Blessed are they who go to Catholic schools: finances force schools to close down - Catholic Education - Cover Story

National Catholic Reporter, Oct 29, 1993 by Tim Unsworth

Chicago's archbishop, Cardinal Joseph L. Bernardin, is criticized for closing schools in order to save parishes, but it is the parish school that appears to be causing the blood flow. Some 25 to 40 parishes are in particularly bad shape and another 100 are living out of their checkbooks. Final decisions, made by clergy, will give priority to sacramental needs and seminaries.

St. Ignatius is one of the seven schools involved in the merger. A Jesuit parish, founded in 1907 on land once part of Loyola University, it has become a neighborhood fixture. The grammar school opened in 1908. Today it has kids whose grandparents graduated from the school.

St. Ignatius is an integrated school of 238 children, 49 percent of whom are Caucasian. The remainder are black, Hispanic or Asian. There is a single tuition ($1,780) for all, although 38 percent are non-Catholics. There is also a preschool, with 36 children.

"We're not going to roll over and play dead," one parishioner said. Students think the merger would fragment families. "I've been here since kindergarten," one student said. "I could have bought a couple of dozen mountain bikes with the tuition money. But I can't get a good education from mountain bikes."

St. Ignatius has integrated parish and school perhaps better than other schools. On Sundays, the children bring up the gifts, take up the collection and serve Mass. An enormously talented second-grader named Tony walks the corridors with his drawing of his creation, "Heart Man." At an all-school assembly, he told students, "When bad people hurt good people, it shrinks their hearts." Every kid in the school knows Tony. It's hard to merge kids like Tony or symbols like Heart Man.

According to the principal, Nancy Kelly, a parish task force is studying the possibility of developing an independent Catholic school. The archdiocese has made it clear that any parish that decides to stay out would have to go its own way financially. Chicago has only five private elementary schools, three elite institutions conducted by the Religious of the Sacred Heart and two under the auspices of Opus Dei.

What are the implications? It's hard to be specific, but some strong impressions emerge:

* Catholic schools still capture the imagination of parents and students. Classroom for classroom, value for value, they remain better than their public counterparts, but the money to keep them going simply isn't there.

* Decisions are still made by ordained clergy and their interest in elementary schools is on the wane. A parish with a grammar school is no longer considered another "Bells of St. Mary's." It isn't that the clergy don't care. "I've got nine buildings to maintain," one said. "The issue in my parish isn't birth control or abortion. It's the boilers."

* There is a growing interest in adult education for Catholics who survive to that level. But money will continue to go in disproportionate amounts to clergy development and care. However, gradually the church will spend more money on adult catechesis.