Growth of U.S. Catholic schools is slowing Two years of notable increases are followed by just a slight rise

By Jonah McKeown Catholic News Agency

Following two straight years of notable growth, Catholic school enrollment rose again slightly nationwide in 2022-23, according to new data made public by the National Catholic Educational Association (NCEA).

The NCEA, which gathers statistics on U.S. Catholic school enrollment each year, reported that Catholic school enrollment grew by 0.3 percent last year to a total of 1,693,493 students in 5,920 schools.

However, Catholic school enrollment remains below prepandemic levels.

The increase for the 2022-23 school year is small but follows a trend of several years of growth that began after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Enrollment dropped sharply in the early stages of the pandemic, falling 6.4 percent from 2019-20 to 2020-21—the largest portive, all the way from local priests hearing confessions for our participants and them allowing us to join them for Mass all the time, all the way down to Scott and the facility people and Rick [Grinstead] the youth minister, everybody has just been really great.”

“We switch a lot of our locations, but we always come back [to Sacred Heart] because everybody here’s just so supportive,” Mr. Weir continued. “We’re on the road all summer, it almost feels a little bit like you’re home, you know, because we’re going to be here for a week, and it’s just so familiar and to just see familiar faces that really believe in what we’re doing is pretty awesome, and that’s why we come back each year.”

Helping Mr. Weir with the camps during the summer is a staff of 10, along with a four-person band. Youth groups also come with additional adult chaperones. Knoxville’s camp saw 16 different youth groups, with some ranging from as small as five teenagers all the way up to 40 teens.

A typical day at the camp includes morning and evening sessions of praise and worship, daily Mass, service projects, free time, witness talks, parish time, and games.

Service projects took place at locations such as Horse Haven, Salvation Army, KARM stores, Young Williams Animal Center, Family Promise, and more.

The theme of the camp was “Ascend,” focusing on the gift of fortitude.

“Last summer we did a theme where we focused particularly on Pentecost, and so we were kind of continuing with the Holy Spirit theme, so we’re honing in on the gift of fortitude and just using that to kind of help young people understand that we have these gifts that are given to us that we can use, to be able to overcome and you know, ascend if you will, over things, difficulties in our life,” Mr. Weir shared.

“Some of our themes for the day are ascend over fear, ascend over suffering, and things that all of us face, and just being able to use the gifts of the Holy Spirit, this virtue of fortitude and then also our community, our relationship with God to help us to rise above some of these challenges in our life and things like that,” he continued.

Assistant youth minister Augie Jellie brought her youth group from Vero Beach, Fla., with the organization Youth on a Mission.

“This is the first time for a lot of these kids. We, as Youth on a Mis - decline in the 50 years since the NCEA started collecting enrollment data.

The numbers rebounded in the 2021-22 school year, reaching record levels in some dioceses.

Nationwide, Catholic enrollment jumped from 1.63 million to 1.69 million, an increase of more than 3.5 percent, the NCEA reported. Though the statistics show that enrollment has not yet reached pre-pandemic levels—1.74 million students enrolled in 2019— the reversal is notable, as before the pandemic enrollment was trending down by 2 percent to 3 percent annually.

A deeper analysis of the numbers suggests the trend of growth may continue, the NCEA said.

Pre-kindergarten enrollment is up by 1 percent compared with before the pandemic, which the NCEA said is a predictor of future Catholic school growth. “In every region except the Mideast and Great Lakes, early child - hood enrollment increased from 2019-20 to 2022-23, a positive sign of the long-term viability of Catholic schools should they retain these students in kindergarten and beyond.”

In addition, Catholic schools across the country retained 82 percent of principals and 86 percent of teachers in the 2022-23 academic year, NCEA said. “The relatively high retention amidst the added pressure of the nationwide educator shortage indicates Catholic school teachers and principals feel supported in their roles,” the report stated.

More than 100 Catholic school closures and mergers took place during the pandemic, most of them elementary schools. Despite that time of difficulty, NCEA’s data shows that the number of school closures and mergers has gone back down, even to below-typical levels.

“Excluding the immediate aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, on average, approxiNCEA continued on page A18 faith” because of the camp. sion, have been coming for more than 10 years,” she said. “It’s just so important to get them to a place where there are so many other Catholic youth around them, and they have an opportunity to kind of be put out of their comfort zone, not at home, and they have the chance to go and serve the community. They get to spend the week with other amazing people. They get to spend the week meeting other people from their age from across the country that came here to do the same thing.”

