Catholic Schools Week

Catholic Schools Week is being observed nation-wide this week. It is a time to celebrate this great privilege and gift of Catholic Education, to relish this treasure, to thank all who make it possible and to recommit ourselves to fostering its growth. We all sense that the atmosphere of respect, good order, and high moral codes of behavior contribute to both academic and athletic excellence in Catholic schools. The facts verify this: 99.1% of Catholic school students graduate from high school and 84. 7% go on to college, while only 44.1% of public school graduates do, a startling contrast which affirms the results of the sacrifices being made by parents to send their children to Catholic schools.
Despite this good news, we all have some idea that the financial challenges facing our schools are having a devastating effect on them, but the facts are even more disconcerting: last year, only 24 new schools opened, while 174 closed or merged with others. Every parish having an elementary school is now history. Across the nation there are only 7, 094 Catholic schools, of these 5,889 are elementary schools and 1,205 are high schools. Of the 2.1 million students in Catholic schools, 30% are minorities and there has been a 14.5% increase in non-Catholic attendance.
Speaking with religion teachers, key players in the raison d'etre for Catholic Schools, I hear widespread comment on how little students know about their faith or how few of them, even those from Catholic elementary schools, practice it by the minimum of weekly Mass attendance. These children are now the third generation of parents and grandparents who themselves have drifted from active practice of the faith. They want their children in a Catholic school for safety, academic and athletic reasons, but the real reason for the existence of our schools, the faith formation and education of children, is not a major factor, it seems. The Archdiocesan Lenten program, Catholics, Come Home, is well-timed and much needed, for the true excellence of a Catholic school cannot be achieved without the real foundation of that education taking place in the home. If, indeed, Catholic schools are A+ for America, the theme of the week, they cannot fulfill this claim unless families regroup around the altar and the sacraments.
Bro. Rene