Some think taking public funding will alter identity of Catholic schools - Catholic Education

National Catholic Reporter, March 28, 1997 by John Allen

As the national battle over vouchers intensifies, two questions define the frontline: What is constitutional, and what can privatization do to improve the quality of education in the United States?

Within the Catholic church, meanwhile, another debate is emerging: Do the benefits outweigh the liabilities?

"The inevitable consequence of public money is to secularize schools," said Bishop Thomas J. Curry of Los Angeles. "We're determined to have it both ways -- to have schools that are at the same time thoroughly Catholic and also federally financed. But it won't work."

Curry, who leads the Santa Barbara Pastoral Region for the Los Angeles archdiocese, has outlined the contours of this intrachurch debate. He believes that vouchers, or any other system of public funding, have the potential to compromise the Catholic character of church schools.

Further, he believes this possibility has been glossed over in the push for public dollars.

"We've spent so much effort attempting to secure government support that we have neglected the question of definition -- what exactly a Catholic school should be." Curry said. "We're not discussing it because there's too much emphasis on obtaining public assistance."

Curry is one of the few in leadership positions in the church willing to break with the consensus in favor of vouchers. He is quick to point out that he has no problem with vouchers for some innercity Catholic schools, where the mission is primarily to educate an under-served population.

For schools whose purpose is to evangelize in the faith, however, he thinks public funding is inappropriate.

Such talk rankles many leaders in Catholic education. Curry's comments brought a swift rebuke from Dr. Jerome Porath, superintendent of schools for the Los Angeles archdiocese.

"How can anyone think that an institution that has made so many sacrifices for so many years is now going to drop its mission just because the government offers some dollars to families?" he asked. "It's troublesome to many Catholic educators to hear the suggestion that they so lightly hold their mission that the thought of more dollars would cause it to evaporate."

Nevertheless, the fear that state dollars may sow the seeds of government intrusion speaks to many Catholics already worried about an erosion of the Church's distinctiveness in the face of secular American culture.

"The church absolutely has no business taking government funds." said Llewellyn Rockwell, president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn Ala. Rockwell, a Catholic layman with strong views on church affairs, writes a column that appears in The Wanderer, a conservative Catholic newspaper.

"He who pays the piper calls the tune," he said, suggesting that when church agencies receive government dollars, they face pressure to conform to secular values.

The concern over Catholicity or the potential for public funding to alter the Catholic character of church schools generally takes two forms. One is a concern that public funding will erode religious identity, as seen in the secularization of such colleges as Harvard and Duke, whose origins were religious.

Most Catholic educators, however are adamant that this will not happen. "Before we went into it, we were clear that we would run the school the way we always have," said Sr. Brigetta Waldron, OSU, principal of Archbishop James P. Lyke School in Cleveland. The predominantly African-American school on the southeastern edge of the city is a participant in the only voucher program in the United States that currently includes Catholic schools. "If a day ever came when we felt any pressure to abandon our Catholic identity, we would withdraw," Waldron said.

The argument that public funding undermines Catholicity strikes many Catholic educators outside the United States as odd, since America is practically the only developed nation in the world that does not provide some measure of public funding for church schools.

In Canada's Ontario province, for example, the state is the sole funder of Catholic schools, and Catholic teachers and administrators are state employees. Over 30 percent of Ontario's school-age population attends one of the province's tuition-free Catholic schools.

"I've been in Catholic education for 25 years, and for all that time we had some type of public funding," said Michael Moher, superintendent of education for the Ottawa Catholic School Board. "It has never compromised our Catholic identity."

"[Catholicity] is a caution, but if you have the ability to control the curriculum and the ability to control the hiring process, you're in good shape. The bishops should be quite comfortable with what's going on in their communities," Moher said.

Sister of Notre Dame Phyllis Cook, principal of St. Columbkille's Elementary School in South Central Los Angeles, agrees that putting the debate in an international context should lessen some of the fear about Catholicity. "Our congregation has sisters in Great Britain and Belgium, where the government has always paid the teachers without any damage to Catholicity," she said. "We can't be limited by fear of what might happen. We can't let worst-case scenarios prevent us from taking advantage of opportunities."