Tonight is the big night! It’s Christmas in July Fest at the Carolina First Center. And, we’re ready to celebrate and raise funds for our school. (This also includes lots of dancing!)
The event is sold out – in fact, it sold out earlier this summer. That’s just how we roll.
On any given afternoon, Joe Bryson is answering phones, stuffing envelopes, or “doing what Sister Catherine tells me to do,” he says simply. Why is Joe here? He is motivated to help with what he calls “the reparations.”
“Racial prejudice has gone on long enough in our world,” says Joe. “We’re all God’s children. At St. Anthony’s, I can help make it right.”
Serving in a world where people always want to know the return on investment can be difficult. “Return on investment at St. Anthony’s isn’t always something you can see,” explains Joe. “But when you can see it, it’s like the Good Shepherd who looks for that one lost sheep. At the end of the school year, if we’ve found that one child or family and helped them succeed, the whole effort is worth it.”
When a person sits long enough to ponder what an ideal education might be, there is no question that a diversity of thoughts, experiences, people and our cultures makes the BEST education of all. The worst is a mono-cultural, confined, uni-lingual and talking head approach to sharing information and values.
St. Anthony regards our radical diversity as a prime mover in the successes we have been able to gain. In addition to significant gender, faith, racial, economic and learning style diversity, we have a complementary foundation built on 70 plus years of lasting Roman Catholic Christianity. The very word catholic means “universal” and we are committed to a universal appeal to all truth and every value. The fact is, the Catholic Church and its schools find the truth everywhere and in many differing peoples. We celebrate that.
We rejoice in the genius of African American spirituality, cultural richness, and the strong population at St. Anthony’s, and welcome all people to be enlightened by it. Between a great church and a great people, there is room for all to be educated in a proudly diverse, faith filled, radically successful school such as St. Anthony’s.
By: Pastor Father Patrick Tuttle, OFM
Did you know that the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has a Secretariat of Cultural Diversity? Allan Figueroa Deck, S.J., Executive Director, suggests that we take steps to build greater unity in diversity by celebration, prayer and worship, interaction, information, story-telling, and inspirational moments. A visit to St. Anthony of Padua Catholic School reveals just such activities!
It was my privilege to attend the National Catholic Educational Association (NCEA) Convention in Minneapolis this past April. Over 8,000 educators gathered from across the country and beyond and it was truly a macrocosm of diversity at every level. One of the highlights of the conference was the announcement that Most Reverend Wilton D. Gregory, Archbishop of Atlanta, is the new chairman of the board of the NCEA. The NCEA guides US Catholic Schools in establishing and maintaining excellence in all areas.
Archbishop Gregory was born and raised in Chicago where his parents sent him to St. Carthage Grammar School, and where, as a sixth grader, Wilton converted to Catholicism. Archbishop Gregory of Atlanta weighed in on the issues of unity and diversity during his homily May 7, 2010, at a Mass for the Catholic Cultural Diversity Network Convocation at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana.
“Our efforts at national unity often depend upon bringing peoples’ diversity into something of an artificial harmony that seeks to minimize the uniqueness and distinctiveness of people. The Catholic Church, on the contrary, focuses upon what we all share in common which is our faith and our oneness in Christ,” Archbishop Gregory said. To be a Catholic one need not abandon one’s individuality. In fact, the Catholic Church is most perfectly herself when all of her children display that rich diversity that God has fashioned into the very heart of humanity,” the archbishop said. “We are most Catholic when we reflect our oneness of faith and worship that is achieved in response to our rich mixture of human variety through the grace of the Holy Spirit.”
Our school is “proudly diverse” and we make every effort to draw upon the richness of each child’s background, celebrating race, color and creed.
By: Principal Sister Catherine Noecker, OSF