Catholic School Crisis: Is Public Aid the Answer?

NEWS

Without outside aid to non-public schools, the “burden will be intolerable,” warned the head of the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops last month after a closed-door meeting of five U. S. cardinals and thirty-seven bishops to discuss their parochial schools’ number-one crisis: money.

A member of the U. S. Catholic Conference’s education committee, speaking about the Chicago meeting, indicated that many of the prelates feel the time has come for a unified posture on Catholic school problems. Not surprisingly, therefore, the education committee urged a “vigorous campaign” to obtain aid for non-public schools. The emphasis will be on governmental aid, in an effort to bail out sinking parochial schools all but immersed in red ink.

Just how bad things are is seen in statistics compiled by the USCC education department and the National Catholic Educational Association:

In the past five years, Catholic school enrollments have declined about 22 per cent. If this trend continues, the peak enrollment of 1965 will be cut in half by 1975. The total number of Catholic elementary and secondary schools dropped 7 per cent—from 12,814 to 11,937—from 1967–68 to 1969–70. Enrollment during the same period dropped from 5,215,598 to 4,672,510, a fall of 12 per cent at the elementary level and 4 per cent for high schools.

A recent study shows that while enrollments are slipping, annual operating costs of the schools zoomed $200 million, increasing overall expenditures to $1.4 billion for all U. S. Catholic schools in 1969–70. Tuition payments—traditional bulwark in Catholic school financing—now account for only one-third of elementary-school costs and three-fourths of those for secondary schools.

The average elementary pupil-cost is now $200 a year against $145 in 1968. The secondary-school cost is $435 per pupil, compared to $335 in 1968. (The average public-school cost is $717.)

One area hard hit by the cost squeeze is Detroit, home of John Cardinal Dearden, head of the Catholic hierarchy. Mass closings of parish schools there appeared imminent last month until the Michigan Supreme Court ordered a “hold” on an amendment blocking aid to parochial schools. While parochial-school administrators were biting their nails over the matter, the court was expected to debate and rule on the controversial amendment’s constitutionality by mid-January.

The hold order in effect freezes the parochial financial situation in Michigan, allowing continued “shared time” with public schools, and other auxiliary programs, but prohibiting the state from forking over any of the $22 million in aid awarded non-public schools as part of a legislature-passed omnibus education bill.

Cardinal Dearden, alarmed at the prospect of one-third to one-half of the state’s 629 parochial schools closing immediately if the amendment is allowed to stand—and perhaps most all shutting down within a year—predicted that 105 of the worst-strapped schools would close in any case, probably by June.

Meanwhile, in Maryland, a kind of parochaid scholarship plan was to go before the state legislature this month. Initial details of the plan—proposed by the Commission to Study State Aid to Non-Public Education, a panel named in March of 1969 by Maryland governor Marvin Mandel—were skimpy, and the governor’s office refused to discuss the plan until its publication.

Basically, it would provide every student in a non-public school with at least $50, even if his family was wealthy. Larger amounts of scholarship money would be awarded to families of lower incomes, with a suggested maximum of $230 per child for a family having a gross income of $4,000. An application for aid could be filed only after the student was enrolled in a private school, and if approved, the funds would be sent directly to the school. Initial state cost estimates were around $14 million a year.

Similar scholarship or voucher plans have been considered in other states; none has been upheld by the courts on a long-term basis because the principle of separation of church and state was seen to be at stake.

In predicted opposition, Stanley Lowell of Americans United for Separation of Church and State called the plan “simply another device to circumvent the ban on public money used for private schools,” and a means of subsidizing selected schools that determine their student body. Stiff opposition to the measure was expected, including a minority report from the panel recommending the plan to Mandel.

Catholics are feeling the parochial money-pinch elsewhere, too. In the Buffalo, New York, diocese—reportedly $16 million in debt—a cutback considered drastic will close ten schools. Five are largely black inner-city elementary schools. Vermont’s Catholic bishop warned the governor that without government aid all Catholic schools in the state will eventually close. The bishops of the four Louisiana dioceses ordered a financial study of the school situation after the state supreme court ruled out state aid to non-public schools. And in Massachusetts, nuns teaching in Catholic schools reportedly demanded a 100 per cent pay increase, from $1,200 to $2,400 annually.

Several implications of broad interest emerge from the crisis:

• With the decrease of teachers from religious orders, teaching salaries have skyrocketed. In turn, tuition costs are becoming prohibitive for many families. Blacks and other minority groups are hardest hit.

