Are They Really Catholic?: 4 New Models of Catholic Identity

In my role as Director for Catholic Identity for the Diocese of Cleveland, the most common question I hear from parents, donors, pastors, and others in reference to our schools is, « But are they really Catholic?” During my first year I dared to traverse into a response to this question, but never quite knew how to answer because I was not sure what people meant by it. For some, it means daily Mass, for others, service experiences with the marginalized, and for another group, it means all the students are Catholic. The more I have thought about this question, the more I have realized the varied dimensions of a Catholic identity and how it cannot be pinned down by any specific expression.

In an odd sort of way, the more I thought about the question, the more it reminded me of an ancient story one often hears in a philosophy class about the ship of Theseus. In the story, there is a ship that leaves Athens every year to commemorate King Theseus for killing the Minotaur and saving the people of Athens. Over time, the ship’s boards rot and are replaced; if all the boards are replaced, is the ship still the ship of Theseus? Similarly, what makes a Catholic school Catholic? Grappling with that problem has been a necessary part of my role.

Cardinal Avery Dulles has a way forward in thinking about this problem because, in many ways, he was dealing with the same issue when it came to the Church. In 1974, Dulles published his classic book, Models of the Church. He opens with a reference to an article in The New York Times in which an Italian theologian declares his assessment that the Church in America is falling apart. In a letter to the editor several days later, a member of a religious community responded that the Church in America was, in fact, dying “only such to those churchmen who are so stuck in conservatism and authority that they cannot see the Gospel of Christ for the Code of Canon Law.” The author of the letter to the editor goes on to state that in his assessment, “these are the best days of the Church.”

Dulles realized that these men could not “agree about the measure of progress or decline because they have radically different visions of the Church. They do not agree about what the Church really is. When we ask what something is, we are normally seeking a definition.”[1] The genius of Models is that Dulles realized that the Church is too theologically, historically, and culturally complex to condense into a single super-image or archetype. Instead, Dulles proposed five models—as institution, as mystical communion, as sacrament, as herald, and as servant (adding a sixth, as community of disciples in a later edition)—of understanding the Church, offering critical interpretations for each.

Similarly, I propose four models of Catholic identity—institutional, a community of disciples, kerygmatic modeling, and prophetic witness—as a way to navigate the complex question of Catholic identity in our schools today. These models are in no way exhaustive, but my hope is that they provide an avenue for further fruitful discussion on a complicated topic. According to Dulles, “to come flatly down on either side of these alternatives would be to content oneself with a half truth.”[2] In much the same way, a singular image of Catholic identity for our Catholic schools flattens the richness and depth of what our schools are, and to pursue any one of them in isolation will lead to distortions.

Two important caveats are necessary. First, the predominant context in which the question of Catholic identity arises is largely collegiate. Rather, my attention will be on Catholic elementary and high schools for two reasons. First, it is my area of expertise. In my position as Director for Catholic Identity, I work primarily with Catholic elementary schools, so it is what I know.

Second, conversations at the level of Catholic elementary or high school are often overlooked. I suspect that many of those interested in talking about Catholic identity at a conference do so within a collegiate setting and, therefore, discuss it within that context. Catholic elementary and high schools, however, have distinctions particular to their setting, and insofar as the conversation often does not involve those types of Catholic schools, these distinctions are lost or ignored. That said, I suspect this proposal of models of Catholic identity can provide a framework, even if only analogously, in dealing with the issue of Catholic identity within the university context.

Second, it is assumed that all models are legitimate models and, therefore, hold fast to the Church’s teaching and magisterium. Any model—just like anyone’s personal devotions and interests—will lend itself to valuing certain aspects of Church teaching and, therefore, speaking less about others. This idea should not inherently disqualify any person or school from being Catholic.

Catholic Identity as Institutional

In many ways, Catholic identity as institutional is the most straightforward model. As an institution, it is supported and bound together by law. Canon 803 §1 states that for a school to be Catholic, it must be under the direction of Church authority or a public juridic person. Canon 803 goes on to state in §3, “no school may bear the title Catholic school without the consent of the competent ecclesiastical authority.” While the competent ecclesiastical authority could be a few people, it is often the local bishop. Simply put, this means that a school that exists without the formal approval of the local bishop cannot be rightly called a Catholic school.

