The following two stories come from the June 21 issue of Catholic San Francisco; both were written by Valerie Schmalz.
Come and teach
A long-predicted California teacher shortage is now hitting Catholic elementary schools in the Archdiocese of San Francisco, with many parish schools still looking to fill one or more positions at a time when principals usually have next year’s staff roster wrapped up.
“We do have a tremendous shortage,” said Maureen Grazioli, principal of St. Charles School in San Carlos. “The shortage exists not just in the Catholic schools, but in the public schools.” A scan of the San Mateo public school job postings showed about 200 vacancies listed online, she said.
Four years ago the spring archdiocesan teachers’ fair drew “an amazing selection” of teacher candidates, Grazioli said. “Last year and this year there were more principals at tables than visitors,” the San Carlos Catholic school principal said.
The archdiocesan Department of Catholic Schools is in the midst of increasing the salaries across the board for elementary school teachers, for the 2017-18 school year, said Associate Superintendent for Professional and Educational Leadership Bret E. Allen. A draft of the proposed new three-year salary scale is being prepared by an ad hoc committee which will share it with pastors and principals for their input, he said.
“….It has become a real issue in our area,” said Vince Riener, principal of All Souls School in South San Francisco, noting some principals are looking for teachers outside of the U.S. Teachers relocating to the Bay Area from elsewhere in the U.S. are also among new hires, Grazioli said. A California credential requirement that teachers have one semester of public school teaching experience can hamper hiring too, Riener said. The requirement can make it harder for Catholic school teachers hired with a college degree to get their credential while continuing to work at a Catholic school.
A June 10 Catholic San Francisco search for teacher job postings on EdJoin.org, the educator job portal, returned 8,292 job postings for a total of 16,044 job vacancies listed in California. Earlier, in mid-October, two months after the 2015-16 school year stated, EdJoin.org still listed more than 3,900 open teaching positions in California, double the number in 2013….
A first-year Catholic elementary teacher with a bachelor’s degree and a California education credential will make $46,512 in the 2016-17 school years in the Archdiocese of San Francisco, Allen said. A starting teacher with just a bachelor’s degree but not yet with a credential will make $41,600, Allen said. San Francisco Unified School District’s salary scale lists a first year starting salary for a credentialed teacher as $52,657.
With 34 percent of teachers statewide age 50 and older, and nearly 10 percent age 60 and older, retirements will continue to be a factor, for the next 5 to 10 years, according to “Addressing California’s Emerging Teacher Shortage.” However, non-retirement attrition is more significant, typically accounting for two-thirds of teachers who leave, the report by the Palo Alto think tank, said.
At the same time, the supply of new K-12 teachers overall is at a 12-year low, partly because of years of layoffs and salary freezes in the public school systems which discouraged students from choosing teaching. That is now being reversed in the improved economy, according to the report.
Come and look at the priesthood
High school is a time when teens are considering what to do with their lives – and the Archdiocese of San Francisco is offering young men an opportunity to learn a bit more about the priesthood and religious life.
Archdiocesan vocations director Father David Schunk is launching a vocations discernment camp July 31-Aug. 2 where young men of high school age can learn about the priesthood and religious life in a relaxed and reflective environment. Discernment weekends for high school students are a growing trend, said Father Schunk. “This is spreading; more and more dioceses are doing it,” he said.
Seminarians will help with the weekend at the Diocese of Oakland youth retreat center in Lafayette. The St. Thomas the Apostle/St. Monica youth and family minister Ryan Dilag will help Father Schunk run the weekend. There will be guest speakers, opportunities for prayer, and recreation. Families are asked to contribute $50 for the camp but scholarships are available. Application deadline is July 1.
A man needs to have graduated from high school, at the earliest, to be accepted for priestly formation, and Father Schunk said right now there is one seminarian who is college age. Most of the men are in their 20s and 30s. The weekend is a chance to think seriously about – or rule out – the priesthood or religious life, he said.
Wouldn’t seminarian school teachers (such as the previous nuns of 75yrs ago) address both of these needs for new priests and orthodox teachers with room and board already covered? And maybe it would inspire more vocations…
Dear Archbishop, you are a good man, although one wishes you would “advertise” Catholic Tradition more. However, in hiring, please make sure that all, that is every one, of the new teachers adhere to Catholic teachings on right to live, no sex outside marriage (that is they will not live with a boy/girl friend), and that they are not, and will not teach acceptance of homosexual sex, including marriage (notwithstanding its legal acceptability). You should compensate such orthodox people better, of course, but assuring that you are hiring actual Catholics, and not nominal ones, is critical to the children that they will instruct.
