The Future of American Catholic Schools Lies in the Past

Last year, a school at which I had taught, Saint Joseph Prep in Brighton, Massachusetts, was one of a number of Catholic schools in the Archdiocese of Boston to close permanently. The problem of failing Catholic schools in the region has become egregious enough to concern even secular publications.

I have spent much time trying to imagine a solution, yet I recently discovered an apparent contradiction in my view of it. On the one hand, I have advocated for vouchers or other forms of government assistance to Catholic schools. Such schools provide an essential public service—education and moral formation—so it seems just for them to receive public funds. Having taught in multiple Catholic schools, I can attest the salary tends to be insufficient for supporting a family. Raising tuition makes costs prohibitive for families who rely most on schools, and the lack of public funds makes parochial teaching careers unsustainable, with the result being teacher turnover, institutional instability, and school closure.

On the other hand, too much public assistance can cause people to identify the Church with the government—and thus with the moral compromises of politics—thereby tainting their view of the Church; political corruption rubs off on ecclesial institutions, becoming religious corruption. For example, Archbishop Charles J. Chaput observes that, over centuries, “the Church acquired influence over nearly every aspect of Quebec’s life, to the point where Protestant street preachers were often banned from operating or even jailed,” and, in reaction, the region rapidly secularized in the “Quiet Revolution” of the 1960s. Chaput concludes, 

The trouble with any habit of power is that service becomes privilege and privilege becomes entitlement. Entitlement, in turn, breeds abuse and resentment. Catholic life in Quebec became formulaic long before the Quiet Revolution. When the world began to change, people shed the Church like dead skin.

As far as education is concerned, the solution to such unhealthy Church-state codependency might be giving government funds not to Catholic establishments exclusively but to all religions’ schools (as would be expected in America due to the First Amendment preventing the federal government from favoring a single religion). That way, ecclesial institutions would be less tempted to become corrupted by worldly privilege.

Nonetheless, a problem remains: public funding comes with strings attached, sometimes including restrictions that impede the Church’s mission or contradict its doctrine. Certain unpopular Catholic teachings, for instance, might be deemed anathema, with Catholic schools’ access to tax dollars held hostage until their educators submit to the zeitgeist. Therefore, even when the state does not favor Catholicism exclusively, it can still pressure Catholic schools to compromise their religious identity as long as they depend on it. Public funding comes with strings attached, sometimes including restrictions that impede the Church’s mission or contradict its doctrine. Tweet This

The future of American Catholic schools, then, lies in operating as independently of the state as possible while still remaining financially feasible. How is that possible? Look at the past, when those schools proliferated and thrived: they did so by being run and staffed by religious orders. Due to those orders’ vow of poverty, tuition could be kept low (as it is at my children’s religious-run school, the only one I know of in my region); and, due to their vow of obedience, teacher turnover was minimal, ensuring institutional stability. American Catholic schools’ greatest hope may, therefore, be a revival of the consecrated life—a revival sorely needed after the country’s cratering in religious vocations during the late twentieth century.

After all, the celibacy and poverty of religious brothers and sisters minimize their ties to the government; with no children to support and little property to be threatened, they do not rely as much on the state’s support systems, so the state cannot pressure them as much. Their schools can thus more easily maintain their Catholic identity. Connecting to the similar liberation enabled by the pope’s independence from national governments, Grant Kaplan’s brilliant article “Celibacy as Political Resistance” argues that both consecrated celibacy and papal primacy “function as spiritual declarations of independence for the modern Christian citizen. Both preserve Catholic identity, not by petitioning the state for rights but by mounting a theological counteroffensive against the pretensions of the modern nation-state.”

The Archdiocese of San Antonio has implemented an intriguing program along these lines, a program that, if extended to more dioceses, seems like it could do much to revitalize American Catholic education: bringing orthodox, joyful religious brothers and sisters over from countries with a surplus of them and training them for our schools. Seeing such role models—otherwise less visible in America today than in previous times—might encourage more vocations to religious orders among our students, thus making American Catholic education more sustainable by providing more teachers from the consecrated life.

Therefore, the religious orders of America’s past may hold the key to the Catholic schools of the country’s future. And, in safeguarding independence from governmental overreach, they can further the very goal on which America was founded in the first place, the goal so close to the Founding Fathers’ hearts. Reviving the consecrated life could thereby revive the country’s original identity; becoming more American might require becoming more Catholic.

Special thanks to Ashley Gabriel Altizer, who drew my attention to the program in the Archdiocese of San Antonio. 

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