It’s an annual event: Catholic Schools Week, this year being celebrated Jan. 28 through Feb. 3. Under the auspices of the National Catholic Education Association this year’s theme is “Catholic Schools: United in Faith and Community.” RCL Benziger, a noted Roman Catholic publishing house notes the “contribution  that Catholic education provides to children and youth, to our Church, to our communities, and to our nation.”

The theme is a noble one: the scope of Catholic education indeed begins at the local community level and expands across the nation — from pre-kindergarten through higher education — and research at some of our nation’s most prestigious colleges and universities. A best-case scenario in education for a Catholic kid: enter as a preschooler, exit as a doctor of philosophy.

My own Catholic education was grades one (no kindergarten when I started in 1947) through eight at St. Joseph’s and nine through 12 at Heelan High School in Sioux City, Iowa. Back then several of the 10 Catholic parishes in Sioux City had parochial schools that served as a feeder for Heelan.

The lifeblood of these schools was the religious congregations of teaching nuns, who had taken vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. At St. Joseph’s the teaching order was the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary (aka the BVMs). Salary was not an issue; and that in turn translated to no tuition.

When I attended Heelan and graduated in 1959, the student body numbered more than 900 students. Like the Catholic grade schools, the majority of the faculty was also made up of teaching sisters: BVM, OSF, SCC, RSM, OP and OSM, all unique, wearing the habits of their orders. Looking at “The Shield,” Heelan’s annual student yearbook for 1958, my junior year, I found that the composition of the faculty was: eight priests, 27 religious sisters and seven laypeople.

The priests and sisters taught classes primarily of a college preparatory nature and   religious courses dealing with the Catholic faith. There were few “shop” or vocational-type courses and those were taught by laymen. Philosophically and theologically, the curriculum had a strong grounding in the liberal arts and the Catholic faith.

How well did all of this “take” relative to its impact on the religious faith of Heelan graduates? In 2019, my wife Bea and I attended our 60^th class reunion in Sioux City. Many of us professed to still being practicing Catholics: faithful attendance at Sunday Mass and on holy days of obligation; daily prayer; frequent recitation of the rosary; and reception of the sacraments.

Looking back on more than six decades, I still recall two teachers, both deceased, who forever impacted my life: Sister Mary Clare Therese, OSF (Order of Saint Francis, or “Franciscan” for short), an English teacher who gave me a love for the English language that I will take to my grave and Father James Lafferty, a priest loved by his students and a true gentleman, “with the nicest sense of personal honor.” He would later serve as Heelan principal and be honored with the Monsignor Lafferty Tuition Foundation.  

Today Bishop Heelan Catholic High School has 540 students and a faculty of 35 laypeople, a part-time priest (chaplain) who also serves as the director of vocations for the Sioux City Catholic Diocese, and no religious sisters.

Four other Catholic schools are under the umbrella of Heelan and together make up a feeder system that together educates students pre-school through eighth grade. And unlike the free Catholic education that I and my fellow students received (while our parents paid their taxes to support the American public school system), today’s Catholic schools students across the wide spectrum of education pay tuition.

Doing some Wikipedia research online (“History of Catholic education in the United States”), I find that in some way, shape or form, there have been Catholic schools in America since colonial times. “The Irish and other Catholic ethnic groups looked to parochial schools not only to protect their religion, but to enhance their culture and language.”

Meanwhile in addition to the Baltimore Catechism, Catholic schools were teaching hearty doses of American history and helping their students to assimilate and absorb all that is best in American patriotism. However, I grew up among non-Catholics who suspected that Catholic school students were learning to be more loyal to the pope than to the president.

Sometime in the 1960s, the Catholic school system that I had known changed forever. After reaching its highest numbers, the downward trend began; post-Vatican II, for reasons I don’t fully understand — liberalization being one, perhaps? — large numbers of religious sisters and priests left their vocations and entered the secular world. Catholic schools, such as Heelan and others like them, would close their doors forever or keep them open with a laicized look and in some instances hearty tuition.

At the college and university level, some Catholic institutions would promote an atmosphere of academic and intellectual freedom at odds with the bishops in whose dioceses they sat. Some Catholics would wonder if such schools were really Catholic.

So today — quo vadimus? Where are we going?

The numbers of priests and religious sisters continue to decline. While I believe in miracles, the doubting Thomas in me says the glory days of Catholic education I knew will not return, at least in my time. But will Catholic schools go away completely? Never. Because we Catholics want them — and need them. And if that means we the laity have to pick up the slack, so be it. We’ll find ways to get the job done.

Meanwhile, to all of you — clergy, religious, laity — who are doing the work of proclaiming the Gospel via Catholic education, thanks — and BRAVO ZULU.

As for myself and fellow Crusaders, Heelan High School, Sioux City, Iowa, Class of 1959 — We’re American, We’re Catholic, We’re Heelan!

Have a nice day.