San Francisco is not a place any observant Catholic would want to raise a family.
Archbishop Cordileone has a very difficult assignment: a territory with a population predominantly hostile to Catholicism, a phony catholic Jesuit university, catholic schools with teachers and administrators who flout Catholic doctrine and do not impart the Catholic faith accurately, a cost of living that prices many earnest Catholics out of the area, and in a state whose government is beginning to persecute private religious institutions,
Nope, I wouldn’t want to live there.
So don’t
How about giving theFSSP one of those empty churches in San Francisco for a start.
I say give Most Holy Redeemer (not empty at the moment) to the FSSP but I would not wish that penance on any order. Except Exorcists.
HAHA. That’s a laugh. The future of the Church rests in the Ordinary Form. of the Mass. Improve the reverence in the Ordinary Form, where the vast of majority of Catholics attend. That’s the way moving forward. The FSSP priests can only offer the EF, meaning that they exclude themselves from serving the vast majority of Catholics. The solution cannot be there. INstead, why don’t you pray for the diocesan priests of SF, encourage them, befriend them, ask the young ones to learn the EF. The head guy, the Archbishop, is already sympathetic to the EF: that right there is most hopeful. But bringing in more outsiders into SF (like the FSSP) by an Archbishop who is sometimes being pigeonholed as an outsider? Not a good solution. It…
It won’t fly.
Ed W., our resident pontiff and expert-extraordinaire, your critic of your comment supporting the FSSP, (“jon”, BTW, who calls himself the only “true-blue Catholic” –really, he does), cannot explain why Novus Ordo /”ordinary form” priestly vocations are like ice in Death Valley in July, while trad. orders continue to thrive, grow, and retain their vocations. SF diocese is down to 236 total priests (2012)of which about half are retired and many are well over age 75—to serve 1.8M Catholics (There were 3M Catholics and 396 diocesan priests in 1950 before the V2 disaster.) These are official dio. stats, but our pontiff does not bother to know pesky facts. Cordileone is a great bishop, but even he had only 1 ordination, Fr. Andrew…
Campion, it is actually YOU who do not wish to face the fact that the majority of Catholics prefer the Ordinary Form; it is the diocesan priesthood who ministers to the MAJORITY of Catholics. Rather than trumpeting these traditionalist communities, why don’t you support your local diocesan parish priest, who most likely needs YOUR prayers, your support, your encouragement. Think of the young diocesan priests and seminarians who love the EF. SUpport them. The future lies in the OF and in the diocesan priesthood, not in these traditional societies. And that is fact.
These traditionalist groups isolate themselves from the rest of the Church. I am hard-pressed to imagine that the future of the Church is with them. Even more hard-pressed to figure why a diocesan bishop would want them, unless there is a desperate need for them. However, SF has diocesan priests who know the EF. I am much more in admiration of the diocesan priests who take the time and the effort to LEARN the old Mass. When you find one, by all means, support him and encourage him.
Wrong, again, “jon”: The NO is a mishmash of man-adoring celebration, developed, in part, by non-Catholics in the vain hope of attracting Protestants to the Catholic Church. Ahh, how is that working? It is only pride, foolish pride, that keeps the present bishops from returning fully to Tradition. And now, of course, we have a Pope who likely does not even know how to say the TLM (and fails to even genuflect at most Masses). This is not to say that the NO lacks all validity, but it is not the future of the Catholic Church in any way (as the Church is shrinking, except where it follows its glorious, and unalterable, past).
St. C, let’s be a bit charitable. Good Pope Francis has a bad case of sciatica that keeps him from kneeling and is the reason for his “limp” when he walks. Second, I believe that every diocese should make the TLM readily available to those who want to attend. Third, the NO has been the Ordinary form of the Mass since the 60’s. In one parish to which I belonged, the Latin Mass attracted about 50-75 people from all over the country. The other five masses attracted about 2-2.5 thousand people every weekend. In the four parishes I have attended in the last 40 years there was never a moment in the Mass that was not sacred and God oriented. The lack of TLM is not the cause of fewer teachers.
The test isn’t how many attend a Mass they have heard of (the NO) compared to how many attend a Mass (the TLM) the NO attendees have never heard of. The proper liturgy is not determined by popularity. The NO was created out of thin air and imposed upon a body Catholic who had never asked for it. A good measure of the NO’s deficiencies is how many Catholics now do not attend Mass at all and have completely fallen away in the wake of the NO.
The TLM was torn away, without warning, from all of us by Paul VI. Churches were full, so your example is foolish. Education is key here. Catholics will again learn what they had learned for hundreds and hundreds of years.
