FAITH IN EDUCATION
By Karla Luke
The Catholic Schools and Early Learning Centers in the Diocese of Jackson are eagerly gearing up for the renewal of their accreditation with Cognia, an esteemed accrediting body for K-12 institutions in the U.S. and globally. Since 2019, the Office of Catholic Education (OCE) has held system-wide accreditation for all Catholic schools within the diocese, a commitment that has prompted notable growth and advancements across the system. Now, as renewal approaches, school leaders are ready to showcase their developments in educational excellence and student-centered progress.

Cognia’s legacy of accreditation excellence
Cognia, formerly known as AdvancED, is a nonprofit that accredits schools with a focus on continuous improvement. Founded in 2006, Cognia brought together the pre-college divisions of two major accreditation groups: the North Central Association’s Commission on Accreditation and School Improvement (NCA CASI) and the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Accreditation and School Improvement (SACS CASI). Following further expansions, including a merger with Measured Progress in 2018, Cognia emerged as a leading accrediting agency recognized by the U.S. Department of Education in 2019.

The Diocese of Jackson’s journey with Cognia builds upon a longstanding relationship with its predecessor, SACS CASI. Since 1975, schools like Vicksburg Catholic Schools, St. Joseph Madison, and Cathedral Natchez have held SACS accreditation. By 2020, all remaining schools in the diocese had secured full system accreditation, further solidifying their commitment to academic and spiritual growth.

Why Cognia? Focusing on Systemic Growth Over Compliance
Choosing Cognia for system-wide accreditation allows the diocese to emphasize continuous improvement, focusing not just on meeting standards but on showing how those standards drive real change. Unlike some accrediting bodies that prioritize compliance, Cognia’s approach is student-centered, emphasizing learning engagement, school culture, student development, and strong leadership that fosters a culture of achievement. Cognia’s platform also equips the OCE with tools like professional development resources, assessments and strategic planning aids that are crucial for making well-informed decisions.

The renewal process for Cognia accreditation involves in-depth reviews in seven essential areas: Culture of Learning, Leadership for Learning, Engagement in Learning, Student Growth, Student Performance, Stakeholder Analysis, and Learning Environment. The OCE Accreditation Leadership Team – led by Karla Luke (OCE), Dr. Dena Kinsey (St. Joseph-Madison), Mary Arledge (Vicksburg Catholic Schools), Kimberly Burkley (Cathedral Catholic School), Rachel Patterson (OCE) and Virginia Hollingsworth (OCE) – recently presented on Oct. 15, a detailed executive summary to Dr. Michael Bratcher, Cognia’s regional accreditation advisor, outlining the diocese’s mission, vision, values and accomplishments.

Since the initial accreditation, the diocese has launched numerous initiatives, including a three-year strategic plan, enhanced academic standards, strengthened assessment programming, and the opening of two new early learning centers in Vicksburg (Sisters of Mercy) and Jackson (St. Richard). Feedback gathered from focus groups held on Oct. 22 and 24, highlighted both achievements, such as improved Catholic identity, responsive teaching practices, and communication improvements, and areas for growth, like expanded parent education and ongoing opportunities for feedback.

Continuing a tradition of faith and excellence
As the Diocese of Jackson moves forward in its accreditation renewal, the commitment to fostering a Christ-centered, academically excellent environment remains unwavering. Through the dedication of faculty, staff and administrators, the OCE is assisting by cultivating lifelong learners, effective communicators, and collaborative contributors to society, all rooted in their faith.
Blessings in faith, hope and love.

(Karla Luke is the executive director of Catholic Schools for the Diocese of Jackson)

Reflections on Life
By Melvin Arrington
Why is the life of a saint who died more than 1,600 years ago relevant to us today? In other words, why does St. Martin of Tours (315 to 397) still matter? The short answer is because his was a life well lived. There is much we can learn from him about respecting the dignity of each person and about practicing the church’s preferential option for the poor.

Born into a pagan family in present-day Hungary and raised in what is now Italy, Martin enrolled as a catechumen at a tender age. His father, an officer in the Imperial Roman army, wanted his son to pursue a military career, but Martin had no interest in becoming a soldier. Nevertheless, he was conscripted into the army. At age eighteen he was baptized. Two years later he left the military, proclaiming: “I am a soldier of Christ; it is not lawful for me to fight.” Interestingly, Martin’s feast day, Nov. 11, is also Veterans Day, which honors all who have served in the military and, additionally, commemorates the signing of the Armistice that ended fighting in World War I.

