Why I Want to Send My Kids to Catholic School

Driving home from the Amendolas' party tonight, I just kept thinking...what was this whole Catholic school thing? It's hard to put it into words. My first idea was a family since we were so close, but you don't have secret crushes on your family members that you divulge later under the influence of whiskey while sitting on a vomit-soaked trampoline.

But it definitely felt like a family in some ways--the rivalries, the grudges, the traumatic and embarrassing moments...but most of all, our shared memories of teachers, Mass, field trips, and retreats. The other day, I was reminded of all that we shared when a picture of Sister Anne flashed on the projector screen during Mass. I saw the picture, and then I saw Tom Pohlen sitting in the next bank of pews. It occurred to me that he and I had both had Sister Anne in first grade along with countless other Saint-Angela students, but Tom's and my experience had been the same. The thirty-something of us were thrown together for eight of our most formative years, and that time is something that we'll never be able to erase--no matter how much whiskey.

I find myself questioning the Church so much of the time--its stance on female priests, contraception, homosexuality--and that's just the tip of the iceberg. Yet, right after we watched our parents dancing in a lip sync dressed as psychedelic nuns, we were so hyped that we yelled that we should have "kids in three!" so that we can put them in school together and be just like our crazy, habit-garbed parents. Why all the enthusiasm to indoctrinate our future children with beliefs that some of us find fault with?

For me, I guess it has to be about the community. We were these warped versions of siblings to each other, and we'll always have that siblinghood. I hope my future kids will have as carefree a childhood as I had--during which the worst thing that ever happened was crying like a baby about a dead lizard and having everyone remember it--and they will be even luckier if they get to spend that time with the same thirty kids. Because, while it does have some disadvantages (i.e. people remembering the person you were from first through eighth grade), it is still an amazing thing to have held hands during Mass together...to have eaten ice-cream sandwiches together...to have gone to Astro Camp together...to have played basketball with nuns together...to have loved the Carnival together...to have grown up together.