Catholic Spirit - Catholic Schools Th is article is from the February 2000 issue. To receive a copy of the entire issue, click here . Every school should teach the three Rs reading, writing, and rithmetic. Some 3,900 students are enrolled in the diocese s 16 elementary schools and three high schools. Franciscan Sister Thecla Cain , superintendent of diocesan schools, said the most visible benefit of the schools is probably the role of alumni in parish work.
Catholic schools prepare students to step forward in leadership.
Sister Cain noted that more than a generation ago, the church, in the Second Vatican Council, reaffirmed the need for the unordained to take more active leadership positions. In the United States, the church s call on the laity has been paralleled by a decline in the number of priests and religious. The correlation between Catholic school and the calling to vocations as priests, monks and nuns is even stronger, Sister Cain said. Spirituality Elo J. Goerig of La Grange, president of the fraternal organization Catholic Union of Texas, said he sees evidence every day of the values business people learned in Catholic schools. Goerig said members of the Catholic Union of Texas, which goes by the Czech acronym KJT, noticed during ordination services for the seminarians that many of the diocesan priests were aging.