http:\/\/www.catholichigh.org\/<\/span><\/a> <\/p>\nThe parish school my younger two boys attend is absorbing 200 New
Orleans students into its student body of 1000. Other Catholic schools in
town are taking on students in similar proportions. We’ve used this as an
opportunity to teach our kids about shared sacrifice and to ask them to
help the new kids adjust.<\/p>\n
But…there is grumbling. The pastor at my folks’ parish told his
congregation during Sunday’s homily that he’s gotten complaints about the
stress on the school and that his answer is "If you don’t like it, take
your kids and your money and go – we don’t need you." I had a discussion
with one of his parishioners this morning who was unhappy with this and
thinking about seeking a transfer.<\/p>\n
For the last 25 years Baton Rouge has struggled with a federal court
order to desegregate its public schools, initially through forced
bussing. One outcome has been "white flight" to private schools and suburban
civil parishes, resulting in a public school system that is about 65%
African-American and disproportionately poor. I believe this has had a
secularizing effect on the Catholic schools (and churches) in Baton
Rouge, as there are now plenty of people influencing policy who believe that
"love your neighbor" means doing everything we can "for the kids" – our
kids…at best. We’re not often challenged to serve others. Maybe one
good that will come out of this disaster is a clearer understanding of
the Cross here in Baton Rouge.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
From a reader: My oldest is a [student] at all-male Catholic High School in Baton Rouge … run by the Brothers of the Sacred Heart, who also have all-male schools in New Orleans (Brother Martin) and Bay St. Louis, MS (St. Stanislaus). Brother Martin is re-opening at Catholic High in the evening hours (3:45-9:30 PM).…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n
From the ground in BR - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/from-the-ground-in-br.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"From the ground in BR - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"From a reader: My oldest is a [student] at all-male Catholic High School in Baton Rouge … run by the Brothers of the Sacred Heart, who also have all-male schools in New Orleans (Brother Martin) and Bay St. Louis, MS (St. Stanislaus). Brother Martin is re-opening at Catholic High in the evening hours (3:45-9:30 PM).…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/from-the-ground-in-br.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2005-09-06T11:06:34+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"From the ground in BR - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/from-the-ground-in-br.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"From the ground in BR - Via Media","og_description":"From a reader: My oldest is a [student] at all-male Catholic High School in Baton Rouge … run by the Brothers of the Sacred Heart, who also have all-male schools in New Orleans (Brother Martin) and Bay St. Louis, MS (St. Stanislaus). Brother Martin is re-opening at Catholic High in the evening hours (3:45-9:30 PM).…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/from-the-ground-in-br.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2005-09-06T11:06:34+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/from-the-ground-in-br.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/from-the-ground-in-br.html","name":"From the ground in BR - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2005-09-06T11:06:34+00:00","dateModified":"2005-09-06T11:06:34+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/from-the-ground-in-br.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/from-the-ground-in-br.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/from-the-ground-in-br.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"From the ground in BR"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2712"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2712\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}