Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time, September 6, 2026
It is September and the focus for many people now is on the school year which is beginning. Even though it has been many years since I have been a student, I still mark my life in terms of the school year. I am a pastor of a parish with a Catholic school (Holy Redeemer), so the school year is still relevant to my life, but even for people long away from school and the running of schools, the new school year does not open without most people noticing it.
When I was a boy and a young man, I looked forward to summer vacation, but then around mid August, I started looking forward to returning to school. I liked school. I am grateful for the education I received.
Except for my three years in law school at the University of Pittsburgh, my entire education was in Catholic schools, 19 years of full time Catholic school study.
Catholic schools have been important to the faith and life of the Catholic Church. Catholic schools are an amazing service offered by the Church to society. Worldwide the Catholic Church is the largest provider of education with 62 million students in elementary and high schools with an additional 6.4 million students in Catholic colleges and universities.
Catholic schools have been enormously important to the Catholic Church in the United States and to our nation in general. In the United States, there has been a significant decline in Catholic school enrollment, though over the past few years enrollment has been stable.
In the mid 1960s, the days of the baby boomers (and my elementary school years), the peak enrollment in the United States was 5.6 million students. Today, there are 1.67 million students in Catholic elementary and high schools and over 800,000 in Catholic colleges and universities.
Also today there are about 2.2 million children in parish religious education programs (like CCD, Sunday School, PREP), for a total of 3.87 students in religious instruction in the United States, counting both Catholic schools and religious education programs. Note that this is fewer children than those enrolled in Catholic schools alone in the mid 1960s. Today families are smaller, religious practice is less and fewer families are baptizing children.
Of course, many students in Catholic schools are not Catholic. 22.2% of students in US Catholic schools are not Catholic, 372,000 children. Catholic or not, Catholic schools are important and formative for children.
Many of you reading this column were blessed to have attended Catholic schools. Catholic schools were and still are important for educating children in both knowledge and virtue. Catholic schools still help children to know and love Jesus. Catholic schools have helped many children from poor families to succeed and to move into the middle class.
We Catholics have a solemn obligation before God to teach children about the faith, to help them to pray and to enable them to receive the sacraments. Obviously the family is the best place to train children to love God and neighbor as Jesus teaches. Families need help from their parish. And Catholic schools are still effective.
Support Catholic schools! I am pastor of Saint John's and Holy Redeemer, and Holy Redeemer has a school. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania has a program where tax payers can direct some of their tax dollars to pay tuition for poor children in Catholic schools. At Holy Redeemer where the families tend to be lower income immigrants, most of the children receive government tuition assistance.
The EITC (Educational Improvement Tax Credit) allows taxpayers to pay part part of the taxes that they would pay to the State of Pennsylvania (not federal or local, only state taxes) to Catholic schools to assist poor families with tuition. The tax payer gets 90% of the donation back in the form of a tax credit (credit, not deduction). Thus the donor really only pays from his or her own funds, 10% of what is given.
For example, if a tax payer were to give $1000, the donor would get $900 back from the government, and would have given only $100 to the Catholic School. 100% of the money given, the entire $1000, is used to pay tuition for poor children in Catholic Schools.
The EITC program allows a Pennsylvania taxpayer to help a Catholic School at little cost to the taxpayer. The taxpayer/donor can give it to Catholic Schools in general or to a particular Catholic School. I humbly ask that you consider making such a contribution to Holy Redeemer School. For information on how to make an EITC tax credit donation, please email me:
