Cardinal Zenon Grocholewski |
By John Thavis
Catholic News Service
VATICAN CITY (CNS) — A transformation has occurred
in Catholic schools over the last 50 years, and the Vatican took its measure
during the recent release of a document, “Educating Together in
Catholic Schools: A Shared Mission Between Consecrated Persons and the
Lay Faithful,” prepared by the Congregation for Catholic Education.
The congregation said lay teachers now make up the overwhelming majority
— at least 80 percent, according to one official — of the
3.5 million teachers working in the Church’s 250,000 schools around
the world.
That represents a dramatic shift, reflecting the declining numbers of
men and women religious. In the United States, the percentage of lay teachers
went from 14 percent in 1950 to more than 95 percent this year. Similar
figures were cited for places like Australia, France, Spain and Hong Kong.
In the past, the Vatican has exhorted religious orders not to abandon
their traditional teaching charism. Closing schools seemed like a costly
surrender.
But the ever-dwindling number of consecrated religious has made it difficult
to keep these schools open even in a Catholic country like Italy, where
about 50 Catholic schools close each year.
The new Vatican document seemed to accept that the lay role in Catholic
schools is here to stay. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, said
Msgr. Angelo Zani, undersecretary of the education congregation.
“Far from being an impoverishment, this transformation constitutes
a great potential for the Catholic school,” Msgr. Zani said. A mature
and committed laity has emerged, he said, and they consider Church-run
schools an important part of their religious community.
Lay salaries, of course, have made Catholic schools more expensive to
operate.
Polish Cardinal Zenon Grocholewski, head of the education congregation,
took aim at countries — including the United States and Italy —
where the Church has had little success in winning direct state aid to
private schools.
“The United States is a disaster, because the state does not recognize
full democracy as far as schools are concerned,” Cardinal Grocholewski
said.
U.S. Catholic schools are just as good as public schools, the cardinal
said, but without state aid they labor under a greater economic burden.
Dioceses and parishes are forced to pass on higher costs to the parents
of students, and sometimes have to close the institutions, he said.
Msgr. Zani said that in the United States, non-Catholic students today
make up 13.5 percent of the total in Catholic schools, while 27 percent
come from minorities. He noted what he called a significant U.S. trend:
Some religious orders that have operated schools frequented by upper middle-class
students have recently opened smaller institutes in poorer urban areas.
He said the dropout rate is 3.4 percent in U.S. Catholic schools, compared
to 14.9 percent in public schools. Ninety-nine percent of U.S. Catholic
high school students graduate, and 97 percent continue education at the
university level, he said.
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