• Massive parochial-school closings will cause a huge influx of students into public schools in some areas, perhaps swamping those already hard pressed to provide quality education.

• Courts and legislatures will feel increased pressure to permit some forms (perhaps indirect and highly sophisticated) of aid to non-public schools as more and more voices declare public assistance “inevitable.”

• Clarification of the traditional U. S. guarantee of church-state separation will be imperative; arguments for and against federal aid to education will become louder, and perhaps petulant.

• Many Catholics seem less inclined than previously to see benefits from sending their children to parochial schools, thus weakening the role Catholic schools play in the teaching mission of the church.

• The future of Protestant schools is entwined with that of the Catholic system.

Is public aid the sine qua non for parochial schools? In an unguarded moment during a press briefing two years ago, Chicago bishop William E. McManus, head of the USCC education committee, implied that well-heeled Catholics could pay for their schools—if they put them ahead of trips to Europe, color TV, and other “necessities” (see May 9, 1969, issue, page 41).

The official stance, however, is summed up in the words of Archbishop Humberto Medeiros of Boston last month at a public, hearing: “Unless prompt effective financial aid is forthcoming to the children in Catholic schools, the Commonwealth may find itself in the gravest financial crisis of its history.” Such public aid, he concluded, “has long been our just due.”

Accc Power Struggle

At year-end it was a question of who would make the next move for control of the American Council of Christian Churches. Carl McIntire, who claims to have been elected president (see November 20 issue, page 44), got three banks to freeze ACCC accounts but was unsuccessful in an attempt to divert mail. ACCC general secretary John E. Millheim said new gifts have provided enough income to cover current operating expenses.

The ACCC recently acquired a forty-six-acre site in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, and moved its offices there in November. The property, which is also being used as a research and seminar center, will be dedicated in May, Millheim said.

Blacker Than Thou

Who is the blackest candidate of all?

That is a recurring campaign issue among contestants—including three black ministers—vying to become the District of Columbia’s first non-voting delegate to Congress. (Seventy per cent of the District’s residents are black; 94.8 per cent of the school population is black.)

Two of the clerics—Walter E. Fauntroy and Channing E. Phillips—and five other hopefuls fought for the Democratic nomination in a special primary this week. The third minister, Douglas E. Moore, will run as an independent in the March 23 general election.

Fauntroy, 37, is pastor of New Bethel Baptist Church in Washington. He is the chief lobbyist for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and head of the local SCLC chapter, coordinated the Poor People’s March on Washington, served as vice-chairman of the D. C. city council.

Phillips, 42, is president of the Housing Development Corporation. He resigned under pressure last summer as pastor of Lincoln Temple United Church of Christ; the middle-class black congregation disliked the militant pulpit guests Phillips invited and his political involvement. He led the D. C. delegation to the 1968 Democratic national convention and, as a favorite-son candidate, became the first Negro nominee for president in the nation’s history.

Moore, also 42, is pastor of Calloway United Methodist Church in nearby Arlington. He heads the controversial Black United Front, which last year demanded “reparations” from several Washington churches. Formerly he taught high school in the Congo.

Fauntroy, while publicly disowning blacker-than-thou strategy, claimed he had been out front in the civil-rights struggle “as no one else in this campaign has been.” Bishop Smallwood E. Williams of the Bible Way Church endorsed Fauntroy in rallies: “He won’t Tom.”

Bruce Terris, white leader of Phillips’s campaign, complained that Fauntroy attempted to portray Phillips as the “whiter” candidate. “Our campaign,” he countered, “is as black as theirs.” He also denounced anti-Semitic leaflets that were circulated in Moore’s rallies. The tracts publicized a pro-Israel ad Phillips had signed in the New York Times; they said American blacks should instead support the Arab cause in the Middle East. Moore disclaimed responsibility for the pamphlets but charged that whites had “bought” Phillips.

Fauntroy contended that if elected he could gain the most favors for the District from Congress: “I have in my pocket the votes of thirty-five to forty congressmen who were elected with black votes in close elections; they will do what I say.”

But, said Phillips, Congress is no civil-rights organization; it takes political savvy, something he gained as a close associate of the late Robert F. Kennedy.

Fauntroy talks freely with newsmen about his faith and often points to his conversion experience as a teen-ager. “In all my campaigns I have tried to put God first,” he affirms.

EDWARD E. PLOWMAN

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