PENNSYLVANIA
The Morning Call
By Steve Esack
Of The Morning Call
The pastor, principal and business manager looked at Holy Infancy School's small enrollment figures earlier this year and decided to ignore them. For now, anyway.
What mattered more was the morals-based learning of students such as eighth-grade class president Louis Perez. What mattered more were Sister Bonnie Marie Kleinschuster's dedication to classroom technology and the school's new media center. And what mattered more was the history of parochial education at Bethlehem's first Roman Catholic parish. ...
While a small number of Catholic schools have opened in fast-developing suburbs and Sun Belt states, Convey said, the national pace of urban and rural closures has accelerated in major dioceses since 2000, the last time enrollments increased. An underlying cause could be the simmering priest scandals because ''Catholic schools may be considered as collateral in lawsuits brought by victims of sexual abuse,'' he reported.