Boys aged 10 to 14 are the fastest growing group of violent criminals in Australia.

Queensland Police statistics released last week show that in a 12 month period, boys in this group committed 276 rapes and sexual assaults — plus roughly 1000 other crimes, including murder, armed robbery and stalking.

Police and social commentators are blaming the media, for being too sexualised and violent – also parents, for not supervising what they watch.

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OK, but what about our schools?

These young criminals attend schools with ideological atmospheres dominated by the mentality of Teachers’ Unions.

The 1999, the Australian Education Union’s policy on “combating racism” denigrated Australian government education policy, saying, “its prime purpose is to serve the needs of the dominant Anglo-Australian culture”.

The Union succeeded in having curriculums changed — the new emphasis being on teaching children, in the words of the Queensland curriculum, “to deconstruct the values of the Anglo-Australian culture”.

What was this terrible “Anglo-Australian culture”?

It was a culture based on the Ten Commandments — commandments to love God, to love your neighbour, not to kill, not to commit adultery, not to steal etc.

Having succeeded in ridding our children of such ideas, we now observe them behaving in accordance with what they are being taught.

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If God exists, there is a supremely urgent reason to reverse this agnostic, morals-free relativism.

If God exists, top priority is that children be taught to love God and to prepare themselves to die in a state of grace.

Parents who take the trouble of sending their children to Catholic schools should be able to feel confident that this is what is being taught.

But can they?

Modern-day Catholic schools accept government funding.  So can they, in fact, be “Catholic”?

Mother Mary MacKillop, in her original Josephite schools, opposed all government funding – making her Sisters beg in the streets rather than accept it.

 “It is impossible,” she said, “to become in any way connected with Government and be true to the spirit, as well as the letter, of our Rule.”

With 90-plus percent of today’s Catholic school-leavers not practising the Faith, perhaps we should revisit Mother Mary’s principles.