SMALL CHOICE IN ROTTEN APPLES

... the frequenting of non-Catholic schools, whether neutral or mixed, those namely which are open to Catholics and non-Catholics alike, is forbidden for Catholic children, and can be at most tolerated on the approval of the ordinary alone, under determined circumstances of place and time, and with special precautions... Pius XI, Divini illius magistri, Dec. 31, 1939 (Vatican translation).

Disgraced $GG "$chool" has been a popular blog topic of late, inspired largely by Dannie's frenzied promotional campaign. We're sure it's aimed at offsetting the huge embarrassment of four Gertie adolescents' graduating from Protestant-Evangelical institutions. The distress signals are unmistakeable: Not only did the Wee One post a sermon titled  "A Catholic Education" (here), but he also led off last week's "Bishop's (?) Corner" with what looks like a plug for the ill-famed (and misnamed) "$chool":

Trinity Sunday marked a significant milestone in the history of St. Gertrude the Great School with one of the largest graduations in our thirty some year history. We congratulate our five eighth graders who will begin High School with us in the Fall, and especially our three graduating High School Seniors.    

There's a lot of panic in those two sentences, a lot of whistling in the cemetery. He's got his back to the wall.

But before we get started, let's immediately put one bit of silliness out of the way. In the real world, eighth-grade "graduations" are meaningless. The only genuine pre-collegiate rite of passage that counts is graduation from high school. The eight-grade transition statistic is just sleight of hand — and pretty clumsy at that — to disguise the "$chool's" dismal 30-year record.

An aside: We'd like to know just how many of the five eighth-grade "graduates"  (LOL) commencing $GG High "$chool" in the fall will remain there until graduation day. That's something we'll be keeping a close eye on. If surnames mean anything, we'll lay odds that at least one of them might end up at Mars Hill Academy. Why should a family's girls get an education inferior to that afforded its boys?

For a sharper picture of the Dirtbag's dilemma, let's consider the secondary-school numbers. In late spring 2017, Dannie congratulated seven high-school graduates: three from $GG (two of whom are the "Prinicpal's" offspring!) and four from area Protestant-Evangelical independent schools — or as Dannie said in his sermon, "the Bizarro world of ... Protestant education." What this means is that some Gertie families who wanted to give their kids an education grounded in Christian moral principles opted against sending them to $GG "$chool." To put it frankly, they made the conscious decision to trust their children to Protestant educators and institutions, the kind Dannie characterized in his sermon as "very serious and methodical in indoctrinating ... children."

The way we figure it, there should have been at least seven 2017 graduates from $GG "$chool," not three. (We don't know how many Gertie parents homeschool or choose public or other private schools, so the number could be much higher.)  Anyhow, 57% of the officially acknowledged class of '17 went elsewhere. And not just any elsewhere, but a heretical elsewhere!

Numbers don't lie.

Anybody with some elementary business smarts can see "One Hand" has a big problem. By his account, Dannie's sad excuse for a school has been around for some 30 years, yet this year it only managed to graduate three — one for each decade of operation. Furthermore, after almost a third of a century, $GG's total enrollment stands at an anemic 19, as reported last week by The Lay Pulpit (here).

Compare $GG's miserable stats with the enviable record of Mars Hill Academy in Mason, Ohio, from which a Gertlet graduated this year. The little classical Christian school started with 27 students about a decade after $GG "$chool." Ten years later it moved to a new building on a 13-acre campus and, after 20 years of operation, boasted more than 360 students and 40 staff.

The Readers' tale of two academies should tell His Idiocy something's really wrong with his enterprise. It also should wake the Gerties up. The time has come to stop funding a manifest failure. Almost eight years have passed since the $GG "$chool" $candal came to a catastrophic head in the late fall of 2009. Someone needs to do now what Dannie should've done way back then. As the Italian proverb goes, "Sometimes it's better to give your apple away than to eat it yourself."

No amount of sermonizing or hollow claims of an "excellent education" can fix the problem, which is a loss of confidence in $GG's "leadership," starting, but certainly not ending, with the "Principal." Only a few parents, among whom are the "Principal" and his wife, embrace Dannie's fictional "Catholic" education. He's definitely being sent a message. It's as if the majority of employees at a Pepsi bottling plant chose to drink Coke: a wise consumer could only infer the insiders must know something untoward about plant conditions or the product.

Dannie doesn't need an MBA to come to the same conclusion as PL. The primitive survival instinct of a plague-rat drowning in raw sewage should be sufficient to tell him $GG "$chool" along with its "Principal" constitute an unsustainable drain on diminishing financial resources. The dreaded "'big ticket' expenses" are coming fast and furious, as we learned in last week's "Corner," in which "One Hand" confessed the air conditioning had "conked out."

A question: Is this the same AC system that was to replace the "dying" system in March 2016, just a little over a year ago? You remember: the one that cost "the princely sum of $11,000 to $12,000," and for which Dannie adjured the Gerties to "do your part" by donating "$100 in a lump sum, or $30-$40 in monthly payments"[click here].)

Panhandlin' Dan may try to cajole, wheedle, spook, and shame until his overstressed vocal cords snap, but the majority of Gerties won't heed his call. Oh, they may smile blankly at their "old 'bishop" or convulse like a distempered cur in nodding assent as he pleads to stanch the flow of red ink. Good parents however, will receive the grace to shield the apples of their eye from $GG's hickory-stick curriculum. Moreover, these moms and dads will parry every effort to intimidate them into enrolling their kids where they won't receive "a Catholic education."

Seeing that the rational solution to the Dirtbag's problems — close the $chool and remove the "Principal" from the cult center — is forbidden to him, we can expect his message to become increasingly agitated as Gerties turn their backs on his frantic appeals. The unbearable tension between his need to free up more cash and his inability to invoke the necessary remedy may well cause $GG to crater sooner than we expected: Gerties with insurance policies naming $GG the beneficiary aren't dying fast enough to soothe Dan's itch to spend.

Although PL is delighted about the impending crisis, we imagine some of you cultlings are depressed. Quite laudably you refuse to condemn your children to the cult's educational black hole, yet you wince in sympathy whenever the Mitered Maggot poor-mouths.

Well, then, why not help the larval creature? Make a counter-offer the Maggot can't refuse: Withhold all donations until $GG "$chool" closes down on its own, thus wiping the "Principal" and his wife off the cult's welfare roll.

STARVE THE BEAST AND UPSET THE ROTTEN-APPLE CART. THEN YOU CAN BUY A MAINTENANCE CONTRACT FOR THE HVAC SYSTEM.