The Catholic Diocese of Buffalo has identified 10 schools that will participate in the pilot phase of a program designed to strengthen enrollment and fundraising...
Enrollment in Catholic grammar schools has been dropping for a couple of decades. In 1984, the diocese had 28,080 students enrolled in 125 elementary schools. By 2004, the diocese had 17,218 students enrolled in 76 schools.
The number of baptisms in the diocese has dropped 51 percent during the same period.
Why is it that it took a secular publication concerned with business to figure out that if we're not producing children, we're not going to have students to keep schools open?
Of course, Business First of Buffalo won't go into the reasons we're not having children since that's not their pervue. However, that should be abundantly obvious to anyone who can add two and two to get four: because we're ignoring Humanae vitae and contracepting and aborting ourselves out of existence.
Yet I don't expect to hear Bishop Edward Kmiec -- or, for that matter, any of his brethren -- coming out to tell his subjects, "Folks, you've got to stop contracepting, because if you don't, there won't be anyone left to send to schools or parishes. Pretty soon, we're not going to have a diocese left if you don't have more children." There's a saying about fiddling while a particular city burns that comes to mind.
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