I forget when and where it was in which, as a reporter, I heard a stunning lecture on the impact of birthrates and basic demographics on the rise and fall of religious institutions in the United States and elsewhere.
What made the lecture so interesting was the connection the speaker — it might have been the United Methodist thinker Lyle Schaller — made between traditional forms of religion and higher birth rates (and, correspondingly, between liberal forms of religion and much lower birth rates). Think about the recent decline of mainline Protestantism. Think about churches in Europe.
Anyway, enough about my fading Baby Boomer brain. The key is that these factors often figure into news stories about religion — especially in a Catholic context. Think about the priest shortage. Think about the relative health of conservative Catholic orders (emphasis on the word “relative”) and the sharp decline or even death of the orders that appeal to progressive, modern Catholics. Think about those painful parochial school closings in urban areas across the nation, but especially in the Northeast and upper Midwest.
Here in Baltimore, Catholics were just hit with a stunner — the closing of Towson Catholic High School. This was a small, but highly symbolic school, in large part because of its elite athletics programs. Round one of The Baltimore Sun coverage of the closing was absolutely by-the-book stuff, in terms of talking to upset parents, sad statements from church officials, etc. I am simply saying that the book is missing a some crucial pages. We read, for example:
Citing the “tidal wave of this dire economy” and a $650,000 deficit, the 86-year-old school notified parents and its 20-member faculty via e-mail Tuesday that it would not open for classes in September.
But many who loved the small school are convinced that more could have been done to save it. They described a pattern of indifference by Monsignor F. Dennis Tinder, the pastor of Immaculate Conception. The alumni association’s president, Paul A. Mecinski, said that if his group had received some warning of the dire situation, members might have been able to help. …
Tinder did not make himself available for comment. But Sean Caine, a spokesman for the Archdiocese of Baltimore, said the combination of $160,000 in unpaid tuition from last year and the sudden loss of 81 students from next year’s projected enrollment was too much for the school to overcome.
Then later on, there is this additional information:
Enrollment declines and closings have afflicted Catholic schools, which serve about 2.5 million students nationwide, for a decade particularly at elementary schools level and at schools such as Towson Catholic that serve urban populations.
“It has been a steady and pretty troubling trend,” said the Rev. Ronald Nuzzi, senior director of the Mary Ann Remick Leadership Program at the University of Notre Dame.
Several religion ghosts hover nearby:
* How healthy is urban Catholicism in Baltimore — one of the strategic liberal Catholic cities in America — in general? What is happening with the Latino population? Asians?
* Are there healthy Catholic schools in the area? Are they all suburban? Is this simply linked to the old Catholics-moving-to-the-suburbs trend? Are healthy schools linked to healthy parishes? What is the status of this particular parish?
* Several years ago, I was stunned to learn that some conservative Catholic families in South Baltimore were pulling their kids from Catholic schools in order to home school them, obviously, or even to send them to conservative Protestant schools.
Why? I asked one mother about this and she said: Our Protestant school is a much safer environment for our children than the Catholic school they were attending. My children are not harassed at the Protestant school about issues like birth control and the size of our family. They don’t have to hear the pope attacked week after week by teachers. Our family felt like our traditional Catholic faith was under attack — in a Catholic school.
I have met other Catholic and ex-Catholic families with the same story. Is this small, but symbolic, problem affecting the support for some schools? How many, if any?
* Obviously, what is happening with birth rates in urban Catholic families in Baltimore? What is happening to the actual pool from which this declining number of students is being drawn? The bad economy is there — you bet. But this trend has deep roots and long legs. This is not something that just started happening. If Catholic families in Baltimore used to average three to five children and now the average is 1.3, that’s going to affect the schools.
Of course, that issue has doctrinal content in a Catholic context.
The Towson story is a big one. It might be time for a deeper look at some of these issues in Baltimore.
 | Posted at 9:34 am |  Print
| Permalink | Trackback |
Comments (21) |
July 10, 2009, at 10:59 am
One issue that’s rarely discussed in these stories is the impact of children with special needs.
Catholic schools usually refuse to accept all but the least affected of these kids. I know of several Catholic moms, including myself, who would have loved to send our children to Catholic schools, but they “lacked the resources to teach them.”
How big an impact is it on the decline of Catholic school enrollment — no idea. But statistics from the U.S. Department of Education show that during the 2006-2007 school year, 6.7 million kids were served in public school under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act — 13 percent of all public school students. That’s a lot of kids, probably a healthy percentage of them Catholic.
