Nazareth Academy and Aquinas to merge

Talk about a bolt from the blue!  I don't know of anyone who had a clue this was in the works.
From 13WHAM.com ...

Rochester, N.Y. - Nazareth Academy and Aquinas Institute have announced they will merge. They're calling it a partnership.

The new partners announced Wednesday that they will call their school system Aquinas Institute and Nazareth Schools.

Beginning in September, Pre K-6th Grade will be held at Nazareth, and grades 7-12 will be located at Aquinas. Some parents are unhappy that their children will have to move yet again.

Watch for more on this story and get reaction from local parents on 13WHAM News at 5 and 6 p.m. and at 13WHAM.com

From the Nazareth Scools website ...

Opening a new chapter for Catholic Education in Rochester: 

The Nazareth Schools and Aquinas Institute are partnering to create a co-educational Catholic school system that seamlessly serves grades Pre-K through 12.  The new school system will be called Aquinas Institute and Nazareth Schools.  Beginning in September 2010, Pre-K through grade 6 will be located at the Nazareth Academy campus on Lake Avenue.  Grades 7 through 12 will be welcomed at the Aquinas Institute campus on Dewey Avenue. 

The Nazareth Schools will continue providing its well-respected elementary school program, including a highly recognized Pre-K and wrap-around school care.  The Nazareth Academy program at Aquinas will continue a strong commitment to women’s leadership and development.  This commitment will be overseen by a position created and staffed by the Sisters of Saint Joseph.   

Both schools bring several shared values to the new school system including a religious grounding in the Roman Catholic faith tradition as taught and supported by the Congregation of Saint Basil and the Sisters of Saint Joseph.  As private Catholic schools, The Aquinas Institute and The Nazareth Schools, this partnership is an historic juncture. 

H/T: a loyal reader


UPDATE: Not too surprisingly, finances seemed to have played a major role.

From a Naz student's post on the Save NAZ ACADEMY from extinction! page on Facebook ...

"Apparently, Nazareth is in millions of dollars of debt and they have been trying to keep it going, but the diocese hasn't really backed anything. "The diocese is literally running out of the inner city" That's why my religion teacher told me. She is a SSJ nun and she was crying.

A memory from the '80s

1985, to be precise - the year that Nunsense began its off-Broadway run of 3,672 performances.

Sister Robert Ann's childhood recollection, Growing Up Catholic, from early in Act II is still relevant today ...

At Saint Clare's School, religion class
Began with Mass each day.
It was said in Latin then.
That's how I learned to pray.

The nuns appeared in black and white.
And so did every rule.
Things were either wrong and right
At Saint Clare's Catholic School.

But then the rules began to change
And many lost their way.
What was always black and white
Was turning shades of gray.

Though Mass is said in English now,
To make us more aware,
Confusion seems to reign supreme.
Like God, it's everywhere.

The Church is quite progressive now
Though people ridicule,
The fact that so many things are optional,
It's hard to find a rule.

Through it all I've often said
Those ancient Latin prayers
That I first learned when growing up --
Catholic -- at Saint Claire's

Christine Anderson's 1998 rendition of Growing Up Catholic has also been posted to YouTube ...

Anger (and fear?) at St. Thomas

Another article on the IPPG's recommendation to close both St. Salome and St. Thomas the Apostle parishes appears in today's D&C.  There's no new factual information that I could spot, but there is an account of an interview with some St. Thomas parishioners by reporter Gary Craig.

The Diocese of Rochester is feeling the same strains as other dioceses across the country: shrinking enrollment and fewer men entering the priesthood. The strain is exacerbated by a schism within the church: Some think the church remains too adherent to tradition, such as the refusal to allow women as priests, while others see a church slipping from its traditional and historical moorings.

After Sunday's early afternoon Mass, a small group of parishioners remained at St. Thomas, upset with the decision.

"I'm angry," one parishioner said, refusing to give his name.

"I'm angry with the bishop."