After leaving the army, Martin met Hilary, Bishop of Poitier, who encouraged the young man to return to Italy to try to win over his family and friends to the Christian faith. But upon arriving there he found himself surrounded by followers of the Arian heresy. After struggling to convert the Arians, Martin returned to Gaul (France) and established a monastery near Poitiers, where he gathered a group of followers and began preaching throughout the area. Because of his holiness, asceticism, and reputation as a miracle worker, the people elected him Bishop of Tours.

Martin founded many churches and monasteries and became a strong defender of the faith, fighting pagans and heretics with words rather than the sword. Known for his compassion, he became an early opponent of the death penalty and often pled for mercy on behalf of those condemned to death.
Because of Martin’s renown as a healer, people with various diseases and disorders came to him seeking cures, among them a leper, a paralytic, and a woman with an issue of blood. He also drove out evil spirits from the demon possessed and raised the dead. Those in the latter category included a man who had died without baptism, another who had hanged himself, and a third man, whose resuscitation resulted in the conversion a large crowd of pagans who had witnessed the miracle. Once, when a pagan attempted to behead him, the sword separated itself from the would-be assassin’s hand and fell harmlessly to the ground.

The most memorable incident in this great saint’s life occurred in the city of Amiens during his stint in the army. On a cold winter’s day as Martin was riding through the gate leaving the city, he encountered a practically naked beggar who was freezing from the cold. Deeply moved by the poor man’s suffering, the young soldier took his sword in hand, cut his cloak in two, and gave half to the poor stranger. That night Martin experienced a vision of Christ clothed in the portion of the cloak he had given to the beggar.

This great act of charity, immortalized in El Greco’s painting “St. Martin and the Beggar” and Van Dyck’s “St. Martin Dividing His Cloak,” brings to mind the admonition: “Whoever has two tunics should share with the person who has none.” (Luke 3:11) St. Ambrose, a contemporary of St. Martin, expressed it this way: “If you have two shirts in your closet, one belongs to you and the other to the man with no shirt.”

I like to think St. Martin had so internalized the teachings of Matthew 25 that he helped the beggar because charity was second nature to him. In Matthew 25:34-40 Jesus tells the blessed they will inherit the kingdom because they came to his aid when He was in need; among other things, He was naked and they clothed Him. These righteous ones, not realizing what Jesus meant, question Him about it, implying that they really didn’t do anything at all for their Lord. Then the King of Kings replies: “Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.”

How should we respond to the plight of the poor? Of course, we should pray for them, but that’s not enough. We must put our faith in action by performing the corporal works of mercy. Specifically, we are called to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, care for the sick, and visit the prisoner. This is what St. Paul meant by “faith working through love.” (Galatians 5:6b)
With so many needs and so many opportunities for giving of our time and resources, it shouldn’t be hard to find ways to follow St. Martin’s example. Contributing to relief efforts for those attempting to put their lives back together in the wake of the recent hurricanes is just one way. If we open our eyes and ears, the needs in our local communities will become readily apparent to us.

St. Martin of Tours, the soldier who didn’t want to fight, was one of the first holy persons to become a saint without being martyred. His abiding concern for the poor, the sick, and the imprisoned made him a model of compassion for his generation and an inspiration to Christians across the centuries. May this “soldier of Christ” inspire in us a fervent desire to become models of “faith working through love.”

(Melvin Arrington is a Professor Emeritus of Modern Languages for the University of Mississippi and a member of St. John Oxford.)

IN EXILE
By Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI

Creeds ground us. Within a short formula they summarize the main tenets of our faith and keep us mindful of the truths that anchor us.

As a Christian, I pray two creeds, The Apostles’ Creed and The Nicene Creed. But I also pray another creed which grounds me in some deep truths which are not always sufficiently recognized as inherent in our Christian creeds. This creed, given in the Epistle to the Ephesians, is stunningly brief and simply reads: There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God who is Father of us all.

That’s a lot in a few words! This creed, while Christian, takes in all denominations, all faiths, and all sincere persons everywhere. Everyone on the planet can pray this creed because ultimately there is only one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God who created and loves us all.