St. Christopher, by denigrating the sacraments of the Church, you have committed heresy. I’d rather not be bothered by your heresy. Ciao.
Uh-oh, St. C., you have nettled our pious pontiff of Cal-Catholic and prelate of Seal Rock, Jon the Pious, and now he has excommunicated you for herrrr-e-sy. No matter that NO dioceses in general in the US, Europe and now in Latin America are bleeding out the priestly ranks (see CARA research center’s stats at Georgetown, and they specifically account in many cases the losses to changes at V2), you MUST NOT pay attention to facts. Smile :) lock arms, walk in step, St. C.
Campion, your assertion is not supported by the fact that in certain dioceses of the US, vocations are booming. Another fact you conveniently omit is that Pope Benedict himself said that the EF will never supplant the OF. Read it in Summorum Pontificum. If you think the EF will ever supplant the OF in the Church, you’re living in a dream world!
Also, Campion, your attitude of division between the OF and EF is not the way forward for the Church. This is ONE CHURCH. The future lies in the OF and in the diocesan priesthood because its very adaptability can move it to more reverence. It’s Lectionary is more expansive, and the number of saints in its calendar more plentiful. The OF offered reverently, within the spirit of the EF, is FAR FAR richer!
You are consistently wrong, “jon”. The NO was jammed down everyone’s throat decades ago. The TLM was a gift from God that has created almost every saint in the Church. The TLM is generally attracting far and away the bulk of new seminarians and priests. Sure there is NO growth here and there: people yearn for a Faith and that is all that is given to them by a hostile Church. God will have His way on this issue, but the TLM is the Mass of the Church; the NO, while “licit” is defective in many ways (how can you say “richer” ?). Read Michael Davies, among others.
St Christopher. You are wrong because you are calling the sacrament of the Church “defective.” That right there, prima faciae, is wrong and heretical. Nothing that definitively conveys God’s grace is “defective.” THerefore, the Ordinary Form of the Mass in endowed with God’s grace and favor, has produced saints, and is effective for the salvation of souls. Your words and sentiments are DEFECTIVE.
“…The OF offered reverently, within the spirit of the EF, is FAR FAR richer!”
Wishful thinking, jon, not reality. You need to judge by the fruits, not by your ideas of what the fruits could be, may be, should be, etc.
Your words and sentiments are just that, words and SENTIMENT. And that is what leads to defective product in any endeavor.
You want fruits, Ann Malley? I have heard many people describe folks who only go to the TLM as “weird.” I am told that they complain a lot (and I can see that it is true by reading your comments here). They have all sorts of demands, I am told. And they post anonymously their attacks against our spiritual shepherds. I have been told by pastors that whenever they see one of you walking towards him, they cringe (“oh, oh, here’s another complainer”). I am told that they think they are better, more authentic Catholics because they happen to go to TLM only.
Is that the fruit you are looking for? If it is, I’d have NONE OF IT!
We love our allies – SF Dyke March
https://www.thedykemarch.org/#!the-role-of-allies/wivt7
But if you want to be a real ally, step aside…
We continue to hold the Dyke March as a self identified dyke-only space. Please support us from the sidelines…
https://www.sfgate.com/politics/joegarofoli/article/Men-told-not-to-rain-on-parade-Unity-key-to-Dyke-2746314.php
Pray To Nun?
https://www.churchmilitant.com/video/episode/vort-2016-06-24?
Most faithful Catholics are aware of the disastrous state of affairs that most women’s religious orders in the United States are in. From rampant lesbianism to prayer circles to witches’ covens and rabid anti-man chest pounding…
-t he IHM nuns — Immaculate Heart of Mary — are quietly referred to as the IHM — I Hate Men — order…
Whatever the cause, the point is that many women religious have abandoned the Faith and converted into social justice man-haters…
Sister Joan Chittister, a radical feminist thinly disguised as a Catholic woman religious,… the Benedictine community in Erie, Pennsylvania of which she has been prioress — that — are you…
Is Nun Sacred
https://www.churchmilitant.com/video/episode/vort-2016-06-24?
Sister Joan Chittister, a radical feminist thinly disguised as a Catholic woman religious,… the Benedictine community in Erie, Pennsylvania of which she has been prioress — that — are you sitting down? — actually composed a prayer to Sr. Joan.
Not for Sr. Joan, not about Sr. Joan — but to her.
As part of their training, Jesuit priests had three years as teachers, usually in high schools in their undergrad major. I suspect Bishops want seminarians ordained as soon as possible. So the Bishops would probably not support a three year ‘delay’
as a school teacher.
