The Catholic Message Board

In the area where I grew up, the Lutheran high school has been going through a bit of a boom. Student enrollment going up consistently. Alumni donations increasing, helping to offset tuition for some students.

While the Catholic schools in the area always preparing for the next round of school consolidation.

And it's not just this one Lutheran high school. Other WELS high schools in the expanded area are also doing better with enrollment.. as well as freshman class retainment going into Soph, Junior, Senior year. The enrollment of non-Lutherans has increased: Catholic, Evangelical... My Father in Law stated that the high school his children went to has some type of agreement that the non-Lutheran families sign stating that they understand that their children will be instructed in the Lutheran faith. I could not even imagine the Catholic high school that I went to (in that same city) would ever do that.

The drop at the Catholic high school from Freshman to Sophomore is regularly impressive.

Again, these are WELS schools that are doing better. The conservative ones. The ones that at least put up a good front that they care about their faith tradition. To my understanding the WELS schools only hire WELS Lutherans. The same cannot be said about the local Catholic schools. They hire agnostic, ELCA Lutherans (the WELS high school wouldn't even do that).

While the WELS schools focus on edifying their students in the faith... the Catholic schools seem to like good ol flagellation. Right now my son (8th grade... Catholic school) is working on an assignment that has him reading about how Catholics spread nasty rumors that Jews were in a league with the devil. That they spread fear amongst all Catholics by saying that Jews steal Catholic babies for sacrifices. And it's presented in a "look at the horrible things the Church has done".

4 years back one dad removed his family from this school when his daughter was working on an assignment on the Catholic Churches negative treatment of GLBT people. He had a row with the school admin and was told that it's Catholic social doctrine to call out when the church failed in her mission.

At my church there are growing numbers of families that are having 4 to 8 children. It's great to see. And a growing amount of these families are opting to homeschool over sending their children to the Catholic schools. A mother of one of these families said that the school didn't seem all that Catholic. Why pay that tuition when you think that the school might actually be detrimental to the child's faith?

For the one example: a city of roughly 35K people... significantly more Catholic than Lutheran. The Lutheran high school started surpassing the Catholic high school in enrollment starting about 2 years ago. Something that has never happened previously.

I have to say, good for them. The catholic schools put social issues in front and toss a few Catholic decorations on that message.

I'm sorry you're in a place with bad Catholic schools. It's not universal, but I hear reports of far too many.

I took a closer look at my son's assignment. It's a timeline of notable moments in antisemitism.

With one of the first events on this timeline being "The False Claim that the Jews Killed Jesus".

I'm going to contact the school about this assignment. I'm trying to figure out if I should start with the priest who has ultimate authority over the school, or the principal.

I'd start with the principal. Document every conversation.

Our city has similar issues. Enrollment decline and closures have been the trend for decades. Let me echo two points.

First, anecdotal comments inform me that many Catholic families have decided that tuition is too expensive. A welfare mentality generates a belief that the government should provide all. The public schools are free, they require no obligations, and education isn't a priority anyway. Importantly, parents can't tell the Catholic schools that discipline issues with their children are not their responsibility.

Second, some Catholic schools are becoming another version of public schools. We have a friend who left public school teaching because she felt called to be part of religious education. She left one Catholic school because the parish priest was not involved and refused to become involved in school issues and the principal dictated an increasingly woke curriculum. Her new Catholic school is more, well Catholic, and is surviving. Her previous school closed. She did relate that, when a Catholic school closes, about half of its students do not transfer to another Catholic school.

She also related that, when nearly all students are well behaved, peer pressure tends to bring the few hellions into line. However, when half the class is out of control, the whole class is out of control. Guess which model applies to Catholic schools?

Both, depending on the school.

Highlander wrote: ↑Sat Jan 24, 2026 11:28 am
She also related that, when nearly all students are well behaved, peer pressure tends to bring the few hellions into line.

I always said that we never had any bullying in Catholic School because the nuns did it for us.

The other aspect of Catholic education, pre-Vat II, is that if one child did something wrong, the whole class got punished. Naturally, kids are going to think that's unfair, but the nuns never missed a beat; they always related it to how sin effects the entire body of Christ. It's not just personal; it's communal.