Cardinal Pell wants more Catholics in Catholic Schools
H/T to Curt Jester – Australia’s Cardinal Pell says Catholic Schools should:
“re-examine how they might maximise enrolment of Catholic students”.
Also, they should:
increase the proportion of school staff who are “practising and knowledgeable Catholics”.
The general trend here in the southeastern USA, of course, is that Catholic schools are becoming more and more elitist as the tuition keeps going up. Whereas it used to be a community that was mostly Catholic, living in neighborhoods together, going to Church together, and going to school together, now it’s much more scattered – people come together at the school from all over the place, and there are Catholic and non-Catholic students (nothing wrong with this, but it’s ironic that my local parish school is 55% Catholic.
Meanwhile, Catholics who are committed to Church teachings on the family can’t afford to send their kids for $3000 or more per year (per student.) There are places in the plains states where it’s much more affordable, but not where I live. Homeschooling, here we come!
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February 23rd, 2009 at 10:52 pm
The solution is simple.
For every dollar the Vatican/a diocese pays out to sex abuse victims, they should invest the same amount in Catholic schools — both in financial aid for students who cannot afford the tuition and for teachers’ salaries, to provide competitive compensation to keep talented teachers in Catholic schools, so that they’re not merely a stepping stone toward higher-paying, public-school jobs.
Some folks might be sensitive to the issue, but if the RC Church can use money –- parishoners’ money — as a penance to those who suffered abuse from priests who should not have been serving and sometimes protected from defrockification (not sure if this is the correct word), there is no reason they should call the flock to the dire situation in our schools without first making right their own efforts.
In the U.S., that would be well over $1 billion in recent years. That could do great work in many of our nation’s Catholic schools.