Father Schunck should go and visit Nebraska and all the other states that are having to build more housing for the seminarians! They must be doing something right……and bring those ideas back to San Francisco!
And Dear Archbishop, please see if you can bring the ‘real deal’ nuns like the ones that teach at Marin Catholic to the grammar schools!!
BTW, Ed W. LA Arch only ordained 8 priests —-for 4.1M Catholics!—and before Pontiff Jon jumps for joy, 4 of the vocations are from OUTSIDE the diocese (2 from Korea, 2 from Mexico dioceses), with the same more than half the clergy elderly, retired or both (566 dio. priests in 2012); now the average age of LA diocese priests is 66 years and depending on the source at least 25% or more retired and not serving full-time ministry if at all. Isn’t the Nova Ordo wonderful and growing!! (All must say, “Yes!!” and joyously clap!!
Campion, why don’t you mention dioceses that have BOOMING vocations and a high percentage of seminarian to Catholic population like Lincoln, Madison, Newark (New Jersey), Wichita, Phoenix, Arlington, Charlotte (North Carolina), Yakima (Washington), Savannah (Georgia), Tulsa (Oklahoma), Steubenville (Ohio), Cheyenne, Rapid City, Pensacola-Tallahassee (Florida). The fact remains that there are more diocesan seminarians and priests in the US than all of your traditional communities combined like your beloved FSSP. Campion, you fail to prove your point. You cite one or two problem diocese and extrapolate it to the rest of the Church in the US. Fallacious! These dioceses that are booming, many of them, are friendly not only to the…
EF Mass, but to the Ordinary Form Mass at the same time! THAT is the future! The future is NOT in your attitude of putting both forms as if in competition against the other. This is ONE CHURCH for crying out loud.
Gentle reader, Cal-Catholic’s prelate extraordinaire, “jon”, with juridical powers of excommunication, only makes up the nonsense: of (rah-rah!) NO dioceses with an alleged vocation explosion. 1st, some are mostly due to trad-leaning bishops or prior bishops (Olmsted, formerly of Wichita, now Phoenix; Morlino of Madison; Montforten of Steubenville, who actually draws candidates to his diocese). But 2nd, fact-check his list: of Newark diocese’s ten 2016 candidates, 6 came from foreign countries where they are needed just as badly, so only 4 true diocese vocations;Tulsa only ordained 1 priest in 2016 and 1 in 2015; only 4 in 2016 in Tallahasee-Pensacola; Arlington, VA, only 2 in 2016; only 1 in 2016 in Savannah; and Rapid City had no…
..vocations—that is NO vocations like the N.O. rite—NO, NONE–but I have a phone call in to Rapid City and Cheyenne to each of their chancery offices, Gentle Reader, to verify their actual true-blue ordinations for 2016. We are not going to make things up or distort stats, as Just Obviously Not-Necessary (=”jon”), or lie about things.
So, the N.O. vocation “surge” is rubbish. Don’t be fooled. Its been 50 years of fooling the Fathful.
Well, Campion proves my point concerning the boom in Dioceses: I had written that “These dioceses that are booming, many of them, are friendly not only to the EF Mass, but to the Ordinary Form Mass at the same time! THAT is the future!”
Secondly, obviously Campion doesn’t read carefully. The dioceses I listed are those with BOOMING vocation as well as those with a high ratio of seminarians to Catholics. Campion didn’t quite get that second clause there. One or two vocations from a place like Rapid City is not something to sneeze at. Neither should we scoff at vocations from other countries who come the the US as missionaries.
You see folks, it’s all about DIVISION for people like Campion. His attitude is “We are better…
” because we have the EF Mass,” which is a straw man and an argument that comes from contempt for the majority of Catholics and from fear! The point is that the future belongs to the OF, not to the EF. And that is supported by the numbers. And supported by Pope Benedict. ANd that is fact that Campion can never dispute.
If a classroom averages 24 students and one teacher whose salary is about $50,000, that comes out to $2,100 per student. Add in building costs, costs of books and materials, wifi, electronic pads, smart walls, etc. and you can get an idea of why tuition is so high. Based on the article, the teachers are underpaid to start with compared to public school teachers. Keep in mind that certification takes one year after a Bachelor’s degree, and the new teachers has about $20,000 in student loans to pay off. So yes, there is a shortage and likely to continue for a few years.
Bob One:
As a rule, faculty expenses (including health care) are 80% of private school expenditures in California. 10% goes to other salaries, 10% to expenses, although for a large school those latter figures might be a little smaller.