This has far-reaching consequences for how we understand God, other Christian denominations, other faiths, sincere non-believers, and ourselves. There is only one God, no matter our denomination, particular faith, or no explicit faith at all. The one same God is the loving creator and parent of everyone. And that one God has no favorites, doesn’t dislike certain persons, denominations, or faiths, and never disdains goodness or sincerity, no matter their particular religious or secular cloak.

And these are some of the consequences: First, Jesus assures us that God is the author of all that is good. In addition, as Christians we believe that God has certain transcendental attributes, namely, God is one, true, good, and beautiful. If that is true (and how could it be otherwise?), then everything we see in our world that is integral, true, good, or beautiful, whatever its outward label (Roman Catholic, Protestant, Evangelical, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, New Age, Neo-Pagan, or purely Secular), comes from God and must be honored.

John Muir once challenged Christianity with this question: Why are Christians so reluctant to let animals into their stingy heaven? The creed in the Epistle to the Ephesians asks something similar: Why are Christians so reluctant to let other denominations, other faiths, and good sincere people without explicit faith into our stingy concept of God, Christ, faith, and the church? Why are we afraid of faith fellowship with Christians of other denominations? Why are we afraid of faith fellowship with sincere Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and New Age religious? Why are we afraid of paganism? Why are we afraid of natural sacraments?

There can be good reasons. First, we do need to safeguard precisely the truths expressed in our creeds and not slide into an amorphous syncretism in which everything is relative, where all truths and all religions are equal, and the only dogmatic requirement is that we be nice to each other. Although there is, in fact, something (religious) to be said about being nice to each other, the more important point is that embracing each other in faith fellowship is not saying that all faiths are equal and that one’s particular denomination or faith tradition is unimportant. Rather it is acknowledging (importantly) that, at the end of the day, we are all one family, under one God, and that we need to embrace each other as brothers and sisters. Despite our differences, we all have the same radical creed.

Then too, as Christians, we believe that Christ is the unique mediator between God and ourselves. As Jesus puts it, no one goes to the Father, except through me. If that is true, and as Christians we hold that as dogma, then where does that leave Hindus, Buddhists, Taoists, Jews, Muslims, New Agers, Neo-Pagans, and sincere non-believers? How do they share the kingdom with us Christians since they do not believe in Christ?

As Christians, we have always had answers to that question. The Catholic catechisms of my youth spoke of a “baptism of desire” as a way of entry into the mystery of Christ. Karl Rahner spoke of sincere persons being “anonymous Christians.” Frank de Graeve spoke of a reality he called “Christ-ianity”, as a mystery wider than historical “Christianity”; and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin spoke of Christ as being the final anthropological and cosmological structure within the evolutionary process itself. What all of these are saying is that the mystery of Christ cannot be identified simplistically with the historical Christian churches. The mystery of Christ works through the historical Christian churches but also works, and works widely, outside of our churches and outside the circles of explicit faith.

Christ is God and therefore is found wherever anyone is in the presence of oneness, truth, goodness, and beauty. Kenneth Cragg, after many years as a missionary with the Muslims, suggested that it is going to take all the religions of the world to give full expression to the full Christ.

There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God who is Father of us all – and so we should not be so reluctant to let others, not of our own kind, into our stingy heaven.

(Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser is a theologian, teacher and award-winning author. He can be contacted through his website www.ronrolheiser.com.)

IN EXILE
By Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI

As a Lutheran priest, Dietrich Bonhoeffer would frequently offer this advice to a couple when he presided at their wedding: Today you are in love and believe your love will sustain your marriage, but it can’t. Let your marriage sustain your love.

Wise words, but what exactly do they mean? Why can’t love sustain a marriage?

What Bonhoeffer is highlighting is that it is naïve to think that feelings will sustain us in love and commitment over the long haul. They can’t, and they wouldn’t. But ritual can. How? By creating a ritual container that can keep us steady inside the roller coaster of emotions and feelings that will beset us in any long-term relationship.

Simply put, we will never sustain a long-term relationship with another person, with God, with prayer, or in selfless service on the basis of good feelings and positive emotions. This side of eternity, our feelings and emotions mostly come and go according to their own dictates and are not given to consistency.

We know the inconsistency of our emotions. One day we feel affectionate toward someone and the next day we feel irritated. The same is true for prayer. One day we feel warm and focused and the next day we feel bored and distracted.

And so, Bonhoeffer suggests we need to sustain ourselves in love and prayer by ritual, that is, by habitual practices that keep us steady and committed within the flux of feelings and emotions.

