Underselling Catholic School Week

It was Catholic School Week and so it was the featured player at the liturgy.  It seemed hard for the speaker to find a way to claim to be better -- rather than as good as -- the public school.  It seemed like trying to justify one's being without offending others.  The problem is in justifying, which grows out of comparison.  The school needed to sell itself as school, as religious school; and there it began to stumble over clichés, bumping into amorphous sayings, and back-pedaling from anything people might be reluctant to hear.  Crashing on through phrases well worn by time and use, the speaker tried to say nothing while sounding like she had just what someone might want.  Having spent a suitable amount of time at it she gratefully sat down, no more grateful than were her hearers who -- too polite (or deadened) to scratch their heads and well past the point of yawning -- stood to mumble their belief.