Many homeschoolers also cite their children’s disabilities as the reason they take them out of schools.
July 10, 2009, at 11:20 am
Suzanne:
That is a great point. I think the rise in conditions all along the autism scale is one of the most stunning and uncovered stories of our age.
You’re spot on.
July 10, 2009, at 12:44 pm
One of the stories in the background of all this has to do with Catholic identity — on the part of the schools, and on the part of the parents. Is the school authentically Catholic, and thus attractive to those parents who want their children to receive a Catholic education? Or is it just a private school with a good sports (or computers, or drama) program? And what about the parents — are they seriously Catholic enough to feel an obligation to send their children to Catholic school, and to insist that it is authentically Catholic?
July 10, 2009, at 1:20 pm
Suzanne and tmatt:
“Special needs” is not simply a matter of educating students with intellectual challenges and/or autism. Our elder daughter for a time attended an RC high school. However, when it came time for our younger daughter, who is academically gifted (Duke TIP program, etc.), to be enrolled, the principal advised against it, saying the school didn’t have the resources to adequately educate gifted students. She ended up being homeschooled (homeschooling herself, actually) and getting a GED a semester ahead of the class in which she would have graduated. She is now a very successful student at a Jesuit university.
July 10, 2009, at 2:21 pm
My 3 grown sons went to Catholic grade and high school and ended up with lots of touchy-feeling events but no real knowledge of their faith. And it isn’t just because of a priest and sister shortage.
Now my daughter-in-law is pondering what to do. She grew up in and still lives with my son & their 2 kids in a small town that is starting to get the new suburban influx with better money for the public schools. Her father struggled to put his kids through the Catholic school system at a time when it was better than the public school. Times have changed. Now kids need computers and other expensive things the Catholic school can’t so easily provide. In addition, who knows what the teachers are telling the kids about their faith in Catholic schools.
I’ve suggested putting them in the public school where they will also get great music opportunities in addition to top notch computer access. I told her I’d help with their religious education - sometimes even the week-end lessons for public school kids at the Catholic parish aren’t so good. Some of the textbooks are a scandal.
As adults in their 30s & 40s my sons found a new interest in their faith and I’m buying them books and providing interesting people for them to informally talk with. They say the real thing is lots more interesting than the hippy, trendy stuff they learned in Catholic high school from with-it priests with motorcycles and girlfriends.
It’s the next generation that is going to bring the church back - once the ’60s generation folks are gone.
But the inner-city high school closings are more a matter of funding. Most of those students are not even Catholic.
Luckily, the ones around here still have sufficient funding thanks to very generous donors.
July 10, 2009, at 3:16 pm
Thanks for the post tmatt. You bring up some excellent points and provide several challenging questions. You definitely got me thinking here.
On a side note, I have witnessed many Catholic high schools increase tuition to make up for enrollment concerns. Does anyone have any information regarding tuition trends for Catholic high schools?
July 10, 2009, at 4:05 pm
I am a Catholic high school principal in central PA. In reviewing the Catholic school enrollment in our area, it has been steadily decreasing for a long time for several reasons.
1) Humanae Vitae—when my wife went to this school several years ago, she was not taught about Humanae Vitae, nor was her older sister. In fact, it wasn’t until about 2000 when the teachings of the encyclical were enforced. This is similar to the level of theology taught during that time.
2) The pastors of the area have encouraged married couples to use contraception and sterilization to limit family size. One couple I know, when a condom failed, had the husband sterilized, on the advice of their parish priest.
3) Several pastors have made remarks in homilies that discouraged people from attending Catholic schools, saying that CCD classes are just as good.
Now, things are changing. Bishop Martino has had a more active role in the organization and running of the schools. The local pastors are no longer in control. Starting with my predecessor, the theology department is carefully monitored to ensure orthodoxy. We have some younger priests who teach Humanae Vitae from the pulpit and actively support the school, and younger families are heeding the message.
Humanae Vitae, or at least opposition to it, is a big issue. Catholics of my parents generation did not continue the large families that they were accustomed to, but had smaller families. We feel the pinch now. We can’t anticipate one family having four or five kids go through the system any longer. Now we are lucky if we get two.