For example, take a couple in a marriage. They fall in love and commit themselves to love each other and stay with each other for the rest of their lives, and at root they fully intend that. They respect each other, are good to each other, and would die for each other. However, that’s not always true of their emotions. Some days their emotions seemingly belie their love. They are irritated and angry with each other. Yet, their actions toward each other continue to express love and commitment and not their negative feelings. They ritually kiss each other as they leave the house in the morning with the words, “I love you!” Are those words a lie? Are they simply going through the motions? Or is this real love?

The same holds true for love and commitment inside a family. Imagine a mother and a father with two teenage children, a boy of sixteen and a girl of fourteen. As a family they have a rule that they will sit together at dinner for forty minutes every evening, without their cellphones or other such devices. Many evenings when the son or daughter or one of the parents comes to the table (without their cellphone) out of dram duty, bored, dreading the time together, wanting to be somewhere else. But they come because they have made that commitment. Are they simply going through the motions or showing real love?

If Bonhoeffer is right, and I submit he is, they are not just going through the motions, they are expressing mature love. It’s easy to express love and be committed when our feelings are taking us there and holding us there. But those good feelings will not sustain our love and commitment in the long-term. Only fidelity to a commitment and ritual actions that undergird that commitment will keep us from walking away when the good feelings go away.

In our culture today, at most every level, this is not understood. From the person caught up in a culture addicted to feelings, to a good number of therapists, ministers of religion, prayer leaders, spiritual directors, and friends of Job, we hear the line: If you aren’t feeling it, it’s not real; you’re just going through the motions! That’s empty ritual!

Indeed, it can be an empty ritual. As scripture says, we can honor with our lips even as our hearts are far away. However, more often than not it is a mature expression of love because it is now a love that is no longer fueled by self-interest and good feelings. It’s now a love that’s wise and mature enough to account for the human condition in all its inadequacy and complexity and how these color and complicate everything – including the one we love, our own selves, and the reality of human love itself.

The book we need on love will not be written by passionate lovers on their honeymoon, just as the book we need on prayer will not be written by a religious neophyte caught up in the first fervor of prayer (nor by most enthusiastic leaders of prayer). The book we need on love will be written by a married couple who, through ritual, have sustained a commitment through the ups and downs of many years. Just as the book we need on prayer will be written by someone who has sustained a life of prayer and church going through seasons and Sundays when sometimes the last thing he or she wanted to do was to pray or go to church.

(Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser is a theologian, teacher and award-winning author. He can be contacted through his website www.ronrolheiser.com.)

FROM THE HERMITAGE
By sister alies therese
I read this somewhere … truth without grace is mean, grace without truth is meaningless. Very similar to how Buddhist writer Pema Chodron cites it this way, “Without clarity and honesty, we don’t progress. We just stay stuck in the same vicious cycle. But honesty without kindness makes us feel grim and mean, and pretty soon we start looking like we’ve been sucking on lemons.” (When Things Fall Apart, Heart Advice for Difficult Times, Shambhala Classics, Boston, 2000).

The 8th commandment: you shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. Our CCC 2464 (pages 591-600) reminds us, “The 8th commandment forbids misrepresenting the truth in our relation with others … offenses against the truth expressed by word or deed are a refusal to commit oneself to moral uprightness: they are fundamental infidelities to God and undermine the foundations of the covenant.”

Compendium to CCC:

521. every person is called to sincerity and truthfulness in acting and speaking
522. the 8th forbids false witness, perjury, and lying … the gravity of which is measured by the truth it deforms, the circumstances, the intentions of the one who lies, and the harm suffered by its victims.
523. The 8th requires respect for the truth accompanied by the discretion of charity in the field of communication and the imparting of information…

We have it clearly … in these two sources, indeed in the Scriptures where we are challenged to believe that Jesus is the ‘way, truth, and life’. Yes, you say, but in political campaigns everybody lies in order to get voted in. No one is going to do what they say once they are in office. Really? One way to check that is to listen carefully not only to what they say … but how they say it. CCC 2505 reminds us, “…show oneself true in deeds and words guarding against duplicity, dissimulation and hypocrisy.”

“Liars are not believed even when they tell the truth.” So says Aesop.

In an African proverb we hear, “A lie comes back sooner or later.”

