A Snippet and a New Link

Rod Dreher, a Dallas-based columnist, Catholic, and Conservative will be on the blogroll shortly--look for "Crunchy Con."

Here's a bit regarding immigration:

My friend N. is a practicing Catholic and a public school teacher in California. For years she has been telling me that they’re overwhelmed with the children of illegal immigrants, and that it is extremely difficult to teach these kids because of the parents’ attitudes toward education. She said that for most of these kids of illegal Mexican migrants, it is very hard to get them to do their homework (she contrasts this with the children of Asian immigrants, who whatever their difficulties with English, work hard to overcome it because, in N.’s view, the Asian parents have a different attitude toward education). And she said that continuity is hard to maintain with the Mexican immigrant kids, because their parents think nothing of pulling them out of class for two weeks at a time for family trips, and so forth.

It would be interesting if the news media would quit taking at face value the statements that the Catholic bishops make on behalf of the church, and inquire as to what the Catholic laity really think about illegal immigration. The media are quick to do this when the opinions of the laity on matters like contraception, abortion and so forth differ from the official Church position. It would be interesting to see how far the laity-–or portions of it-–is from their bishops on this matter.

Although my Swiss/German granny spoke German around the house, she made DAMN sure that her children spoke English (and German) when they went to school. There were no excuses for lousy grades, and no "interruptions" of schooling.