In addition, this authority can be exercised through several governing models. The most common is that of the parish school. In this context, the pastor acts as the juridical administrator to the ministry of the juridical person, the parish. There are, however, different governing models. These various models often, though not always, arise out of a situation in which a school seeks to exist, or seeks to continue to exist, without a pastor or parish. For example, if a religious order seeks to establish a school, it must receive the bishop’s formal approval but is governed by the order itself. As historic parishes close, some of those schools remain open and are governed by a third party, which, in turn, reports to the bishop’s office, who maintains seats on the board. Another example may be when a community that opens a school without a parish—often called an independent school—receives formal approval by the bishop, is governed by the board, and is verified in its Catholic identity by a member of the bishop’s staff, such as the diocesan superintendent.

The institutional model is straightforward because it proceeds from the law of the Church and finds its ultimate authority in the bishop. In this way, the Catholic identity of the school is very black and white. If one were to ask, “But are you really a Catholic school?” the answer is easy: yes, we have formal approval of the Catholic Church through our local bishop, as administered by the pastor. This model also provides a framework for accountability and can provide checks and balances to ensure the faith is being promoted and taught in accordance with the Catholic faith. Without this legal structure, anyone could open a “Catholic” school and teach whatever they wanted without any form of accountability.

If the strengths of the institutional model are obvious, its weaknesses are equally as obvious. Does a school that does not receive approval from the local bishop really mean it is not Catholic, even if the school pays Catholic men and women to teach the Catholic faith and attend daily Mass? For a variety of reasons, a bishop may not approve a school as a Catholic school even though it, for all intents and purposes, plans to act like one.

Likewise, to assume a Catholic school is Catholic simply by it being legally designated as such can lead to what the Congregation for Catholic Education called in its 2022 document, “The Identity of the Catholic School for a Culture of Dialogue,” a reductive view (§69). This view could lead a school to act almost identically to its secular counterparts and remain Catholic due to its canonical status, which leads to what I perceive as the second weakness, namely, that law, by its nature, takes time to change and adapt. If there exist gaps in the law, the strength of accountability and the mechanisms of dealing with issues that arise in school communities fail.

Imagine, for instance, a Catholic school that is guided by charisms at the expense of certain “principles of Catholic doctrine.”[3] The bishop may take issue with how a school is teaching various theological topics and ignoring or misrepresenting certain principles of Catholic doctrine. However, he is unable to address it at the most local level because the canonical authority is granted to another governing body. Bishops are then placed in a tough position of addressing the issue with a written statement, with their only next tool for recourse being removing them as a Catholic school. Gaps within canon law, therefore, create tension between bishops who lack the canonical tools in gradual conflict resolution with some schools.

Catholic Identity as a Community of Disciples

Perhaps the most familiar model within the popular imagination is Catholic identity as a community of disciples. In this model, the Catholic identity of a school corresponds to the reverence or piety of its staff, but most importantly, its students. The shared lived faith of the children constitutes a tangible and visible sense of the identity of the school community and reinforces how faith is taught and practiced by parents at home. In this model, the Catholic identity of the school is born out of the devotion to the faith by its students, which is reinforced by their teachers and parents.

These schools go to weekly Mass, or even better, daily Mass. They all genuflect while walking by the chapel and have religious art, icons, and prayers around every corner, and all who enter are welcomed with a generous picture of the Holy Father. The Catholic identity is cultivated through rigorous parent interviews for prospective students to ensure they fit the mission. In addition, the administration is careful to hire for the mission with an eye to the acknowledged personal devotions and expressions of the faith of the candidate in their interview to see if their views align.

