Catholic Identity in Institutions

An interesting perspective.

...The battle against parochial schools began to be waged. The still existing bond between school and Church was now to be dissolved, and the school’s spiritual foundation was no longer to be the Christian faith but the ideology of the Führer. With great intensity the bishops led the battle for the preservation of parochial schools and for the upholding of the concordat, and the pastoral letters on this subject that our pastor read in church made a deep impression on me. Already then it dawned on me that, with their insistence on preserving institutions, these letters in part misread the reality. I mean that merely to guarantee institutions is useless if there are no people to support those institutions from inner conviction .....To be sure, teachers could be found…who had deep convictions of faith ..... But in the older generations there existed an anti-clerical resentment [and] in the younger generation there were convinced Nazis. So in both these cases it was inane to insist on an institutionally guaranteed Christianity...--Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI), Milestones: Memoirs, 1927-1977 (Ignatius Press, 1998), p.15

For a present day application of this principle, see Dr. Freddoso's paper on the Notre Dame controversy of 2009.