The following comes from a February 2 statement from Bishop Patrick J. McGrath on the Diocese of San Jose website:
It is with great sadness that I am informing you of the decision to close St. Lawrence Academy at the end of the 2015-2016 academic year. This decision has been a difficult one, made in light of a significant accumulated deficit, declining enrollment levels, and the inability to raise funds to stabilize and sustain operations.
We are deeply sorry for the disruption to our community of families and staff, and most particularly our students. As Superintendent of Schools for the Catholic Diocese of San Jose, Kathy Almazol is working with St Lawrence Academy school leadership to help place our students in alternative academic settings where they can finish their high school education and prepare for college.
OK – Time to scrap the old system if it is not working. There is no reason to build expensive Cathedrals if nobody enters them, and by ignoring the central importance of Catholic Schools we ensure empty pews will follow.
It is time to Re-Think and Re-Engineer Catholic Education, and move beyond the babysitting mode in to Community Education of the Whole Student. With the internet and the examples from the Charter School system – we have alternatives to warming chairs all day, and if our schools are going under then it is time to try new solutions
Besides – when the Real Estate that used to be our schools is being sold to pay for perks for the ‘professional bureaucrat’ Catholics – it is time to take their slush funds away and…
With no more nuns, and teaching brothers, and an absence of clergy, is it any wonder why Catholic schools are closing at such a rapid rate? Look at the official guide of the Catholic Church for America in 2016, and compare it with the guide published in 1966. It is very discouraging. The Catholic Church is dying, and the cause is modernism.
Maybe over $16,000 a year cost-of-tuition (=their actual annual tuition, not counting registration fees) was too much for responsible parents to place their daughter in a New Church Diocese-of-San-Jose “catholic” school and “Discover their voice” (=their motto).
It is too bad: for years, St Lawrence was a good Catholic school with good principals and dedicated Catholic teachers and good academics: but that is at least over 20 years ago. At least the Diocese can make a killing off of selling the land, and give it all to Muslim-resettlement and climate-change re-education at “Catholic” Charities.
Steve Phoenix, St. Katherine Drexel’s success in providing Catholic schools was due to her strong devotion to the Blessed Sacrament. Your beautiful quote, (below) about the Supernatural Power contained in all of the Tabernacles of the world, reminded me of her life. How many bishops are now denying the possibility of another St. Katherine Drexel entering into their diocese? There is absolutely NO excuse for not having sisters to teach our Catholic children. Priorities are all wrong!
“It leads to many of us quitting great jobs, breaking off associations, and changing one’s life entirely. The axis of the Universe is completely re-situated in one’s life.”-
– by Steve Phoenix
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Look what happens when priorities ARE in order.
Katherine Drexel’s father’s charitable donations totaled about $1.5 million, the Drexel sisters shared the income produced by $14 million—about $1,000 a day for each woman. In current dollars, the estate would be worth about $400 million.
After her father’s death, her uncle, Anthony Drexel, tried to dissuade her from entering religious life, but she entered the Sisters of Mercy Convent in Pittsburgh in May 1889 to begin her six-month postulancy. Her decision rocked Philadelphia social circles.
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By 1942 Drexel and her order established a system of black Catholic schools in 13 states, plus 40 mission centers and 23 rural schools. She took the name Mother Katharine, and joined by thirteen other women, soon established a religious congregation, the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament. Mother Frances Cabrini had advised Drexel about the “politics” of getting her new Order’s Rule approved by the Vatican bureaucracy in Rome.
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In 1935 Mother Katharine suffered a heart attack, and in 1937 she relinquished the office of superior general. Though gradually becoming more infirm, she was able to devote her last years to ***Eucharistic adoration***, and so fulfilled her lifelong desire for a contemplative life. Over the course of six decades, Mother Katharine spent about $20 million of her private fortune building schools and churches,as well as paying the salaries of teachers in rural schools for blacks and Indians. St. Katharine Drexel KNEW where the SUPERNATURAL POWER began! Meanwhile, many of our bishops still hide the Tabernacle and wonder why attendance at Mass is steadily declining along with the closing of many Catholic schools.