The strengths of this model are clear: this robust culture greatly assists parents in transmitting the faith to their children. I describe this model as popular because in the books dealing with Catholic education and identity published in the last decade, this model is prevalent. In The Catholic School Playbook, published in 2025 by Word on Fire, the authors argue that “assuming that approximately 20% of Catholics take their faith seriously (recent polls support this), Catholic schools should focus recruiting efforts on this 20%, rather than allocating equal resources on lukewarm Catholics.”[4] They go on to suggest that one helpful strategy for recruiting and finding these students is “identifying the more devout Catholic parishes, publications, homeschooling families and co-ops, and schools.”[5] Many who are drawn to this model do so because they have seen a shift towards secularization in Catholic schools that look like public schools with a religion class. Parents and educators alike are drawn to this model as a “rediscovery” of Catholic identity. In practice, this is often achieved by ensuring that all subjects, books, assignments, etc., operate within a particular Catholic worldview.

There are, however, temptations that weaken this model. Again, the Congregation for Catholic Education in 2022 warned of a view of Catholic education that it described as the narrow view. “In such schools, there is no room for those who are not ‘totally’ Catholic. This approach contradicts the vision of an ‘open’ Catholic school that intends to apply to the educational sphere the model of a ‘Church which goes forth,’ in dialogue with everyone.”[6] The cost of such a Catholic identity is often a kind of exclusion of those who do not express their faith in the same way as others, both inside and outside the Catholic Tradition.

Simply put, the Catholicity of a school is not found in its students. The Congregation goes on to say, “We must not lose our missionary impetus to confine ourselves on an island, and at the same time we need the courage to bear witness to a Catholic ‘culture,’ that is, universal, cultivating a healthy awareness of our own Christian identity.”[7] I suspect this model is so popular because it reminds many of the Catholic schools of old, where the children from the neighborhood parish went to the local Catholic school. Those students graduate and visit their old school some decades later, only to find the children are not Catholic anymore.

Catholic Identity as Kerygmatic Modeling

As St. Paul VI so aptly put it in Evangelii Nuntiandi §41, “Modern man listens more willingly to witnesses than to teachers, and if he does listen to teachers, it is because they are witnesses.” The quality of Catholic education is directly proportionate to the formation of its educators. Some students spend more time around their teachers than their parents, so teachers have a profound impact on the spiritual lives of their students. Practically, this model is important because it reflects the state of Catholic schools today, which continue to educate a growing number of non-Catholics.

Additionally, as educators who are extensions of the Church’s mission, teachers stand as ministers to their students through the way they witness to them in all their educational activities and beyond. For this reason, their embodiment of the kerygma—the proclamation of the essential message of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ—is crucial. The strength of this model is the way it manifests and understands the evangelical mission of the parish and Catholic school. It accepts students from varying walks of life—divorced and remarried parents, same-sex parents, and students of differing faith traditions, to name a few—and, therefore, takes seriously the ongoing faith formation of its educators as an essential task in equipping them to fulfill the mission of Catholic education.

While serious attention to the formation of its teachers may not be unique to this model, those who gravitate to the “community of disciples” model of Catholic identity may be uncomfortable with their students being exposed to some of these more complicated moral situations. Key theological themes of this model are accompaniment, dialogue, and witness.

If some of the strengths stem from the practical, on-the-ground reality facing our schools, so do the weaknesses. While it may be ideal to “hire for mission,” in a shrinking field of eligible, qualified, and formed candidates, administrators are often left to “form to mission” instead, which means doing the hard work of transforming the hearts and minds of educators while they are on the job. This issue is particularly difficult at the elementary level, where the teaching of theology is not specific to certain people, but required by the same second-grade teacher who teaches most subjects to their students. Many teachers graduate from secular universities, and while they may have been trained in literacy best practices, they have never taken a theology course in their lives and are left to teach students something with which they can feel uncomfortable or ill-equipped.

As with one of the weaknesses of the hierarchy model, simply because one has a certificate of baptism and is Catholic—the basic requirements in canon law—does not mean that the person is adequately formed to teach religion. More to the point, it can be a challenge for administrators who have pastors or are members of a local Protestant church teaching fifth grade, but are unable to teach theology, even though they are deeply rooted in a habit of reading and meditating on Sacred Scripture. The Protestant teacher must allow another Catholic teacher, who may be far less formed, to teach theology simply because that person was baptized Catholic.

