every child, and, since last year, he has been offering scholarships for his young parishioners so they can leave the pernicious atmosphere of Northern Virginia’s public schools. Fr. De Celles seems indeed to be following in the footsteps of St. Raymond of Peñafort, who is famous partly for the schools he founded.
“In Northern Virginia, where critical race theory, gender ideology, and emptied classrooms because of COVID-19 have sparked protests by angry parents of public-school students, a parish priest is taking up the legendary Archbishop ‘Dagger John’ Hughes’ mission of helping Catholic children get out of public schools by every means possible.
Archbishop Hughes founded the Catholic school system in New York City in the mid-1800s and famously declared, ‘We shall have to build the schoolhouse first and the church afterward. In our age, the question of education is the question of the Church.’
Faithful Catholic education is no less urgently needed today. So, when the pandemic hit last year, Fr. John De Celles of St. Raymond of Peñafort Parish in Springfield, Virginia, instituted a one-time $2,000 scholarship for each child in his parish who switched from a public elementary or secondary school to a Catholic parochial or lay-run school.
This year, Fr. De Celles has renewed that offer again, thanks to the generosity of parishioners. He also doubled the parish’s annual, renewable scholarships to $1,000 for students in Catholic grade schools and $2,000 for students in Catholic high schools. And on a case-by-case basis, St. Raymond’s offers additional financial aid to families in need and helps cover the direct educational costs of families who homeschool.”
This is not a ploy to increase enrollment at the parish school, either, because St. Raymond’s has no school. In fact, Fr. De Celles particularly criticizes the attitude so common at Catholic schools now that increasing enrollment is more important than being faithful or affordable. Crisis Magazine explains:
“These scholarships are not a marketing strategy for the parish school—in fact, there is no school at St. Raymond’s. Instead, parishioners attend nearby parochial schools or Angelus Academy, one of a growing number of faithful, lay-established schools. St. Raymond’s also supports an active group of Catholic homeschooling families.
The goal in promoting all of these options is to ensure that kids get a Catholic formation.
‘We need to do whatever we can to help parents get their kids out of these corrupt government-run schools,’ Fr. De Celles says. ‘We talk a lot about ‘evangelization,’ but we’re losing the souls we already have if we let these little ones be prey to the wolves. They will leave us and Jesus. We must do everything we can to save them, literally.’
The parish scholarships and Father’s efforts to highlight the dangers of public schools in bulletins and other parish communications have persuaded families to make the switch to Catholic education. One family told him they ‘cannot imagine going back to the public school system.’”
Single parents and couples with big families alike benefit from Fr. De Celles’s efforts. The priest said, “Parents tell me all the time how they love the Catholic schools, and how grateful they are.” Fr. De Celles is proving that one man can make a huge difference in the lives of many other people.
“For many Catholic families, Catholic schools are too expensive. Today the average annual tuition for Catholic elementary parochial schools is $5,178, and for Catholic high schools it’s $10,575, according to the National Catholic Educational Association.
Fr. De Celles believes that pastors and Catholic school leaders should avoid getting ‘stuck in the mindset that they have to ‘compete’ with public schools, so they spend all sorts of money on expensive buildings, facilities, equipment, gymnasiums, science and computer labs instead of first focusing on providing a solid education in a Catholic setting and culture.’
Rather than worrying about what most matters—like serving ‘the lower middle class and poorer devout practicing Catholic families who simply want their kids in Catholic school but can’t afford to’—the Church needs to avoid looking at ‘the wrong numbers, enrollment rather than cost,’ Fr. De Celles says. He especially wants to help out ‘the ones we’ve convinced to have large families,’ who ‘accept the faith in a radical and sacrificial way’ but are often priced out of parochial schools.
‘We need to consider Catholic schooling—solid Catholic schools teaching and exemplifying the faith—as one of our primary goals,’ he says. ‘So what if we underwrite the schools with offertory surplus? We need to save the souls of our kids.’
In addition to helping families with charity, Fr. De Celles advocates school choice policies.”
Fr. De Celles formerly opposed government school vouchers, believing that government interference harms education (which is completely accurate). He realized, however, that, practically speaking, in the less-than-ideal educational situation in America today, school vouchers can help children escape from woke schools which offer little real education.
“‘I used to be opposed to school vouchers from the government,’ he [Fr. De Celles] recalls. ‘My fear being that once they get their fingers in our schools, and we become addicted to their money, they will eventually start to control us.’
On the other hand, if Catholics eventually have to forego voucher money or tax credits because of moral concerns, ‘we’ll be in no worse shape than we are today,’ he reasons. The simple fact remains that ‘it is unjust for the government to tell parents where they must send their own children if they want to take advantage of their own tax money.’
Fr. De Celles also supports Catholic homeschooling, ‘because parents are the first educators of their children, not us. And if they choose to be more active in their children’s formation, God bless them! That’s great, and we should help them.’
Homeschooling works, ‘because one size does not fit all,” says Father. “We can’t say, ‘Here’s your parish school, take it or leave it.’ We have to give them alternatives that fit their needs and capabilities and goals.’
Another hopeful alternative is lay-run Catholic schools outside the parochial system, as long as they are ‘truly Catholic.’
‘We’re America—where are our creative, free, enterprising Catholic educators who want to establish new, faithful and independent schools?’ he asks. ‘We’ve seen so many success stories—schools run on a shoestring but providing for a real need, what parents want. Again, pastors and bishops should encourage and support this in every way possible.’”
Fr. De Celles is truly living out the Christian (and American) imperative to achieve greatness and effect change through personal agency. Not only that, he seems to have inspired his parishioners not only to take advantage of his offers but to donate money to make those offers possible. Thus he not only identified the problem, he found a creative way of fixing it, and inspired others to do the same. I wish there were more leaders like Fr. De Celles in the Catholic Church, and America in general, today.