Catholic Culture's news summary notes a New York Times story that more than 2,000 Catholic schools have closed since 1990.
Well, since so many Catholic schools ceased being distinctively Catholic years ago, this shouldn't come as a surprise. Why go to a Catholic school when it has reallybecome just a public school named after a saint? When the salt has lost its savor, it is good for nothing but to be thrown out and trodden underfoot.
The mainstream Catholic misinterpretations of Vatican II continue to wash the Church in America into bland irrelevance. Why should the secularists bother persecuting it? It's slowly killing itself anyway.
In 1867, Matthew Arnold wrote "Dover Beach", a haunting poem evoking the "melancholy, long, withdrawing roar" of the Sea of Faith. As a boomer who finished Catholic elementary school in 1964 and then watched my Church falter, I've found the roar all too audible. So here I wait, listening for the whispers of that Sea's invincible return.