He maintained that St. Thomas has long had a more traditionalist stance — an approach he said sometimes runs counter to the sentiments of the bishop. Several men and women surrounding him agreed, but none wanted their names used in public criticism of the closure recommendation.

Schism, at least in its formal sense, is much too strong a word here, although Craig is certainly correct in his assertion that there is a something of a rift between progressive and traditionalist (for want of better terms) Catholics in DOR.

That said, it is interesting to note the fear evidenced by the parishioners with whom Craig spoke. It would seem that Fr. Norm Tanck's efforts at belittling and demeaning the traditionalist Catholics at St. Thomas (see here) are having their desired effect.

Whither the altar rail?

CatholicCourier.com posted a story today on the recommendation to close both St. Salome and St. Thomas the Apostle churches in Irondequoit.

I didn't spot any new factual information but the article did end with an intriguing sentence.

Unique traits of all five parishes would be incorporated into the new parish, planners pledged.

 

I wonder which of the surviving churches will now get an altar rail.

DOR's Available Priest Projections

In September of 2003 Bill Pickett, then DOR's Director of Pastoral Planning, gave a presentation to a group consisting of the members of the Eastern Greece/Charlotte PPNM Steering Committee, along with the parish councils and pastoral staffs of the six parishes involved. The occasion was the kick-off of Phase 2 of the PPNM process for the EG/C Planning Group.

Part of Dr. Pickett's presentation was a 5-page handout containing what appeared to be screencaps from a 28 slide Power Point presentation.  Some of these slides presented DOR's then-current projections out to as far as 2025 for such items as the number of priests and the number and type of parishes.

Packrat that I am, my copy of that handout is still in my files.  As so, without further ado, here is the data Dr. Pickett presented 6+ years ago.

 

 

  

  

Priest Projections

Of particular interest is the following chart from Page 2:

Pay particular attention to the projected number of priests in 2015. I make it out to be about 90 and I have to wonder, despite DOR's protestations to the contrary, whether this is the real driving force behind at least some of the more recent parish closures, as well as some of those now in the works.

This "vast wasteland"

Fr. Z. has noted that some people suspect that preference for the TLM over against the Novus Ordo might be largely a function of age.  He therefore asked

would some of you younger folks take some time to write your thoughts about the new Mass/old Mass question?

I also invite seasoned Catholics to do the same.

Let’s see some responses.

Some of his responses were published yesterday. The second one came from a lady with experience with the liturgy as celebrated in DOR.  It reads, in part,

I am 39 years old ... I went to Catholic school and the parish associated with my school was very orthodox and traditional (in the 1970s-80s everyone still received communion knelling at the Communion rail (mostly on the tongue but you had the choice)), parts of the Mass were retained in Latin, chant, etc. ... 

I really had no idea how unusual the parish was or graced I was that I attended it until I left home for college in 1988 and saw the vast wasteland that’s left in upstate NY (Bishop Matthew Clark’s diocese).

I went to the “Catholic” Mass offered by the Catholic campus ministry. I truly did not recognize it as a Catholic Mass. I called my husband (who was then my boyfriend) and told him that I must have gone to a protestant service by mistake. Besides the hideous music, the liturgical dance, the clown vestments and everything about the “worship space”, they had written their own Eucharistic Prayers that had phrases like “save us from the bondage of capitalism.” My time in upstate NY was like being lost in the wilderness (I did not own a car so was forced to endure what I had access to). I stuck it out and went to Mass every week with gritted teeth.

It's still a wasteland, only just not quite as vast as it was 20-some years ago, as more and more Catholics simply quit attending Mass.

St. Joseph School to revert to being parish run

CatholicCourier.com is reporting that St. Joseph School in Penfield will revert to parish school status at the end of the current school year.  Discussions are also underway, according to the diocese, that may lead to a similar change at St. Louis in Pittsford and St. Rita in Webster. Similar talks are also going on with St. Lawrence in Greece, according to a report last week by Channel 10 News.

