Potpourri

Through this column I would like to personally acknowledge and thank our parishioners for responding to our call to support Catholic Education and our very own St. Catherine of Alexandria School by attending the School Gala last Friday, February 11 at the Mission Inn. Your $135.00 and bids to the auctioned items will go far for our children in their growth as Catholics, as children of God. A big thank you!

The cause of Catholic Education brings to mind the original meaning of education. It comes from the Latin word: E(x)-Ducere: educere: to lead out of. It brings to mind the formation of a new people in Exodus: with the new knowledge of God, the Israelites were led out of the land of bondage in Egypt into the land of Freedom in the Promised Land. It brings to mind the person, mission and ministry of Jesus, who was found in the Temple, explaining the will of His Father and declaring that His teachings in word and deed were to preach the good news to the poor, set the downtrodden free, to heal the broken hearted, to restore sight to the blind, to bring liberty to captives and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. To paraphrase Paolo Freire: “Education is a cultural action for freedom.” It is a training and an act of liberation from ignorance to knowledge and wisdom, from oppression to freedom and to fuller human life, and from being a sinful humanity to becoming better children of God, sharing more fully the life and love of the Holy Trinity.

The ideals of Catholic Education bring to mind the thoughts of Blessed John Paul II. For him, Catholic Education is a privileged place for the search for truth, for the cultivation of an analytical and creative mind, for a discovery of God and the deepening of the faith in an atmosphere of religious freedom, for the development of moral conscience and a social ethic “according to Christ’s mind, to the praise of the Creator and the Redeemer” (Ex Corde Ecclesiae). In the tradition of his predecessors, John Paul II also defined the liberating task of Catholic Education as a continuing search for a new way of life and a new world economic and political order.

In honor of the Egyptian people: I congratulate and pray for the people of Egypt for their bravery and commitment to the cause of freedom and democracy through a People Power Revolution. The project to oust their ruler whom they called dictator is not over. With the Egyptian Army in power, the constitution is abolished, the parliament dissolved and new elections are being planned. But the people, especially the workers, are pushing for deeper fundamental structural reforms to remind the interim military government on the direction of liberating change. The Exodus is now being re-experienced in Egypt and in the Middle Eastern Islamic world. We did oust the Philippine dictator too. --Fr. Ben Alforque, MSC