LONG ISLAND (NY)
Newsday
BY DICK RYAN
Dick Ryan of West Islip is the author of "Holy Human: Stories of Extraordinary Catholics."
December 16, 2004
Sister Dorothy was the best teacher I ever had and that includes all those who ever stood, statues with chalk, at high school or college blackboards.
She was my first-grade teacher back on Manhattan's West Side and she taught us things about ourselves and God and crayons that were as simple as they were stunning.
The Sister Dorothys have always been the jewels of Catholic education but unfortunately, when problems arise today, the focus always pounces on something else for a solution.
For instance, with today's 57 regional and parish Catholic schools on Long Island mired in a huge drop in enrollment, the church honchos are naturally lunging for solutions with the official language of the Catholic Church: money. With the announcement of plans for a new Diocesan Education Foundation that will fund scholarships and other "special programs," there is also the proposal for still another annual collection, as well as a slick marketing campaign that will not only help fill the seats with tuition-paying kids but also fill the coffers of the schools' budgets. ...
To the surprise of nobody in the pews, the research people may discover that the answer to all those questions is exactly the same. There is a pervasive malaise in today's Catholic Church that feeds on the mistrust and sense of betrayal spawned by the sex-abuse scandal but that is also soured by church leadership's veneration of image, money and anti-abortion, their grand obsession and their version of the Holy Trinity. And some find it ironic, if not chilling, that children and money always seem to be at the center of many of the crises in today's church, with very differing focuses between parents and prelates.