Nice reminder, Catherine: Mother Drexel also (as you know) undertook extraordinarily laborious journeys (esp. from about 1895-1937, when she suffered her first serious heart attack) throughout the American SW when it was still mission country.
She founded and staffed schools for Native American populations in New Mexico and also in distant Arizona reservations, esp. the Tohono O’odham reservation (St Catherine’s at Topawa was reputedly named for her patron saint). All these thrived up until the 1960’s —I’ve seen the photos, dozens of sisters, hundreds of uniformed students—who obtained an outstanding spiritual and academic education. She is credited with obtaining the Franciscans from S John the Baptist Province in St…
..St Louis to come out west and missionize the growing US territories (statehood didn’t occur for NM and AZ until 1912).
There are many extraordinary stories in the Tucson archives About Mother Drexel that deserve attention and publication.
Then what happened to those schools? Well: we know what happened to all the orders in 1965; as well as a pogrom against the Catholic Church for “oppressing” the Native Americans by the American political left. Now, St. Catherine’s, except for the deteriorating chapel, and the school buildings are in decay, virtual ruins. An allegory of the Catholic Church.
One of the (miraculously) surviving missions of Katharine Drexel still stands in Gallup diocese (N Ariz & NM), and thanks to the Native Americans who (horror of horrors!) are traditionalists — yes, THERE is a frightening though for New Churchers) is seen in this link to St Michael’s:
https://voiceofthesouthwest.org/2014/09/10/gateway-to-the-navajo-reservation-the-history-of-st-michael-arizona/
The photos themselves are amazing, and show what we and they had, up until the wrecking ball that hit in 1965.
Thank you for the analysis and factual connecting of the dots, Steve.
With increasing numbers of Catholics led erroneously to believe that upholding Catholic doctrine is some form of oppression – and to speak against that ‘method’ is to be disobedient – it is no wonder schools/churches are shutting down.
Thank you, Steve Phoenix, for the link. : ) Absolutely REMARKABLE, isn’t it? Katharine Drexel did not waste one second of her time wondering if men received more attention than her. She did not seek to improve or enhance, let alone undermine the Perfect Holy Structure of the Blessed Trinity in order to have her feet washed along with the men. Eve’s squeaking wheel about being superior or equal in knowledge to God also felt good to her at the time but when Adam caved in and disobediently greased her squeaking wheel it actually placed Adam on the fast track that brought about his own demise. History repeats itself!
A Very Insightful stating of the Obvious, or what will be obvious rather shortly:
SEE
Want Your Children to Survive The Future? Send Them to Art School
Can you imagine a world in which most jobs are obsolete?
https://medium.com/@dustintimbrook/want-your-children-to-survive-the-future-send-them-to-art-school-c88600146606#.7x3jfdtfm
If not, you are most likely in for a rude awakening in the coming decades of radical shifts in employment. This is particularly true for new parents propelling the next generation of workers into an adulthood that many economists and futurists predict to be the first ever “post-work” society.
Though the idea of a jobless world may seem radical, the prediction is based on the natural trajectory of…
The dedication to the Catholic faith and its transmission to our children seems to be a root problem for our schools. Parents want private education, but many don’t go to Mass. With no sisters living in community to staff the parishes, the tuition has to be at the rates to cover the bills, which now is a lot for middle class families. Without sacrifice on the part of everyone in the church, the parish, religious, the parents, Catholic schools are only for the upper middle class.
….an increasing number of parents want a private education for their children because they want their children to shine academically so that they can compete in today’s job market. The same market in which mothers are busy competing, not staying home raising as many children as God sends them. That is why, in my view, the expediency of downplaying Catholic Faith and Morals is ever increasing. Compromise and competing with the world for $$$ is the whole of the game today. Those who live the Faith and make the sacrifice to have the children are considered to be wasting themselves.
That leads to a shortage of patience with the Faith and no children to fill the subsequent ranks of religious sisters and priests.
I’m curious what the local demographics were in the 1970s that led to the decision to establish the school. What has changed in those same demographics in recent years to lead to the decline and eventual closing.