In the last two weeks, you’ve received two letters from a future Royal America. After traveling through the time vortex, letters postmarked Royal California reached your eyes. The first one detailed a proud and strong America, led by its King to colonize Central America and the Caribbean after a century of domestic isolation. The second one described this century of isolation itself: how the American military was brought home from the dunes and hills of the Muslim world and put to work reclaiming America’s dilapidated cities and shifting borders from violent and criminal barbarians.

This last letter came with a warning—the time vortex is closing, soon there’ll be no more letters. The letter is written in the conditional—did the following suggestions actually materialize?—but the implication is that it was a serious proposal weighed by the King and his court. No word on what the decision was, but it couldn’t have been too different. Luckily, the last topic is arguably the most important one of all: education of the youth.

Most people lament that K-12 education in America is getting more expensive each year, while simultaneously producing fewer and fewer educated graduates. There are a legion of non-profits, boards, endowments, individuals, movements, and initiatives dedicated to solving this education crisis, which is presented as a monumental and unprecedented challenge that will require the heroic efforts of broad swathes of society, as well as tremendous economic resources.

Homeschooling, charter schools, technology in the classroom, stereotype threat, racial discrimination, teacher unions, teacher salaries, irresponsible parents, school shootings, gangs, negative media influence—the list of footnotes and subheadings in the field of education are endless. And every year, the bill for education grows.

I’m going to pointedly shrug at the cacophony of education crusaders and propose a simple solution that will not only improve the quality of education tenfold, but also save the taxpayers up to 99% of the $154 billion spent on education by the federal government each year. The solution is simple: hand over the entire Department of Education to the Roman Catholic Church.

To begin with, the Church is clearly qualified to accept this role as cultivator of America’s youth. The Church has a nearly 2,000-year-long history of successfully transmitting good habits, knowledge, virtue, institutions, history, and a complex set of traditions from generation to generation. In fact, the Church was one of the long-time pioneers of the field of education. Where do you think universities originated from? Lots of wise and accomplished scientists, saints, and philosophers were members of the Church, and even more were educated or inspired by it.

Copernicus was a Catholic priest. A$AP Rocky attended public schools.

The Church, furthermore, would be ecstatic to accept this responsibility. The Church, quaint as it may seem, still runs primarily on the fuel of faith, virtue, self-denial, self-restraint, and service for the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God. If it used to cost $154 billion to run a national educational system, the Church is going to take those $154 billion U.S. dollars and exchange them for 154 billion faith and virtue credits.

You won’t have to pay this pyramid of priests; they’ll take on the costs themselves at no charge. In return for the responsibility, however, the Church asks permission to indoctrinate its pupils into the faith of the Church. It wants to teach them about the Bible, the trinity, and the eternal sacrifice of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Nothing more.

Why the Roman Catholic Church? Why not another church? It’s sad to hear but, after two years of President Clinton II, the only two churches left with enough national organization and traditionalist credentials to undertake such a monumental task are the Catholic and Mormon churches. Since the former is at least ten times larger in America than the latter, the choice could not be clearer.

You may cringe at the thought of placing the nation’s entire young human crop in the control of celibate ascetics who wear dresses and can’t stop going on about this Jesus Christ guy who lived, like, a million years ago, man. But isn’t religion most deeply believed when it is taught young and taught socially? And isn’t an authentic faith in an established religious tradition a pretty good way to discourage youngsters from skipping class, joining gangs, getting pregnant at 16, doing drugs, being rude, cheating on exams, cyberbullying, hosting rainbow parties, and shooting up their classmates?

Take a moment to ask yourself: if the cost of a permanent end to school shootings is mandatory, universal religious education, are you willing to grant that saving the lives of children is more important than keeping up a never-ending melee between believers and non-believers on the fairly trivial point of the literal truth of the Christian religion? Religious people are more likely to be happy and satisfied with their lives, more likely to reproduce, more likely to have a loving family and community, more likely to give to charity, more likely to be gainfully employed, more likely to save money—you get the picture. They are also less likely to do drugs, be depressed, develop mental problems, join a gang, steal, murder, rape—you get the picture.

If we moved from a nationwide system of mandatory secular public schooling to a nationwide system of mandatory Roman Catholic schooling, it seems logical that the general population would become happier, less atomized, more fulfilled, less criminal—in essence, the Church would achieve the kind of social change the education crusaders are spectacularly failing to achieve right now. On top of that, the country would gain a common culture and frame of reference through the culture and traditions of the Church. National unity and bonhomie would rise to never-before-seen levels. And on top of all that, the taxpayers would be $154 billion richer every year.

At this point the letter ends, and I’m sure you might exclaim in anger that the Catholic Church cannot possibly be allowed to influence the multitudes of Baptist, Methodist, Lutheran, Episcopalian, Mormon, Jewish, etc. kids in America. But now, rather than discussing what to do about education, we’re discussing which state religion we’re going to choose, are we not?

That’s what I call progress.