Archbishop: Catholic teachers must help shape better society

The Express of May 9th has an interesting article. Catholic teachers must shape a better society, but who is shaping better Catholics in our CATHOLIC Schools. We talk about a lack of Vocations, but where do we expect to get vocations from? Yet we are not teaching our children to live the virtues.

Here is the article written by Camille Bethel:

Catholic teachers must help to shape a better society, Archbishop Joseph Harris, said yesterday .

Harris was speaking at a thanksgiving mass in celebration of the 130th anniversary of St Joseph Convent, San Fernando. The service was held at the Our Lady of Perpetual Help RC Church, Harris Promenade, San Fernando.

He said a Catholic education has to ensure that habits of prayer, love and being a Eucharistic people are engraved in Catholic students before they leave Sixth Form. This is to ensure that both purposes of a Catholic education are fulfilled.

"A Catholic education has a double end. It seeks to develop citizens of the kingdom of Almighty God and also citizens of this land. That is the purpose. A Catholic education therefore must help to revitalise Catholic culture and identity or else it would have failed.

"If it is one thing that we need among all our people we need people with merciful hearts, compassionate hearts, loving hearts. We need a society which is far more genuine than the one in which we live," he told the principal, teachers and pupils in the congregation.

Harris spoke about the purpose of the mission of the Cluny Sisters to Trinidad and he congratulated them for ensuring that the intuition was still being carried out after 130 years.

"I read an except from a letter written by the Bishop at the time, who asked the sisters if they could come to Trinidad so that they could teach young ladies of all classes and all religions. That was the founding intuition. 130 years later we can look at it and say to ourselves, 'Yes, we have been faithful'."