Catholic Identity as Prophetic Witness

This model finds its heart in the prophetic voices in the Old Testament and is enshrined in Christ’s warning in the Gospel of Matthew that “whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me” (Matt 25:40). The theological themes for this model are justice, the corporal works of mercy, and service. The model of prophetic witness seeks to be a part of that ministry of the Church that chooses to meet those who have been outcast and live on the margins. Catholic identity in these schools is its service to the Gospel and the ministry of Jesus Christ to the least of these. Archbishop Cardinal James Hickey—himself a Cleveland native and former Bishop of Cleveland—once stated, “We serve the homeless not because they are Catholic, but because we are Catholic. If we don’t care for the sick, educate the young, care for the homeless, then we cannot call ourselves the church of Jesus Christ.”

This model, therefore, stands on the shoulders of the Church’s long and storied history—as Pope Leo XIV’s Dilexi te highlights—of caring for the poor. Part of its prophetic witness means emphasizing service to those in the school and in the broader community, which is done not just through education, but also by meeting the physical needs of its community by providing food and clothing. The model depicts a diverse array of holy images of saints that allow its students to see themselves in the Church and often reflects the culture of the community in its worship experiences, such as a gospel choir for Mass, which is held bi-weekly rather than weekly or daily. On off weeks, they may have a Liturgy of the Word, adoration, or penitential services in order to allow all their students to more fully participate. Not conferring a blessing during the distribution of Holy Communion is not always practiced and can act as a barrier to what feels like full participation in a Mass.[8] For some, Catholic identity means frequent attendance at Mass, and that a school would deviate from this is unconscionable, as would be a baccalaureate Liturgy of the Word instead of a baccalaureate Mass, especially for alumni.

A certain weakness and temptation of this model of Catholic identity is that in the process of prophetically meeting the needs of those they serve, schools lose the essential Christological intention of their service. Service becomes synonymous with philanthropy or social work, rather than charity forged in the heart of Christ. The 2022 document by the Congregation of Catholic Education warns of this charismatic expression of Catholic identity.

There are others according to which what counts above all is the “Catholic spirit,” the “Christian inspiration” or the “charismatic” fulfilment, terms which are poorly defined, hardly concrete and seldom verifiable in reality. According to these interpretations, neither the application of canonical norms nor the recognition of legitimate hierarchical authority are considered necessary. If this were to be the case, it would only be of “symbolic” value and therefore hardly effective. Sometimes, in the case of educational institutions established and/or directed by Religious Orders, Institutes of Consecrated Life, Societies of Apostolic Life or charismatic groups, there is an imbalance between the charism and ecclesial belonging. In some situations, any reference to the term “Catholic” is avoided, choosing alternative juridical terminology.[9]

These prophetic terms, then, lose their kerygmatic meaning and become absorbed into secular definitions and presumptions, which risks undermining the very nature of Catholic education. In addition, these schools often serve in disadvantaged and economically depressed neighborhoods, which can make finding the right educators—let alone Catholic educators—difficult. If most educators are non-Catholic, it can be difficult to find those able to teach theology and more challenging to maintain a Catholic cultural ethos.

Conclusion

Contemporary discourse on Catholic identity appears incommensurable, largely because of an intransigent reliance on a singular model that dictates what Catholic identity must mean and how it is presented. To rely on a single model as the standard for Catholic identity is, as Cardinal Dulles analogously argues, to “content oneself with a half truth.”[10]

Further compounding the difficulty of these conversations is that many of our schools, 70 years ago, generally fit the “community of disciples” model, but have shifted due to various socio-economic factors to the “prophetic witness” model, which can be a challenge for administrators, teachers, and alumni to navigate and articulate how their schools remain Catholic.

I hope that by providing varying models of Catholic identity, we can engage the question of “But are they really Catholic?” more fruitfully, attentive to the ways it is commonly presumed, and draw one another to a more holistic vision of Catholic identity and the ways the mystery of the Church is embodied in the ministry of our Catholic schools.

Seeking the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary through prayer