Saving a Catholic school.

"Saint Marguerite Bourgeoys, pray for us."

Those words spoken by veteran Calgary school trustee Lois Burke-Gaffney to close an emotional parent's meeting earlier this year set the stage for a small, local, and utterly glorious defence of Catholic education.

Within days of Burke-Gaffney asking for the prayers of Canada's first saint and patroness of education, trustees announced they would never surrender to the aggressive demands of Charter-waving linguistic ideologues trying to seize control of Calgary's Ecole Ste. Marguerite Bourgeoys from the Catholic board.

It was a huge victory for parents who had argued passionately that their children's French mother tongue and Catholic faith were indivisible aspects of their lives. As one father expressed it movingly during the parents' meeting: "I'm my kids' dad, and I bring them up in a French-speaking home. I want them educated in French. But God the Father must always be the centre of their life at home and school."

Calgary Catholic trustees heard. They responded. They stood for the Faith. In the aftermath, they made clear they recognized their actions have implications well beyond the few hundred families involved with Ecole Ste. Marguerite Bourgeoys. They have ramifications across Alberta and, indeed, Canada. What they explicitly rejected was the request--no, the shrill political insistence--for creation of a hybrid Catholic-public board to oversee education for French-speaking students in the city.

Such a board already exists in Edmonton, where, despite that city's much larger French-speaking population, it appears to be an unmitigated disaster. Students have bolted. Teachers have fled. "Accommodations" have reportedly been made to the religious character of the board's Catholic schools.

The problems that have arisen to the north of us are exactly what a group of Calgary parents warned against when they fought tooth and nail against a French-only board locally. My wife was a leader of that group.

Joyously proud of her Quebec roots that date back to Marguerite Bourgeoys' establishment of education in New France under the Sisters of the Congregation of Notre Dame, my wife made sure our kids' first language was French. But Linda was arguing long before we were married that passing on a mother tongue begins at the kitchen table, and must have the home at its centre. It is not, she has always maintained, government spending of tax dollars that sustains children in their language, culture, heritage, faith. It is mamma and papa.

On that basis, she and like-minded parents lobbied against establishment of the French-only school board. Armed with reams of statistics on costs and provincial exam results, they demonstrated convincingly that, for 15 years, the program for French students run by Calgary Catholic has produced as fine an education as Alberta offers at a reasonable price. They still lost.

Faced with a Supreme Court judgement known as the Mahe case, which gave French-speaking Canadians "a measure of control" in running their own school boards, the Alberta government capitulated to ideologues who insist on putting political ambitions ahead of classroom considerations.

The provincial learning minister gave them permission to set up a board with the potential to oversee both the city's public French-speaking school and Ecole Ste. Marguerite Bourgeoys. The board would, in other words, comprise Catholic and non-Catholic trustees.

When the minister refused to give that board exclusive legal control over French education in the city, however, Calgary Catholic trustees seized the chance to take their courageous stand.

At the heart of their stand was the understanding that giving non-Catholics even a "measure of control" over Catholic schools would be the beginning of the end for all Catholic education. In this case, it would be a government-funded linguistic obsession trumping the truths of the Faith. In future, it would be all manner of causes du jour. This is a province, after all, whose premier once famously asked: "What's the difference between a Catholic and non-Catholic paper clip?" as part of his argument for finding "fiscal efficiencies" through combining school boards. This is a country, too, in which Newfoundland and Quebec simply trampled denominational rights by abolishing faith-centred education. It happened there. It could happen anywhere.

Yet Calgary Catholic trustees have said resoundingly it won't happen hear as long as they are on the job. Saint Marguerite Bourgeoys, pray for them.