Page 10: Catholic Schools in Perspective, continued

As should be obvious by now, a complex series of causes brought about the decline in Catholic education. Identifying the difficulties is not a morbid exercise in futility if it can launch the Catholic community on an examination of conscience which can move us to an understanding of our mistakes and set us on the road to a renewed appreciation of the value of Catholic schools for the Church in America.

Whether or not that happens, however, never allow someone to declare that finances have been killing our schools; the crisis in confidence, the crisis in faith, has been doing them in.

Allow me to conclude with some anecdotal data.

For several years now, I have taken up a pet project: Reading the biographical “blurbs” on the newly-ordained for the various dioceses, whose newspapers I receive. Time after time, one discovers “the Catholic school link,” regardless of the age of the ordinand. Indeed, in my admittedly unofficial and unscientific survey [but this “anecdotal” information has also been confirmed in studies by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate], I have found that approximately 90% of the men have had at least a Catholic elementary school education, with half of them likewise graduating from Catholic secondary schools. That kind of a statistic is even more impressive when one considers that, unfortunately, fewer than 25% of American Catholic boys have the benefit of a full twelve-year experience of the Church’s schools. And while vocation “recruitment” is not the sole indicator of the value of a Catholic education, it is a powerful one since it also suggests that the same institutions are fertile training for all types of lay apostolates as well. The vocational angle alone, however, would make a deep impression on anyone looking toward the future and even for crass financial pay-back on an investment.

My second story. Some time ago, our community of priests and seminarians entertained two couples [married 47 and 21 years, respectively] who were going to assist us in forming a pre-Cana team. The celibates ranged in age from 48 to 19. We had a thoroughly delightful evening, with person after person sharing marvelous stories of growing up Catholic. Although we spanned at least three generations and hailed from various parts of the country, we “spoke the same language” – the language of Catholicism, which bridged every other sociological gap, whether of age or sex or ethnicity or place of birth. That evening, after the company had left, I tried to determine what, aside from our obvious membership in the Church, we had in common, causing us to have such an uncommonly unified vision of reality. And then it dawned on me: All nine of us had been educated, from kindergarten through graduate studies, in the Church’s schools. While many of us today are rightly concerned about the decline in our worship life [what sociologists refer to as “cult” in a positive sense], I recalled that both sociologists and theologians agree that a viable “cult” demands a “culture” – and Catholic education provides just that, giving us a lens to look at the world and ourselves in a unique manner. That, in essence, is what Catholic schools can do as no other educational approach can, precisely because they originate, as John Paul II said, “ex corde Ecclesiae” [from the heart of the Church], and are intended to lead their students back to the Heart of God.

Father Peter Stravinskas is a priest of the Society of the Venerable John Henry Cardinal Newman. He is the editor-in-chief of Newman House Press and of Catholic Response, a magazine imbued with a joyful and dynamic orthodoxy and written according to high-quality journalistic standards. He is also the author of several books, many of which are available on-line through the Society's website at http://jhcnewman.org.