“This is my first time going to Mass six days in a row, and every day it was just really eye-opening. And then also I went to confession, and we also had adoration, so being able to do all of those in one week just really helped me get what I needed to get in this moment from God,” she said Abigail shared that she enjoyed being with hundreds of kids from around the country.

Ms. Jellie’s favorite part of Alive in You is the overall program.

“We’ve gone to a couple of different organizations for camps, and I really like how Alive in You does the program and really engages with the kids, and their witness talks, I think, are very well put-together in terms of bringing it down to the kids’ level and making it really relatable for them,” she said.

Ms. Jellie also believes the Catholic camp helps her own faith journey.

“I love getting to see the kids’ connections that they form, and I think it helps train me in the sense of having grace because teenagers are teenagers, and they mess up over the course of the week, small mess-ups, big messups, whatever. We teach them that we can make mistakes, life is about forgiveness, and we need to be able to move past mistakes and make better choices next time. So, it helps train me and my patience and my grace, and I ask God for help with that when I’m here, so it just grows me closer as well.”

Bianca and Abigail, two 17-yearolds from the Archdiocese of Atlanta, said their favorite part of the week was their service day at The Muse Knoxville, a children’s science, technology, engineering, arts, and math museum

“Our service project was to go to this children’s museum and help them out there, and I really like kids,” Bianca said.

“I just liked interacting with kids and seeing them have the creative mindset that they have and just having different roles combined,” Abigail shared.

Bianca believes she has “definitely grown as a person in my

“I made tons of friends; I have friends now that I will never forget about; I have relationships I will never forget about. It’s always something that whenever I come to these kinds of retreats, it’s always something that stays close to my heart, and I always remember the people,” she said.

Mr. Weir noted that at each camp there is normally a turning point where “you just kind of start to see the walls come down and people kind of buy in to what’s going on and to really understand what it is we’re doing and why we’re doing it.”

“We’ve had kids over the years, youth ministers tell us, that you know this one kid was kicking and screaming coming here, they didn’t want to come, their parents were forcing them, and by the last day they were the ones who were up there thanking us for running this kind of an event and letting us know that it was really impactful and life-changing for them. So yeah, we really do see a lot of transformation in our participants over the course of the week,” he observed.

Father Mark Wajda, an Orlando, Fla., priest, brought a group up from his parish and celebrated the closing Mass on July 2 at the Cathedral of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. He also witnessed a transformation in the kids during the week at Alive in You.

“It’s amazing to see them come in, well first of all, especially a group this size, nobody knows anybody, it’s all a little strange. But you can see them starting to get a little more on fire for their faith, in the small groups, in the large group in the talks that they have, the witness talks and all that kind of stuff. You can see the wheels turning… obviously within your own group, you see that spark… ‘I can be Christian and still be a teenager.’ It’s amazing,” he said.

“Seeing 300 kids growing, I get choked up about it. It really is amazing to be able to walk with them on a journey, even with some of them it’s only a week. It grabs my heart,” Father Wajda said.

For more information on the Alive in You camps, visit aliveinyou.com ■ mately 100 Catholic schools close or consolidate each year. At the end of the 2021-22 school year, 44 Catholic schools closed or merged. … The current positive trend in Catholic school enrollment may enable a continued trend of fewer school closures or mergers,” the NCEA reported.

Polling by CNA’s parent organization, EWTN, shows that Catholic parents largely back initiatives to support school choice, with two-thirds of Catholic parents surveyed last year saying they support a policy that allows students to make use of public education funds for the schools or services that best fit their needs.

The NCEA data showed that overall, 10.5 percent of Catholic school students use a parental choice program, and 27.6 percent of Catholic schools enrolled students using parental choice

Creation continued from page A3 beating: the maternal heartbeat of the earth. Just as the hearts of babies in the womb beat in harmony with those of their mothers, so in order to grow as people, we need to harmonize our own rhythms of life with those of creation, which gives us life.’ [1]

“ During this Season of Creation, let us dwell on those heartbeats: our own and those of our mothers and grandmothers, the heartbeat of creation and the heartbeat of God. Today they do not beat in harmony; they are not harmonized in justice and peace. Too many of our brothers and sisters are prevented from drinking from that mighty river. Let us heed our call to stand with the victims of environmental and climate injustice, and to put an end to the senseless war against creation.

