Denver Catholic

23 DENVER CATHOLIC | JULY 25-AUGUST 7, 2020 actively encouraged this policy.'... After the Civil War, Congress spent large sums on education for emanci- pated freedmen, often by supporting denominational schools in the South through the Freedmen's Bureau." Let's remember that it was not until Catholics — and specifi cally the Irish — began to fl ood U.S. shores that national leadership sought to confi ne students to their version of "public schools." As celebrated columnist George Will has written, "In the 19th cen- tury's second half, fear and loath- ing of Catholic immigrants were ubiquitous and forthright. In 1854, Massachusetts's governor and all but three members of the legislature were members of the anti-Catholic Know-Nothing party, and the legisla- ture's Nunnery Committee searched for underground dungeons in con- vents. Protestantism was e– ectively a semi-established religion, widely taught in public schools with hymn singing and readings from the King James version of the Bible." Thus and since, Blaine sealed U.S. education's fate as a monolithic system, even as our nation has diversi- fi ed far beyond what the Know-Noth- ings originally feared. And today, education su– ers from decades of not just discriminatory education prac- tices but housing practices — called redlining — that confi nes students to education by zip code. Attempts to change that are fought by groups vested in that system and who hide behind Blaine Amendments to pre- empt parents from making choices out of that system to attend non-public and religious schools. In this book A Fine Line: How Most American Kids Are Kept Out of the Best Public Schools, Tim DeRoche explores the discriminatory practices that have endured in the decades fol- lowing Blaine. "Why are children being assigned to schools at all?" he asks. "Why do we trust an incredibly important decision to a government o® cial? We aren't assigned to a doctor by the government. Or a hospital. We aren't assigned where to live [despite the government's attempts in prior times]. ... But our children are 'assigned' to a school when they are fi ve years old. And many lower-in- come kids of all races fi nd themselves assigned to dysfunctional failing schools with abysmal records of stu- dent performance." The data is worth reviewing again. Both math and reading assess- ments have revealed that student achievement has either been fl at or dropping for most U.S. students. Between 2017 and 2019, there was no signifi cant change from the prior 2017 assessment in math and marked decreases in reading. Reading scores were lower in more than half of the states at grade 8 since 2017. According to the associate com- missioner of the National Center on Education Statistics, which admin- isters the Nation's "Report Card," "... students are struggling to understand and explain the importance of civic participation, how American govern- ment functions, the historical signifi - cance of events and the need to grasp and apply core geographic concepts." So DeRoche, like millions of par- ents and policymakers, challenges the concept of "education by zip code" — as he should — and believes that "every American parent should be making an active choice about where their children will be educated." With the Blaine cloud of bigotry being lifted by the Supreme Court, that pathway is now open. W e have come to think of the Church, the gathering of God's faithful, in primarily spiritual terms. Throughout Chris- tian history, however, faith implied social and even polit- ical obliga- tions, which supplied a concrete expression for the Christian life. In the history of Christen- dom, one political organization prom- inently stands out: The Holy Roman Empire. We think of the Roman Empire as ending in 476, the date of the abdication of the last emperor in the West, although it continued with unbroken succession in the Byzan- tine East until 1453. In the year 800, Pope Leo III crowned a new emperor in the West, Charlemagne, to serve as the preeminent political ruler of Europe and the protector of the Church. Emperors were longstanding partners of the Pope, the one serving as political and the other as spiritual head of Christendom, though they often turned into rivals. Peter Wilson provides a thorough account of the Empire, and a defense of its e– ectiveness as a political body, in his Heart of Europe: A History of the Holy Roman Empire (Belknap, 2020, paperback ed.). The extensive book (of just under 1,000 pages) does not provide a standard chronolog- ical account of fi gures and events, as it examines the overlooked heart of European culture through three sections focused on the ideal of the Empire, its unique sense of belonging that held it together, and fi nally its governance. The book's organization provides an interesting and fresh approach, but it could have used a stronger narrative through coher- ent stories and summary of the key contributions of important fi gures (somewhat supplied by the timeline at the back of the book).The Empire's key characteristics included its trans- nationality (centered in Germany and embracing at least parts of twelve other modern states); its decen- tralized authority, with governance dispersed among the Emperor, kings, electors (tasked with voting for new emperors), princes, prince-bishops, counts, knights, and free cities; and its cooperation with clergy, with bishops integrated into its civil rule. As the nature of Christendom implies, the Church is not solely spir- itual; it is a lived social and even cul- tural reality in the world, and the laity have a role in regulating Christian life in the world. The emperor was the chief representative of the laity and even held veto power within the papal conclave. As such, the emperor was the main defender of Christen- dom against external enemies and promoter of internal peace. The Holy Roman Empire experienced remark- able stability and purpose, uniting such a large expanse of territory and peoples through an understanding of the Empire's role in the defense of local rights and of Christendom itself. It provided a sense of corporate iden- tity and freedom by seeking consen- sus and peace, rooted in faith: "Free- dom was expressed and celebrated collectively through communal gath- erings and festivals, and by verbal and visual reminders of the community's traditions and identity" (579). Christendom is currently taking on new forms in the southern hemi- sphere. Despite having its original heartland in the Middle East, even 100 years ago it would have made sense to speak of Christianity as a religion cen- tered in Europe and North America. No longer. There is a drastic shift in the proportion of Christian population to the southern hemisphere, ensur- ing Christian growth for the next 100 years and leading to new spiritual and social expressions of the faith. Philip Jenkins thoroughly explains this shift in The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity (Oxford, 2011, 3rd ed.). Although the Catholic Church should experience signifi cant growth in Latin America, Africa (which will become the largest Christian conti- nent), and Southeast Asia, much of the global growth comes from Pentecostal and independent groups. "The Chris- tian world will have turned upside down," Jenkins notes, as a solid major- ity of Christians will come from the south, while "Christianity worldwide is becoming steadily more charis- matic" (113, 85). With growth in numbers, new social expressions of Christianity will follow. And like the Dark Ages of Europe, the Church is stepping into the social void to provide sta- bility: "All too often the Catholic Church occupies such a prominent role because it is literally the only institution that can hope to speak for ordinary people" (179). As Christians work to rebuild society, "we might even imagine a new wave of Chris- tian states, in which political life is inextricably bound up with religious belief " (172). It is hard to predict the future, even as a very di– erent trajec- tory seems inevitable, as the Chris- tian faith, once again, proves itself adaptable by fi nding fertile soil for spiritual and social renewal. Refl ect- ing on Christendom helps us to real- ize not only what we've lost, with the breakdown of the social reality of the Church in the West, but what could be, building upon the growth of Chris- tian culture in the global south. The Catholic Reader R. Jared Staudt, PhD, is a husband and father of six, the director of formation for the Archdiocese of Denver, a Benedictine oblate, prolifi c writer, and insatiable reader. DR. R. JARED STAUDT Christendom: old and new

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