How are you going to decide who has lied? Or maybe just expanded the truth? CCC 2489: “Charity and respect for the truth should dictate the response to every request for information or communication. The good and safety of others, respect for privacy, and the common good are sufficient reasons …” What are the offenses against truth? Well, begin with false witness and perjury. Move on to respect for the reputation of another, rash judgment, detraction (tells another’s faults), and calumny. CCC 2480 goes on to say, “Every word or attitude which by flattery, adulation, or complaisance, encourages and confirms another in malicious and perverse conduct.” What about those lies?

US author Bertrand Brinley says, “That’s one of the troubles with a lie. You’ve got to keep adding to it to make it believable.”

“A good many lies, there are at least two sides to them and you can take a point of view. But this was a flat lie. You couldn’t get around it”. Joseph Krumgold, US author, in Onion John.

St. Augustine, “A lie consists in speaking a falsehood with the intention of deceiving.” Is that the game of politics…deception? Or is there some responsibility for candidates to tell the truth and leave it up to the voter to select? Who will serve the people? Who will govern? To lie is to purposefully lead a neighbor into error … failures of justice and charity, to allow others to become unsafe. In Elfsong by Ann Turner, a US author, “Elves cannot lie. A lie stinks on our skin, like rotten meat. Anyone can smell it.

”What is stinky around this election? As citizens, we have to find it and then decide. I appreciate FDR, past President, who remarked on a radio show in 1939, “repetition does not transform a lie into truth.” It’s that old story … even if you sit in your garage by the hour … it does not make you a car!

Finally, Peterson (The Message, 2003), “Summing it all up, friends, I’d say you do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious – the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse, … God who makes everything work together, will work you into His most excellent harmonies.” (Phil 2:8-9)

DO VOTE.

(Sister alies therese is a canonically vowed hermit with days formed around prayer and writing.)

LIGHT ONE CANDLE
By Father Ed Dougherty, M.M

October 28 marks the Feast of Saints Simon and Jude, Apostles. Tradition holds they were martyred together in the first century while preaching the Gospel in Persia and that their remains were later moved to St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, where a single tomb commemorates them to this day.

St. Bridget of Sweden and St. Bernard of Clairvaux both had visions where God identified St. Jude as the Patron St. of the Impossible, and for centuries, pilgrims to his grave have reported powerful intercessions. Today, Catholics throughout the world invoke the intercession of St. Jude in the most desperate circumstances, and the Prayer to St. Jude is credited with bringing much relief in times of trial.

As for St. Simon, history tells us little about him other than the story of his mission of evangelization with St. Jude that led to martyrdom for them both. But he is named as one of the twelve Apostles in all three Synoptic Gospels and in the Book of Acts.

St. Simon is referred to as “Simon called Zelotes” in the Synoptic Gospels to distinguish him from Simon Peter, which led to his being called “Simon the Zealot” as it is believed he was a former member of the Zealots, a revolutionary political party of the time. However, these fragments of information bring into focus the life of a man who underwent a profound conversion. The Zealots were committed to overthrowing the Roman occupation through violent revolution. So, if Simon was a member of the Zealots, then following Christ would have affected within him a radical change of heart.

The very fact of being one of the twelve, and then later an evangelist, traveling from town to town and through the nations of the region speaks to this conversion. And his path in many ways represents the universal Christian conversion to turn from worldly power to the power found only in the love of Christ.
As for the life of St. Jude, we hear only a bit more about him in the New Testament than we hear about St. Simon. He was the disciple who asked Christ at the Last Supper, “Lord, how is it that You will manifest Yourself to us, and not to the world?”

Christ’s answer to this question was, “If a man loves Me, he will keep My word, and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make our home with him.”

It’s an interesting exchange considering St. Jude’s role as patron of the impossible because our prayers for help must contain the same kind of faith Christ speaks of here. We must have faith even when we don’t see Him, and even when the things we ask for aren’t answered in exactly the way we expect.

St. Jude also wrote an epistle, which is the second to last book of the New Testament, where he encourages the faithful to persevere through trying circumstances. This is yet another interesting consideration in light of Jude’s role as intercessor for the impossible because sometimes the first help God gives us is strength to persevere through that which seems impossible to face. So, we might see in these two key parts of the bible why St. Jude is such a powerful intercessor, and also why it is so fitting that he is paired with St. Simon for a single feast day, because they both point us towards renunciation as the ultimate way to follow Christ.

(For a free copy of The Christophers’ Lift Up Your Hearts, e-mail: mail@christophers.org)