"I WOULDN'T BE HERE if it weren't a Jesuit school," says Sarah Matthews, a junior at Gonzaga High School in St. John's, Newfoundland, founded in 1962 by Jesuits of the Upper Canada Province. Tracey King and Krista Blackwood, Gonzaga seniors, echo Sarah's thoughts: "Schooling in the religious tradition is important -- many people our age don't think they need it, but in the future they'll look back and be thankful that they've had a Catholic education."

And Gonzaga may not be a Catholic school, much less a Jesuit school, in the not-too-distant future. Right now, Sarah, Tracey, Krista, and their fellow students are occupied with math classes, language labs, and extracurriculars, but it is never far from their minds that Gonzaga is a school under fire.

The placards say it all; students at Gonzaga High in St. John's, Newfoundland, are worried that proposed legislation would strip their school of its Catholic and Jesuit character.

This has been the educational system in Newfoundland for 200 years, starting back when it was a colony of Great Britain, later when it was an independent dominion, and now as a province of Canada.

But today we at Gonzaga find ourselves in a battle for the continuance of denominational education, a battle for that which makes Gonzaga Catholic and Jesuit. When Newfoundland became a Canadian province in 1949, the Terms of Union were hammered out between federal officials in Ottawa, Ontario, and provincial officials in St. John's; those terms preserved Newfoundland's right to continue its denominational education system. Any change to those terms requires a constitutional amendment ratified by the House of Commons and Senate in Ottawa.

That is what is happening, and it has us more than worried. Newfoundland's provincial government is introducing a bill that would in effect abolish the denominational school system. The current draft legislation would make all schools public at first; afterwards, they may attempt to get denominational status if 90 percent of the students' parents want it. After that, it would literally take only ten parents to challenge the viability of a school's denominational status at any time, and it would require 90 percent of the parents to beat that challenge and keep a school denominational.

There's a hidden agenda here: the provincial government wants to replace denominational schools with entirely public ones. In an open letter to parishioners, Archbishop James MacDonald of St. John's put it pointedly: "The new schools the province intends to legislate will in fact be secular or public schools in which Catholics and members of other denominations will be permitted to exercise very limited religious activities . . . The very existence [of the denominational schools] would be subject to the whim of the provincial legislature from day to day, not on the rights or wishes of the Catholic people or others."

The archbishop has also spoken out against tampering with entrenched minority rights. "For the government to undertake the implementations of these proposals would be a violation of the Constitution of Canada and the protection it gives to minority groups . . . We are not prepared to stand idly by."

In a strong showing of ecumenical solidarity, a network of churches and denominations advised the government against holding a provincewide referendum about changes to the school system. Hubert Norman, executive director of the Integrated Educational Council, announced that all the churches involved "agree that the province is wrong to consider using a majority process, in this day and age, to remove minority rights. The government has never in our history attempted to override the minority rights held by individual groups."

The referendum was a package deal; it contained many changes to Newfoundland's education system, some dealing with finances and others with personnel policies, all crowded in with the proposed change to the constitutional right of Roman Catholics and members of other denominations to have publicly funded schools. The referendum was held last September, and 53 percent were in favor of the changes and 47 percent against. But only a shade over half of the eligible voters did vote, so that 53 percent in favor of the changes represents actually only about a quarter of eligible voters.

In anticipation of the impending constitutional change, a group of citizens formed the Alliance for Choice in Education. One of its members is Tom McGrath, Gonzaga's assistant principal. He asserts: "We want to put our children first. Parents should be allowed to choose how they want their children educated. The real issue is not finance or efficiency. It is power. The provincial government has made a power grab."

We are waging the battle on two fronts: in Ottawa we are trying to block or slow down the constitutional change, and in St. John's in the House of Assembly we are lobbying our provincial legislature, where the bill will have to be passed. If our efforts fail, will Gonzaga remain Catholic? The Jesuits' commitment is to run a Catholic school, not a nondenominational school, and the government will not want priests running a non-Catholic school.

Former premier Clyde Wells was the driving force behind the bill, and until his retirement in January he had ordered his party members to give it their support. But a number of back benchers in his own party openly defied him, intending to vote against the government. A controversial item in the bill would allow the government to "take over" present schools, physical facilities included, even though some were financed and built by parishes and dioceses. You will not find the word expropriation in the bill, but, believe us, it is there, between the lines.

Things are uncertain since Premier Wells retired. Brian Tobin, former federal fisheries minister, has won the right to replace him. On January 29 Tobin called a provincial election, and on February 22 he won a five-year mandate to govern the province. Will Tobin, a Catholic, call his caucus to toe the line? We don't know.

"My sons received an excellent education at Gonzaga. The teachers and the Jesuits were always there to listen and the Christian way of life was emphasized," says Mrs. Peggy Hatfield, mother of two former Gonzaga students and a strong proponent of the school. "Why would anyone want to banish that?"