Chicago has the largest Catholic school system in America, led by Francis Cardinal George and Sister Mary Paul McCaughey, O.P.. Catholic schools in Chicago save billions of tax-dollars for Illinois tax-payers. Catholic schools cost money - cash money, hard dollars, the long-Green difference. The Big Shoulders Fund* is that long ( 25 Years and going strong) difference. The average Catholic grammar school tuition runs in the neighborhood of $ 5,000 and a high school cost sits between $ 7,500 and $ 8,000 per student.
Catholic students receive a solid grounding in college prep course, but also a foundation in values absent in public education.
Catholic schools focus on the values of faith, hope, love, and community. We talk openly about values and spend time each day giving children an opportunity to learn, share, and understand the consequences of good and bad behaviors. We believe in Jesus Christ and we have a feeling of grace that comes from our beliefs.
Can the school your child attends teach the sort of lessons that will help your child become a good and compassionate person? Is there a clear expectation that all children will be treated with respect by teachers and other students?
How a school handles these issues indicates whether the school is capable of reinforcing the values that you and other parents teach at home. Ultimately, we want your child to grow up to be a good and compassionate person, and we will do everything we can to help you raise your child in the right way.
The Chicago media would have you believe that Chicago is and always has been a Secular City. It is not and never has been. Chicago is was and should be always a City of Faith - founded by French Catholics ( Monsieur Du Sable was a child of Rome). The Chicago Tribune is and has been an anti-Catholic news organ. Its editorial board and most of its columnists never give the Catholic Church and Catholics themselves short shrift. Short shrift is a Catholic term by the way. It is an Anglo Saxon derivation of Latin Scribere(L) -scrifen (OE) -schriven -meaning to possess what has been written, or prescribed for forgiveness.
Back in the day and, yes, even today, Confession, or Penance, was the means by which one could be forgiven by the Church Universal - back in Communion. My personal door to the Confessional swings like a saloon door on pay day. I get shriven and then forgiven. " See you soon, Hickey! Try to make it past the Holy Water font on the way out."
Too many comfortable Catholics are ashamed to be comfortable and Catholic, these days, because the only news about Catholics in the newspapers, especially Know Nothing Joe Medill's Tribune, is a Ha-Ha piece by the always smarmy Eric Zorn - today, ( Abort-Hissy Fit! Abort Hissy Fit!) it happens to be about a kid getting disciplined for a Tebow-moment during a Catholic high school graduation somewhere in this vast Republic of ours - or a Neo Theo Personal Jesus Was a Community Organizer and Abortion Friendly Nun by the loony Manya Brachear, not to be out-done by Bruce Dold, the disk-jockey-cum-editor of course, who regularly churns out chides to Cardinals and Catholics to abandon their Faith and evolve like Dick Durbin and Pat Quinn.
Catholics live under the radar in this media-propped Secular City. They live in neighborhoods defined by Catholic Parishes - St. Tommy More, St. Sabina's, Our Lady of Tepeyac & St. Columbanus. Catholics are civil servants, teachers, nurses, cops, firemen, skilled tradesmen, business leaders and tax-payers. They pay twice - tuition that keeps taxes down and ever soaring taxes to pay for public education.
Catholics fund the tuition of Muslims, Jews, Protestants and even the children of atheists and agnostics who want their children educated. Catholics have always done that and will continue to do so until the day that laws promoted by the Tribune make that impossible. That day is looming very quickly. Catholics can still vote.
Tonight Catholics and people who understand that Chicago would still be a smoking pile of 1871 embers were it not for Catholics celebrate 25 years of really Big Shoulders
The Big Shoulders Fund will host a 25th Anniversary Dinner on Thursday, May 24, 2012 at the Chicago Hilton and Towers.The evening will honor all of the Big Shoulders' Champions with special recognition of the Founders. Dinner committee in formation.
Celebrate your Faith. Celebrate your history, not as Joe Medill, Eric Zorn, Bruce Dold and Manya Brachear would have you believe, but as it is, was and should be.
Founders of Big Shoulders Fund Mr. James W. Compton
Sr. Mary Brian Costello, R.S.M.
Mr. Lester Crown
Mr. Ronald GidwitzMr. William McIntosh
Mr. Andrew J. McKenna Sr., founding Vice Chairman
Mr. James J. O’Connor, founding Chairman
Mr. Edmund A. Stephan (deceased)
Mr. Barry F. Sullivan
Mr. Arthur R. Velasquez
Celebrate 25 Years of Carrying Children's Dreams
Esse quam Videre, Catholics. Viva Cristo Rey! Catholics Forward . . .while you can move.
*Mission StatementThe mission of the Big Shoulders Fund is to provide support to the Catholic schools in the neediest areas of inner-city Chicago.
Big Shoulders Fund is unique in that administrative expenses are supported by an endowment and other income which ensures all funds currently raised go toward programs that benefit the Big Shoulders Fund schools and the students they serve through scholarships, special education programs, instructional equipment, much-needed school facility improvements, faculty support, and operating grants.
http://schools.archchicago.org/Values/
http://www.chitowndailynews.org/2009/03/02/Families-struggle-with-Catholic-school-tuition-23006.html
http://blogs.chicagotribune.com/news_columnists_ezorn/2012/05/abort-hissy-fit-abort-hissy-fit.html
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