As parents and children brace for the shutdown of 23 Catholic schools, the archdiocese of Chicago is pinning its hopes for the future of Catholic education on the collection basket.
They call it the stewardship model and the ultimate goal is lofty: to one day provide a free Catholic education for every child who wants it.
To achieve that goal, church officials are relying on the biblical philosophy of tithing–giving 10 percent of one’s income to the church. They say the practice may be the only lifeline left that can keep the nation’s largest parochial school system afloat.
Other options, such as turning to charter schools or specialized academic curriculums, do not fit the mission of Catholic education, they say.
Instead, Cardinal Francis George and other church leaders are asking parishioners to take responsibility for a crucial church ministry.
“The problem we are facing is financial,” said Nick Wolsonovich, the archdiocese’s superintendent of schools. “We need to encourage parishes to move steadfastly toward the stewardship way of life. … Our real attraction should be our Catholic faith.”
The stewardship approach is already reaping millions of dollars in Wichita, Kan., where none of the 10,400 students attending Catholic schools pay tuition.
But some clergy and educators say tithing will not help schools in predominantly poor black and Latino neighborhoods where income often falls below the poverty mark. Some also say tithing is a biblical mandate that should not be marketed as the sole solution for saving Catholic schools.
Others argue that educators must find radical ways to change Catholic education.
Rev. Peter McQuinn of Epiphany Catholic Church in the Little Village community said the wave of closures, which includes his 95-year-old parish school, presents an opportunity to question the approach Catholic schools take to passing down the faith.
“The principal mission of the church–and I hugely believe in reading, writing, and arithmetic–the principal mission of the church has to be the mission of Jesus Christ,” he said. “With the schools we’re able to do both. Maybe it’s time to say: `What are we doing?'”
The crisis is not limited to Chicago. On Ash Wednesday, the Brooklyn diocese announced it would be closing 22 schools in Brooklyn and Queens. And in the last two years, the archdiocese of Detroit has closed 21 schools.
There are nearly 8,000 Catholic schools in America; only 34 new schools opened last year while more than 100 were closed or merged with another school, said Michael Guerra, president of the National Catholic Educational Association in Washington, D.C. The association is commissioning a study to figure out why Catholic schools are on the decline and how to reverse it.
“I’d be open to rethinking all sorts of models,” Guerra said. “We have been the glue that held some of these communities together. … I would not be happy with a system that stabilizes if we don’t have a very significant presence in the communities where our services mean so much.”
There are already some models that work. The Cristo Rey high schools (there are two in the Chicago area) combine academics and religious instruction with off-site jobs to defray annual tuition. Corporations and foundations also contribute.
San Miguel Schools, middle schools on Chicago’s South and West Sides, select students based on financial need and academic underperformance at their local public school. They, too, depend more on private donations rather than tuition. Financial and academic support continues during their graduates’ high school years.
Guerra said some dioceses have wrestled with the idea of charter schools, but said none have adopted the model mainly because current laws prohibit religion in public education.
“The so-called `Catholic education’ part of it goes on all day in a Catholic school, not just during religion class,” Guerra said. “This doesn’t mean that you are counting your rosary beads during math class, but it means you cannot easily separate the academics from the religious mission.”
For example, Guerra said a Catholic school teacher could teach students right from wrong by drawing on and discussing their own faith. Such discussions would not be allowed in a public school.
Rev. Michael Pfleger, pastor of St. Sabina Church, still thinks it is worth a try. The Chicago archdiocese quashed plans to turn his South Side parish school into a Catholic charter school seven years ago.
“If it’s a choice between closing our schools, and abandoning communities, or looking into some other experimental options that can keep these schools open, well, I think the answer is obvious,” said Pfleger. “I think we owe it to these communities to find a way to keep their schools open.”
So far the most successful plan for the long-term financial stability of individual Catholic schools in the Chicago area is the Patrons program. The plan, developed by the non-profit Big Shoulders Fund and modeled after a similar program in the archdiocese of New York, finds patrons willing to contribute $75,000 per year to a school for three consecutive years.
In addition to the economic support, patrons form an advisory board with principals and parents to find ways to improve the school. Since the program began in 1999, 22 schools have received funding through the Patrons program.
“It has made a big difference,” said Heidi Waltner-Pepper, executive director of Big Shoulders. “And I think the reason behind its success is that patrons are looking at these schools like a business. They are looking at schools like a product that needs to be improved.”
One of the schools scheduled to be closed in June, St. John Berchmans in Logan Square, had been slated to receive a patron in September. Parents are unhappy with the decision to close the school and plan to fight.
The Catholic school experiment in the U.S. began in the 19th Century when bishops met in Baltimore to devise an alternative to Protestant-infused public schools.
When European Catholic immigrants flooded Chicago at the turn of the 20th Century, religious orders often built schools first, parishes later. Priests and nuns taught classes for meager salaries and the annual tuition was only a few dollars, largely because parishes would foot the rest of the bill.
Now, Catholic schools largely rely on tuition to cover costs. If enrollment drops, they must raise tuition, which in turn can drive away more families, particularly in working-class neighborhoods.
To reduce their reliance on tuition, two South Side parishes—-St. Columbanus and Immaculate Conception–adopted the stewardship model.
At Immaculate Conception, located in a mostly Latino area on the Southeast Side, Rev. Michael Enright launched the stewardship program with a leap of faith. Right away, he told parents they no longer had to pay tuition.
“It was driven by desperation,” Enright said. “I wasn’t sure how long I could count on the archdiocese to support our school. I thought they probably would close us if we weren’t doing something different.”
To Enright’s surprise and delight, it worked. Sunday collections doubled. Enrollment went up and parents became parishioners. Those who did not tithe or become active in the parish were asked to leave and make room for those who made it a priority.
Wolsonovich, the archdiocese’s schools superintendent, said parishioners ought to be reminded that Catholic education is a ministry of the church just like a soup kitchen or a food pantry.
But selling the kind of stewardship program that has worked in Wichita, where 38 schools serve 10,400 students, may be hard in the Chicago archdiocese, with its more than 200 schools and 100,000 students.
Enright said it has been difficult to break the consumer mentality–the idea that Catholic education is a commodity to be purchased rather than a sacred duty.
For that reason, selling stewardship as a way to solve the schools’ financial woes may be the wrong approach, said Rev. Matt Eyerman, pastor of St. Columbanus, on the South Side.
“It’s not the bake sale of the new millennium,” he said. “It’s not at all a scheme to raise money. It’s a biblical mechanism to get people more committed to God. Everything else falls into place.”
Eyerman said tuition for his parish school is not yet free. But since embracing stewardship, the parish has been able to staff an adoration chapel 72 hours a week and its food pantry continues to expand.
Bob Voboril, superintendent of Wichita’s Catholic schools, said broadening the definition of stewardship is indeed a necessity for success.
“You constantly fight the notion that I’m paying for something when I give a Sunday envelope,” he said. “You’re not a stockholder. The church is God’s.”
Voboril said if Chicago can do it, any diocese can.
“If it really makes a wholesale movement toward stewardship, it will change the face of Catholicism in this country,” he said.
Guerra, of the National Catholic Educational Association, agrees. The Chicago archdiocese will be the test for whether stewardship is a pipe dream or a realistic pursuit.
“Chicago will tell us whether that is going to happen,” Guerra said. “If Chicago succeeds in what it’s proposing to do … that will be a great sign of hope for the country.”