The effects of this war can be seen in the many rivers that are drying up. Benedict XVI once observed that: ‘ the external deserts in the world are growing, because the internal deserts have become so vast. ’ [2] Consumerist greed, fueled by selfish hearts, is disrupting the planet’s water cycle. The unrestrained burning of fossil fuels and the destruction of forests are pushing temperatures higher and leading to massive droughts. Alarming water shortages increasingly affect both small rural communities and large metropolises. Moreover, predatory industries are depleting and polluting our freshwater sources through extreme practices such as fracking for oil and gas extraction, unchecked mega-mining projects, and intensive animal farming. Sister Water, in the words of St. Francis of Assisi, is pillaged and turned into ‘ a commodity subject to the laws of the market ( Laudato si’ , 30).

“The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has stated that acting now with greater urgency means that we will not miss our chance to create a more sustainable and just world. We can and we must prevent the worst from happening. Truly, much can be done (ibid., 180), provided we come together like so many streams, brooks, and rivulets, merging finally in a mighty river to irrigate the life of our marvelous planet and our human family for generations to come. So let us join hands and take bold steps to ‘ Let Justice and Peace Flow throughout our world.

“ How can we contribute to the mighty river of justice and peace in this Season of Creation? What can we, particularly as Christian communities, do to heal our common home so that it can once again teem with life? We must do this by resolving to transform our hearts, our lifestyles, and the public policies ruling our societies.

“ First, let us join the mighty river by transforming our hearts. This is essential for any other transformation to occur; it is that ‘ ecological conversion ’ which St. John Paul II encouraged us to embrace: the renewal of our relationship with creation so that we no programs. In some states, such as Arizona and Indiana, nearly all of the state’s Catholic schools take part in school choice.

“Expansion of parental choice programs has long been viewed as a way to support parents as the primary educators of their children. Thirty-two states and the District of Columbia offer school-choice programs, all of which vary in terms of their funding mechanisms and criterion,” the NCEA reported.

“Iowa and Utah, both of which already had programs, recently expanded school choice to include more families across the states. Catholic schools should work together to support expansion of parental-choice programs across the nation,” the report continued.

Arizona’s steady expansion of these benefits culminated in a universal K–12 school voucher program that took effect last fall. Under the program, all of the state’s 1.1 million schoolchildren will have access to an Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) that provides approximately $7,000 per child that families can use for tutoring, private school tuition, at-home curricula, special-needs therapies, and other education expenses.

Dissatisfaction with several aspects of public education may help explain why Catholic schools are enjoying an increase in enrollment nationwide.

The EWTN News/RealClear Opinion Research poll last fall found that 74 percent of Catholic voters are concerned about children suffering from an educational “COVID deficit” caused by the shift to online learning during the pandemic. Seventeen percent said they were not concerned, and 10 percent said they were not sure.

EWTN’s polling also revealed concerns among Catholics about the quality and content of education at public schools. Nearly 47 percent of respondents with children in public school said they have considered, in the past year, moving their children from a public school to a private or parochial school because of concerns about the quality of the education received.

Several educators CNA spoke with cited Catholic schools’ emphasis on a quick return to in-person learning during the COVID shutdown, the high quality and Christ-centeredness of the education provided, and an emphasis on partnering with parents in the education of their children as contributing factors in parents’ decisions to switch from public schools since the pandemic. ■ longer see it as an object to be exploited but cherish it instead as a sacred gift from our Creator. Furthermore, we should realize that an integral approach to respect for the environment involves four relationships: with God, with our brothers and sisters of today and tomorrow, with all of nature, and with ourselves.

As to the first of these relationships, Pope Benedict XVI spoke of the urgent need to recognize that creation and redemption are inseparably linked: ‘ The Redeemer is the Creator, and if we do not proclaim God in his full grandeur as Creator and as Redeemer we also diminish the value of the redemption. [3] Creation refers both to God’s mysterious, magnificent act of creating this majestic, beautiful planet and universe out of nothing and to the continuing result of that act, which we experience as an inexhaustible gift. During the liturgy and personal prayer in ‘ the great cathedral of creation, ‘ [4] let us recall the great Artist who creates such beauty and reflect on the mystery of that loving decision to create the cosmos.

