Today, that neighborhood is in Philadelphia's inner city. The church has been closed, but the archdiocese still maintains a Catholic school there called Our Lady of Hope. It serves a minority population, including a large number of non-Catholic students. As with most Catholic schools today, the faculty comprises many more lay people than religious. Fostering a sense of Catholic identity becomes more of a challenge for today's schools embracing diverse populations.
Some urban schools are primarily non-Catholic.
Throughout the South, Catholic schools are being built in places where large Catholic populations are new to Baptist-dominated areas. In suburbs, Catholic schools are challenged to be more than just good private schools with high achievement test results and winning sports teams. In a project we are launching at The Catholic University of America to prepare Catholic schools to meet 21st-century challenges, we're examining finances, governance, curriculum, student demographics and other key issues. But the state of religious identity in Catholic education is a paramount topic. Catholic schools were born out of necessity.