July 10, 2009, at 4:07 pm
Olympia, Wa has a Catholic parish with 7000 folks/2800 families & ONE priest. I couldn’t believe it, here’s the webpage:
http://www.saintmichaelparish.org/files/library/c47a0fd4ceddea9d.pdf
For several years there was another (retired) priest in the area who offered to help out. But there was a problem. He was a Pastoral Provision priest. Married 40+ years, of course his ordination approved at the highest level of the Vatican in the mid-80’s. The Seattle archdiocese forbade him to do anything whatever at the parish. Don’t tell people about a clergy “shortage” when things like that happen. As long as the worship of celibacy by hierarchy is more important than ministry to laity this will continue. When it stops (It is simply a perverse view of marriage) the problem will cure itself. 7000 souls have no chance in the world of having a useful relationship with one priest, so it must not matter.
July 10, 2009, at 6:46 pm
One of the unspoken (and little reported on) scandals in the Catholic Church is the corruption of segments of Catholic education as some Catholic schools do everything possible to be radically liberal morally and delight in trashing Catholic teachings and Catholic Tradition.
I wish we had not trusted Catholic education with our kids so much. We were shocked by how little about our Faith our kids had learned (but plenty of liberal politics and liberal dogma) as they neared graduation. Catholic Parents should be very careful to examine the kind of education going on in the Catholic schools they are thinking about sending their kids to.
July 10, 2009, at 9:50 pm
I am so glad that you posted this. Baltimore Catholic schools are doing miserably, and I think that reporters should also be asking: Why is the archbishop forming a “task force” made up of secular/public school experts to try and save them? Why are business CEO’s a good consultant for the Catholic school, but not the parents who continue to pull their kids from the schools?…OR the very committed and often deeply religious (read, orthodox) teachers like my husband and a number of our friends, who leave Catholic education after horrible experiences?
And why do teachers like me, after teaching in Catholic schools, feel that sometimes a NON-CAtholic school is a better place for your child’s faith to be protected and even nurtured?
July 11, 2009, at 1:27 am
Googling finds info that only 18 students in the entire school last year, were from the local parish. The rest of the student body were bused in from Baltimore. News articles reveal that the only parents who seemed concerned were the parents of students who lived in the parish and a few alumni. 160,000. in unpaid tuition has to be a big loss for a small private school that is sustained largely by tuition, and reading that they were losing 81 students for the upcoming semester.. one has to wonder if those 81 students were from families that had paid their tuition in the past and weren’t happy with what was happening at the school.
I have friends who are Catholic, some sent their children to Catholic schools when they were younger, but many of them pulled them out by 4th or 5th grade. A few couples I know pulled their teen aged children out of Catholic high schools because the education had become substandard, or because the violence and drug use were as bad as in the public schools.
July 11, 2009, at 9:18 am
[…] a no-brainer. Another fine piece, titled Just Another Painful School Closing, by Terry Mattingly at GetReligion. Be sure to read the entire piece and the comments as well. A snippet: I forget when and where it […]
July 11, 2009, at 10:41 am
I’m not sure why anyone would find articles like this surprising.
The Vatican II/Novus Ordo experiment has left in its wake a clergy and sisterhood that has gone completely off the rails spiritually and morally and decimated their numbers. Well-formed priests and sisters used to run these schools for pennies on the dollar while giving a solid Catholic education. Now we over-pay for outsiders to do the same work, while the few priests and nuns left are either luke warm or even in full rebellion against the dogmas, doctrines and de-fide teachings of Holy Church. Of course most traditional/orthodox/conservative minded parents pull their kids (and their money) out.
As far as the laity goes, they have been divorcing and contracepting themselves out of existence for nearly half a century. Many of those kids who actually make it into the world wind up walking away from the faith - often because they never had the faith imparted to them at their local parishes or by their parents. If they still have any degree of faith, the “Catholic” colleges (like Notre Dame) will be sure to beat what’s left out of them.
Then we say “oh no, another school/parish is closing,” as if some other result could be expected after committing spiritual and demographic suicide for four decades.
The good news is that while the hand of God is wiping away the Vatican II/Novus Ordo man-centered/world-centered edifice, traditional cirlces are staying married, having kids, producing exponentially more vocations, building churches, opening schools and basically thriving as Catholics always have.
July 11, 2009, at 2:00 pm
So in this terminally overpopulated world, you have a problem with smaller families?