Those outside California may not know that an 800 square foot one bedroom apartment, not in the expensive part of The City, will run about $2,700-3,500 per month. In San Francisco, $50,000 per year salary is almost at the poverty line.
Gentle reader, Jon the excommunicater cherry-picks diocese with a few traditional-leaning former bishops (ex Olmsted, Phoenix, formerly of Wichita; Yakima, former Bp. Carlos Sevilla set up the vocation influx, not the present de-admimistrator; Lincoln (now Conley, previously the famous trad Bruskewitz), etc, etc. So where traditions Catholic influence reigns, even Jon the Devastator is forced to admit vocations grow.
Yet some on his list are, like jon, all wrong. (To be continued)
Campion is fond of drawing a division in the Church. Sad. very sad. Pathetic. NO one loves tradition more than I do, especially the EF. But admit it Campion, it’ll never supplant the OF. Wake up.
Gentle Reader, it is not possible to directly reason with Pontiff “jon”, as he doesn’t follow rules of reasoning nor of non-contradiction, or as noted my rebuttals above, but I address you, Gentle Reader, so you may know the truth: there is no Novus Ordo ordination “BOOM” (he likes to capitalize things, noise without substance )—the multiple dioceses of his mystical “surge” in vocations—BTW, Cheyenne got back to me, only 1 ordained this year (2016)—-see my full debunking diocese-by-diocese above 6/28/16, 1:57pm)—and BTW also, Arlington, VA only had 2 ordained this year, he probably counted all the people listed on their vocation poster. 50 years of dissembling to the Catholic Faithful is coming to an end: traditional…
..orders are BOOMING, and as St. Christopher noted above, men are drawn to a Church of the Divine, Eternal Things, not a church of man, a church which changes constantly now it’s teachings. Ave Maria, Gentle Reader!
Dream on Campion, dream on. My only point here from the start is that the EF (and all the other traditional groups that offer the EF only) WILL NEVER supplant the Novus Ordo. Campion neglects to mention my trump card: Pope Benedict, who himself wrote that the EF will never overtake the OF. And Campion’s factoids? Worthless, in light of the words of Benedict.
Again Campion, read my earlier post introducing the list of diocese with BOOMING vocations as well as diocese with a high ratio of seminarian to Catholics. Campion it is good policy that if you are going to try to dispute your opponent’s words, try to make sure you had understood the opponent’s point completely before you spew false info. Ok? Ok.
Lord jon of the Humble Pie has spoken!
Nonsense. A vocation “boom” without more than 1 or 2 ordination annually is dishonesty on stilts. No diocese can survive on 1 ordination a year, and that is the New Church “new normal”.
The fact remains that there is a boom in certain dioceses, which people like Angelo and Campion can never dispute. Many of the bishops of these dioceses promote the celebration of the OF in light of tradition, in light of the EF. AND THIS IS THE WAY FORWARD. Bringing in your beloved FSSP to a diocese that already has clergy who love the EF and who love tradition is redundant, unnecessary, divisive even. I can understand bringing the FSSP to an area that has no clergy who knows the EF. But SF does! Support those diocesan clergy.
This is the way to unity in the Church, not in the attitude of a Campion or even of an Angelo.
The NO is doomed to fail, “jon.” The death grip exercised by the often apostate episcopate in the USA demands that the TLM be ignore or prohibited. Many bishops disobey Summorum Pontificum and insist on crazy “tests” to permit even one TLM here and there. But, the TLM will come back because it grows Faith. Many, many priest of the NO have sought to learn it too. Listen to the words of the great bishop Gracida in his interviews with Michael Voris. He now says only the TLM. Listen to him, and to Abp. Schneider.
Of course the Ordinary Form won’t fail. HOwever, your words will.
Bring in the FSSP or any of these groups to an area, and you create a parish that becomes a little island, an enclave, separating themselves from the rest of the parishes. Again, it will be good if the archdiocese didn’t have clergy that know the EF. But that is not the case.
More factual, truthful evidence there is no “boom” in Novus Ordo vocations nor, as proven above, in actual ordinations. With regard to major seminarians (theology students) in US dioceses, there was a 4% drop in 2015-2016 academic year compared to the prior year: 3520 total, compared to the previous year (2015) number of 3650. CARA @ Georgetown, new report May, 2016:
https://cara.georgetown.edu/Overview201516.pdf
Actual US diocesan priestly ordination totals for the last year given, 2015, were 515; compare that to 1965, when the number ordained was nearly 1000, and the US CC was about 48.5 million (in 2015, US total Catholic population is estimated to be 81.6 million).
There is no “vocation boom”, “ordination…