NEWS A VIEWS
NEWS & VIEWS C a t h o l i c Schools After years of decline, is the enrollment picture brightening for Catholic educational institutions? Could be, if some national survey statistics...
...An artist, a poet, a hermit, a dropout or a private citizen maybe can, but no one can be truly independent as a public politician and still be elected...
...But, wait...
...As an AttorneyGeneral-designate can be "persuaded" to quit his segregated private clubs, so can a presidential appointmentssecretary-presumed be expected to do the "politic" and "honorable" thing...
...Cited as factors for the decline i~, enrollments in institutions of higher learning generally are higher student fees, the inadequacy of financial aid programs, and the fact that, despite high unemployment rates, more people are working than ever befare...
...Cat~holic Conference, action agency of the American bishops, sees nothing facetious or joking about Schneiders...
...He's very tolerant about those things . . . . " The reference to "Catholic adviser" might have been used facetiously, since Schneiders also said, "Carter and I have never talked about my religious beliefs except in a joking way...
...I'm sure there are aspects of my Catholic upbringing that may affect me in some damaging ways," said Schneiders, son of an itinerant professor of psychology at Jesuit universities, brother to three nuns, Georgetown U. dropout, and professed agnostic...
...The program is being assisted by a $10,000 matching grant from Grolier, Inc., a New York-based publisher of educational materials...
...The London Tablet's Tom Burns summed up a moving tribute to the late Father Martin D'Arcy, S.J., with some agonizingly candid thoughts: "My sadness is not at his going because he always wanted to arrive, but that his last years were clouded by the changes in the church, which he did not appreciate...
...What has been learned from Gene McCarthy's and other independent campaigns...
...Demurrer notwithstanding, Father D'Arcy's is a great loss...
...Most of those desks will never be filled again...
...So far as I know, he said the Tridentine Mass to the end of his days--by permission, of course...
...He termed his remarks "insulting to millions of Catholics" and added that the Conference "is disturbed that a close aide to the President-elect should apparently hold and express such views...
...Carter] refers to me as his 'Catholic adviser'," Schneiders told the Post...
...Some 3,000 institutions are to be included in the study, which is being completed by Garland G. Parker of the University of Cincinnati...
...10 and 11 at Fordham University...
...He'll be a "panelist" in the new Steve Allen TVseries, "Meeting of Minds...
...Schneiders joined the Carter campaign as a baggage carrier, but by the end of the campaign "probably spent more time with the candidate than any other person," according to the Post...
...Says the newsletter Washington Watch: "It pays to be an independent, but in some party's clothing...
...JOHN DEEDY 7 January 1977:2...
...Details from Professor John C. Olin, Department of History, Fordham University at Rose Hill, Bronx, N.Y., 10458...
...it's the 500th anniversary of More's birth...
...Schneiders, accordingly, has allowed that his comments were "illchosen...
...Could be, if some national survey statistics prove out...
...Even so, some dioceses have launched aggressive enrollment campaigns to put students back in some of them...
...We've talked a lot about Catholicism...
...and he'll be the subject of a Quincentennial Conference being held Feb...
...For all his intelligence, he could not see that growing-up is a continuous and endless process, that we are all embryos and have no reason to consider any person or process as fully extended and complete...
...And so is that a few weeks earlier of Robert Speaight, who lived to finish his life of Francois Mauriac, but not see the reviews...
...And come New Year's Eve, he and his girl friend will marry...
...he'll occupy a chapter of the my-favorite-saint book being edited by John Delaney...
...I've said what a farce it was...
...T,hey're hopping mad over some opinions on Roman Catholicism expressed by Schneiders to Sally Quinn in a Washington Post interview, notably that Catholicism is a "farce" and that the Catholic church "does a better job of screwing people up than any other institution...
...So he knows how I feel, but not how it evolved...
...But Bishop James S. Rausch, general secretary of the U.S...
...Among their topics of conversation: religion...
...Schneiders is Carter's appointments secretary...
...When Greg Schneiders began moving up in the Carter camp as Jimmy's "complex young no-man," there were those, including himself, who thought that his live-in arrangement with his girl friend could be a source of embarrassment to Carter~ In Schneiders's own words, "There are a lot of Southern Baptists who would say, 'What's Jimmy Carter doing with this immoral guy on his staff living openly in sin?' Carter hasn't said anything about it but he might if it became an issue...
...Odds and Ends --Thomas More is hanging in there as popular as ever...
...Quincentennial...
...The counting is not all in, however...
...On the college and university levels, a survey of 688 "representative" institutions shows a 7 percent enrollment increase in private schools of higher learning, most of which are church-related, and a 4.7 percent increase in theological schools' enrollments...
...A Friend a t Court...
...No less worthy of focus, however, would seem to be the dramatic counter-trend in church-related institutions, as yet unexplored and unexplained...
...Meanwhile, at the grade and high school levels, Catholic institutions for the third straight year are experiencing an enrollment decrease of less than 1 percent, thus further persuading some Catholic educational officials that the parochial school decline has bottomed out...
...Well, Schneiders has become an issue with some religious folks all right--but these folks are Catholics, not Southern Baptists...
...So small a percentage figure still translates t~ 47,042 students, however, and of course does not regain the hundreds of thousands of enrollments lost from the peak years of the 1960s...
...News stories to date have focused on the composite figure of decline in college enrollments, which Parker has labeled "a surprise and a shock" and which, if prevailing through the final compilation of data, would mark the first loss in general enrollment in the 17 years that he has conducted the survey...
...Most recent figures for elementary and secondary schools show a decline from one year to the next of only 0.05 percent...
...The Newark archdiocese, for instance, has trained a group of "parent volunteers" and will dispatch them as recruiters to visit homes throughout the archdiocese during the period leading up to Catholic Schools Week, Feb...
...These gains come in the face of a 1 percent student decline for colleges and universities generally...
...6-11...
Vol. 104 • January 1977 • No. 1