July 11, 2009, at 2:19 pm
Something in the article nagged at me; why does this school have a balance sheet that is expressed solely in money? The talk of the deficit sounded like getting a Catholic education is something one buys. Left out was the idea that a Catholic education is the responsibility of the whole church. The article felt like reading analysis of a point of sale transaction. Where is the communal aspect?
July 11, 2009, at 2:32 pm
Much has been made of Towson Catholic’s evolution from a parish school. Having grown up in Immaculate Conception parish and having graduated from both the grade school and the high school, I believe I can offer some insight.
First and foremost, new parishes have been formed in communities that were formerly part of Immaculate Conception parish. IC’s boundaries no longer include those communities. Thus, students who in the 1960s lived in IC parish would today live in other newer parishes — despite having the same address!
Second, as far back as the 1940s, when my mother attended TC, TC had many students from other parishes, including those in Baltimore City. The 1960s MSA championship men’s basketball teams, in fact, were comprised largely of students from St. Ursula’s parish, several miles away.
Third, as the divorce rate has risen, more and more single mothers are struggling to pay tuition so that their children might attend Catholic schools. In some cases — including instances at TC — the students whose mothers fell behind in tuition were summoned to the principal’s office and informed they would be unable to return to school unless the delinquent tuition was paid. Instead of a helping hand — a hand up, not a handout — students and single parents are shown the door.
Fourth, IC pastor Fr. Tinder and others have commented that TC draws from a “different community” today (rather than the parish). Several have cited the students coming from Baltimore City. I recall that Jesus said, “Suffer the little children to come unto me” — not “Suffer the little children who live in my parish to come unto me.” Could this be subtle snobbery or racism?
July 11, 2009, at 2:38 pm
Looking at the article, I see problems that a business reporter would have jumped on. The deficit of 165,000 seems to be an operating deficit; but the article is very unclear on this. Could this be a perpetual shortfall that can be creativly bounced around?
On the $650,000 owed, owed to whom? How does closing the school take care of the problem? It is very odd to talk about liabilities, which these are, without also talking about assets. Knowing the net worth of the school (the difference between assets and liabilities) would make some sense of the situation. Among the assets are memoribilia, what is going to happen with this? Are the movable assets going to be sold? What about the physical plant, is it worth more as an empty building than as a going concern?
If students have signed up, there are contractural obligations in force. Just wait till the lawyers get into this.
Was there any attempt to merge the school into a stronger one? That would seem like a prudent path to follow.
Waving around big numbers and saying we must act now is not a very convincing business plan.
July 11, 2009, at 3:34 pm
“So in this terminally overpopulated world, you have a problem with smaller families?”
The question assumes the nonsense that we live in a “terminally overpopulated world.” We don’t.
If Western countries were overpopulated, we would have to have millions from the third world pour into our nations to pick up slack in labor. If Catholics were overpopulating, our families wouldn’t be dwindling and we wouldn’t be suffering from the demographic problems (including vocations to the priesthood, sisterhood and other orders.) that we are now. If America was overpopulated, we wouldn’t have millions upon millions of acres of land owned by the federal government, with vast amounts more being confiscated by the day. Neither would we our environment be among the cleanest on earth.
Even if we were to assume that we’re overpopulting, which we’re not, Catholics (unlike seculars, heathens or heretics) are forbidden from engaging in birth control just so that they can have mate for sheer pleasure, without fear of procreating children and cramping their lifesyle. Catholics are also forbidden from killing their offspring through abortion.
So whether or not I “have a problem with smaller families” is not at all the issue.
July 11, 2009, at 6:51 pm
Back onto the topic, people: The press coverage of this issue. Stop yelling at each other.
July 12, 2009, at 12:44 am
One has to wonder how much $ was lost giving “need” scholarships to inner city basketball stars to come to TC. …
July 12, 2009, at 1:23 am
Took a look at the school’s own announcement. It seems there is an effort to place the students in other RC schools. With a special effort for the seniors. There will be a meeting for the students with outplacement. A faculty member has volunteered to help them.
This site goes into the figures with a slightly different presentation than the press. It seems the 160,000 was a shortfall, presumably from last year. What is it doing on the books now; the year should have been closed and this written off. But it appears that the number is included in the 650,000 which is the projected deficit for the coming year. No idea why, seems rather strange to me. The figures provided to the MSM and the students are not very clear.
The church’s site also covers a grade school, but the information shown is for the 2006-2007 school year. Again, odd.
The more I look at the data provided, the less I understand the situation.