The New York Times has run a series of elegiac articles on the closing of 22 Catholic elementary schools in Brooklyn and Queens

National Review, March 14, 2005

* The New York Times has run a series of elegiac articles on the closing of 22 Catholic elementary schools in Brooklyn and Queens. This is the long goodbye to a lost geography of New York, when, as one reporter pointed out, neighborhoods were known by their parishes--Angels for Queen of Angels, Sacred Hearts for Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary.

More than the New York of The Honeymooners has vanished, however, for the Catholic schools had become gateways for striving minority parents who wanted the order and discipline public schools had increasingly failed to provide. Parochial schools became vulnerable because the dearth of vocations dried the pool of low-income nun-teachers, but vouchers or tuition tax credits might have kept them alive: Parents of parochial-school students pay double to educate their kids. The taxpayers will now end up bearing the cost in any case.