The reason we are having trouble keeping Catholic schools open is because there are fewer Catholic kids. Who came up with the profound thought? Would you believe a Buffalo, New York, business periodical? (Thanks to Tom for the link.)
Enrollment in Catholic grammar schools has been dropping for a couple of decades. ... The number of baptisms in the diocese has dropped 51 percent during the same period.
The publication doesn’t spell it out, but I will. Catholic schools are closing because Catholics, like everyone else, are contracepting so much that there are fewer kids around. Sure, down in the Southern parts of the country, there are all kinds of immigrant kids, but in the older Catholic dioceses—Boston, New York, Chicago, Detroit (all closing schools)—baptisms are dropping fast.
As Tom says, I’d love to hear a bishop come out and tell the people, “If you don’t want your schools and parishes to close, the first thing to do is to stop contracepting.” Yeah, I’m not holding my breath for that one.
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I’d be curious to get a sense of the drop in the adult Mass-attending population. Parents driven from the church are not likely to baptize their kids and send them to the parish school.
I agree if parents are not attending Mass, then it is likely their child(ren) will unlikely be enrolled in CCD.
Though I am not sure what is meant by “parents driven from the church”: are parents ticked at the Church for the abuse scandal, its tough teachings on abortion, birth control… or something else?
I strongly suspect ‘something else’ as in the strong materialistic, consumer driven culture that is all around us. Many denominations are struggling with their service attendance and even finding vocations.
A Christian life we are all called to live is not easy and is counter-culture to the popular trends of today.
Au contraire… A problem in parish religious education is the large number of families who don’t worship on the Lord’s Day but who make sure that their children are enrolled in relgious education classes.
Certainly that’s a problem that’s added on top of the lack of kids. Our parish religious education enrollment is declining precipitously, but in addition, of the kids who are there a large percentage aren’t going to Mass.
(I don’t include our parish’s Spanish-language religious ed which is growing by leaps and bounds.)
The suburban Catholic schools in Chicago are overpopulated and have highly competitive entry. Given the pitiful condition of the Chicago public schools, the inner city demand could fill up every Catholic facility in the State, if the price was right. (A great portion of Catholic School students in Chicago are not Roman Catholic)
The issue is high taxes. It is really hard to afford Catholic School when you pay (in Illinois) high property tax for public schools that do not work. If property taxes were lower, or rebated, the inner city would be opening schools left and right. The quantity of demand exists, but not at double the market price.
JBP
Granting all of the above, Dom, the Church, or at least the RCAB, hardly seems to be helping things in the way it has handled the Our Lady of Presentation school fiasco and the prolonged uncertainty of the fate of the Latin Mass community at Holy Trinity (which led to a dramatic drop in its CCD enrollment). To be sure, Catholicism is not the easiest path for young families to follow in our materialistic, hedonistic, child-unfriendly culture, but is it really necessary for the Church/Archdiocese to make it more difficult for parents, including those who are willing to put large dough on the table—as in the case of Presentation—or travel long distances, as in the instance of the Latin Mass folk, to obtain daily or Sunday schooling for the rising generation? This seems so self-defeating.