Tuition to rise at St. Joseph School

St. Joseph Parish will raise tuition by about 10% to $3,300 for the 2010-11 school year. Tuition has been set by the diocese at $2,950 for the last two years.  The diocese has yet to say anything about its tuition plans for next year.

MCCS 2009-10 enrollment down

DOR spokesman Doug Mandelaro is quoted as saying that there had been "an 8-percent enrollment drop at the remaining schools this past year."  The 2008-09 MCCS enrollment has been reported at 3,700 students. With St. Joseph's enrolment at just over 400, an 8% drop at the remaining schools translates into a loss of of about 265 students, or a 2009-10 enrollment level of about 3,435 students. 
Two years ago the diocese indicated that it needed over 4,000 students to break even, given its tuition rate of $2,950.  It would therefore appear that the MCCS budget is now under considerable strain.

The demographic shift - again

Mandelaro attributed the drop in enrollment to both the economic downturn and "changes in demographics."  It must be noted that for the last two years the diocese has been citing a demographic shift as a cause of various ills ranging from declining Mass attendance to declining MCCS enrollment, but that it has yet to publish the data upon which it bases that claim.

No closed school will be allowed to reopen

Mandelaro confirmed an earlier report that the diocese will not allow any of the 13 schools closed by Bishop Clark in 2008 to reopen as parish schools.

"None of the closed schools are being reopened," he said, noting that one reason Bishop Clark approved the task force's recommendation on school closings was concern that if some or all of the schools slated for closure had been allowed to remain open, they might have drawn students away from the county's other 11 schools, thereby destabilizing the entire school system.
That concern persists.

A parish school: A "wonderful opportunity ... for the growth of our parish"

The story quotes St. Joseph pastor Fr. Jim Schwartz on the relationship between a parish and its school ...

"From a parish perspective, faith formation is a major parish priority as it is expressed in Catholic school," Father Schwartz said. "We see this as a rich and wonderful opportunity to provide faith formation for the growth of our parish."
Father Schwartz said he is optimistic that local control over the school will encourage parishioners to feel more connected to it, allowing the school to continue providing a high-quality education ...

"The viability and the future of the school has just taken a giant step forward," Father Schwartz remarked.

All of which leads one to wonder just what Fr. Schwartz' assessment of "the viability and the future of the school" would have been, had it remained under MCCS control.

Why does it always seem to be about the money?

While DOR does not release the weekend collection figures of its parishes, it does publish their CMA assessments.  And, since a parish's CMA assessment is based largely on the size of its average weekly collection, these assessments can give us a good picture of our parishes' relative incomes.
With this in mind it is interesting to note that the four parishes that have or may regain control over their schools are among the nine in all of DOR with the highest CMA assessments. Indeed, only one other parish (Peace of Christ) in this top nine has a Catholic school on its property.
So it looks like just about the only parishes to be considered for, in Fr. Schwartz' words,  "wonderful opportunit[ies] ... for the growth of our parish" are those who are already doing pretty well for themselves.
I guess the rest of us will just have to fend for ourselves.

UPDATE: 13WHAM.com is reporting that the reversion of St. Lawrence School in Greece to parish control is now a done deal.  The change-over will take effect at the end of the current school year.

UPDATE: WHEC.com also has a report on this story. At least one St. Joseph parent is quite happy with the new arrangement ...

Since Bishop Mathew Clark closed 13 Catholic schools in 2008, there has been some lingering resentment and skepticism. Parents worried which schools might be next? But parents who spoke today say they like this move.

"It is a good thing. It's actually a very positive thing. It's a relief," said parent Christine Sebastian. Instead of sending her son's tuition money to the Diocese, it will now go directly to the St. Joseph's parish school. "I mean, for years we've worried every timed the tuition list comes out, which schools are going to close. And honestly, the anxiety, the fear is now gone. We can raise money for areas that we wanted to spend money in. And now we can do that."