Second, let us add to the flow of this mighty river by transforming our lifestyles. Starting from grateful wonder at the Creator and His creation, let us repent of our ‘ ecological sins, ’ as my brother, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, has urged. These sins harm the world of nature and our fellow men and women. With the help of God’s grace, let us adopt lifestyles marked by less waste and unnecessary consumption, especially where the processes of production are toxic and unsustainable. Let us be as mindful as we can about our habits and economic decisions so that all can thrive our fellow men and women wherever they may be, and future generations as well. Let us cooperate in God’s ongoing creation through positive choices: using resources with moderation and a joyful sobriety, disposing and recycling waste, and making greater use of available products and services that are environmentally and socially responsible.

“ Lastly, for the mighty river to continue flowing, we must transform the public policies that govern our societies and shape the lives of young people today and tomorrow. Economic policies that promote scandalous wealth for a privileged few and degrading conditions for many others, spell the end of peace and justice. It is clear that the richer nations have contracted an ‘ ecological debt’ that must be paid (cf. Laudato si’ , 51). [5] The world leaders who will gather for the COP28 summit in Dubai from Nov. 30 to Dec. 12 next must listen to science and institute a rapid and equitable transition to end the era of fossil fuel. According to the commitments undertaken in the Paris Agreement to restrain global warming, it is absurd to permit the continued exploration and expansion of fossil fuel infrastructures. Let us raise our voices to halt this injustice towards the poor and towards our children, who will bear the worst effects of climate change. I appeal to all people of goodwill to act in conformity with these perspectives on society and nature.

Another parallel perspective has to do with the Catholic Church’s commitment to synodal - ity. This year, the closing of the Season of Creation on Oct. 4, the feast of Saint Francis of Assisi, will coincide with the opening of the Synod on Synodality. Like rivers in nature, fed by myriad tiny brooks and larger streams and rivulets, the synodal process that began in October 2021 invites all those who take part on a personal or community level, to coalesce in a majestic river of reflection and renewal. The entire People of God is being invited to an immersive journey of synodal dialogue and conversion

“

So, too, like a river basin with its many tiny and larger tributaries, the Church is a communion of countless local churches, religious communities, and associations that draw from the same shared waters. Each source adds its unique and irreplaceable contribution, until all flow together into the vast ocean of God’s loving mercy. In the same way that a river is a source of life for its surroundings, our synodal Church must be a source of life for our common home and all its inhabitants. In the same way that a river gives life to all kinds of animal and plant life, a synodal Church must give life by sowing justice and peace in every place it reaches.

In Canada in July 2022, I spoke of the Sea of Galilee where Jesus brought healing and consolation to many people and proclaimed ‘ a revolution of love. ‘ Lac Ste. Anne, I learned, is also a place of healing, consolation, and love, a place that ‘ reminds us that fraternity is genuine if it unites those who are far apart, [and] that the message of unity that heaven sends down to earth does not fear differences, but invites us to fellowship, a communion of differences, in order to start afresh together, because we are all pilgrims on a journey.’ [6]

“ In this Season of Creation, as followers of Christ on our shared synodal journey, let us live, work, and pray that our common home will teem with life once again. May the Holy Spirit once more hover over the waters and guide our efforts to ‘ renew the face of the earth’ (cf. Psalms 104:30). ” ■ Mary Tankersley is a parishioner at Our Lady of Fatima in Alcoa and helps lead the Care for Creation Ministry there. Denise Clark is a parishioner at All Saints in Knoxville and is a member of its Creation Care Team

[1] Homily at Lac Ste. Anne, Canada, July 26, 2022. [2] Homily for the Solemn Inauguration of the Petrine Ministry, April 24, 2005.

St.

[3] Conversation at the Cathedral of Bressanone, Aug. 6, 2008. [4] Message for the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, July 21, 2022. [5] “A true ‘ecological debt’ exists, particularly between the global north and south, connected to commercial imbalances with effects on the environment, and the disproportionate use of natural resources by certain countries over long periods of time” (Laudato Si’, 51). [6] Homily at Lac Ste. Anne, Canada, July 26, 2022.