Saving Catholic Schools

The tsunami of Catholic school closings has not overwhelmed every diocese. This front page story from Spokane, Washington, shows what one diocese has done to keep their schools viable. The article also shows just how vitally important those schools are to the life of the Church and also to the lives of the students who attend them.

I will note one other point: When was the last time you saw a front page story about the Church that was not drowning in negativity? But, as my colleague Tom Gallagher recently explained here at NCR, Spokane's Bishop Blase Cupich recently got high marks for his handling of the settlement with sex abuse victims. Until and unless bishops handle the sex abuse mess with the kind of openness and honest commitment to a resolution that Bp Cupich has demonstrated, they will never, repeat never, get a fair-minded treatment from the press. Nor should they. But, as this article shows, if the confront the mess, they can build the kind of rapport that permitted the Catholics of Northeast Washington to wake up this morning with some good news about the Church in their local paper.