By Steven Spearie, Correspondent, Springfield Journal Register, Updated Aug 21, 2015

The Springfield Catholic Diocese’s new school policy could call into question parents’ lifestyles, especially if they go against Catholic teaching, and takes a new approach toward a more Protestant tradition of tithing.

The Family School Agreement would also require that non-Catholic families to attend Mass weekly and contribute to Catholic parishes, even while in most instances paying higher tuition rates at those schools.

The agreement, modeled after a Wichita, Kansas, plan, was issued by Springfield Bishop Thomas John Paprocki on July 20, but some Springfield schools haven’t made parents or legal guardians sign it.

In a letter to pastors and principals, obtained by The State Journal-Register, Paprocki acknowledged that the agreement was initiated in part when a same-sex married couple tried to enroll their adopted children at a Springfield elementary school, later identified as Christ the King.

One of the points of the agreement — which was recommended by the diocese’s Presbyteral Council, a 20-member senate of the bishop that acts in a consultative nature, and approved by Paprocki — is the expectation that parents, adoptive parents or legal guardians of children enrolled in Catholic schools meet with their parish pastor if they are “not living in accord with church teaching.”

That would take in persons who are divorced and remarried but haven’t been granted an annulment, unmarried couples living together, and people who are in same-sex marriages or partnerships.

Although recognized by civil law, same-sex marriages are not recognized by the Catholic Church.

Falling enrollment

According to the National Catholic Education Association in Alexandria, Virginia, the total Catholic school enrollment for 2014-15 in the U.S. was nearly 1.94 million students, with 1.36 million in elementary and middle schools and 579,605 in high schools.

The association reported steep drops in enrollment in the 1970s and ’80s, and by 1990, enrollment stood at 2.5 million students.

The Springfield Diocese’s numbers “have mirrored the decline in Catholic school enrollment across the country,” said Jonathan Sullivan, the diocese’s director of catechetical services, whose office covers Catholic schools.

Nationally, non-Catholic enrollment in all schools is 16.9 percent. In the Springfield Diocese, which is made up of 29 counties in a band across central Illinois, the non-Catholic enrollment is 16 percent in high schools and 13.7 in elementary and middle schools.

The discipleship and stewardship components of the Family School Agreement mandate that the entire family, even if some members aren’t Catholic, participate in weekly Mass and on holy days of obligation, and it “obliges” families to try to tithe at least 8 percent of their income to the parish church in addition to paying school tuition.

Sullivan said it will be up to parishes to monitor both Mass attendance and tithing.

The agreement includes all elementary schools, Sacred Heart-Griffin High School in Springfield, Routt Catholic High School in Jacksonville, and St. Patrick Catholic School, a not-for-profit corporation that operates under the jurisdiction of the bishop and the diocese and is guided by a board of directors. SHG is sponsored by the Springfield Dominican order of sisters. Routt is an independent Catholic high school governed by a board.

The agreement also covers preschools attached to elementary schools or parishes, like St. Joseph the Worker Preschool in Chatham. For now, it doesn’t cover Parish Schools of Religion, or PSRs, programs that provides religious formation for elementary school-age students who attend public schools.

School vs. home

A source knowledgeable about the agreement, who attended a spirited Aug. 7 meeting in Springfield called by the diocese — which featured plenty of questions from parish pastors and school principals — but asked not to be identified, indicated that several people at the meeting mentioned objections to the tone of the statement.

An objection was also raised, said the source, because the agreement asks parents for more financial and personal involvement in the parish in addition to requiring participation in weekly Mass.

None of the more than half-dozen pastors and principals reached by The State Journal-Register either by phone or by email would discuss the contract publicly. Several referred the newspaper to diocesan officials.

Sullivan, who represented the diocese at the meeting, said schools should have been presenting the agreement to parents still enrolling their children after the Aug. 7 meeting, though he didn’t know how many were doing that. He said he wouldn’t comment on what was discussed during a private meeting.

Reached by email Thursday, Tom Bayer, chairman of the SHG board of directors, said the school’s administration was “reviewing the agreement.”

Sullivan said that the agreement in some ways codified what parents implicitly knew was expected of them regarding Catholic education.

Prior to the agreement, Sullivan said, the diocese didn’t have standard language about those expectations, and schools handled the wording in their handbooks.

Part of the agreement, he said, is that children will be taught the teachings of the Catholic Church “in their fullness,” making clear that the diocese’s curriculum “is systematic and reflects the Catechism of the Catholic Church, even if those teachings conflict with ways parents are living their lives.”

“Some parents aren’t living lives in a manner consistent with the Catholic faith,” Sullivan said. “What they’re teaching in schools is going up against something very different at home.”

While no children will be turned away if a parent consents to the contract and doesn’t live up to it, Paprocki, in the letter to pastors and principals, acknowledged that parents might not enroll their children if they will be taught that their parents may be living “in an objectively sinful situation.”

Sullivan said a diocesanwide Religion Curriculum Standards, written by a committee that included principals and parish directors of religious education from around the diocese and approved by Paprocki, covers subjects like divorce, cohabitation and homosexuality. He said the subjects are usually formally addressed in seventh grade, but “more foundational teaching” may occur in earlier grades.

“We want to be in a position to pastorally reach out to people,” Sullivan said. “If someone has had difficulties, we would hope that person would sit down with the pastor.”

‘Isn’t trying to coerce’

Parents and students who actively promote “a moral or doctrinal position contrary to Catholic teaching” — supporting ordination of women priests, for instance — would be considered in violation of the Family School Agreement. The agreement says that could lead to the expulsion of the student.

“What parents in their right minds would idly sit by while a religion teacher is forced to tell their children that something is wrong with their family?” said John Freml, an SHG graduate and a Springfield leader of Call to Action and Equally Blessed, two organizations that support the full inclusion of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Catholics in the church.

“This is not the kind of church that Pope Francis has called for, and Paprocki should reread what the pope has said about how the church should treat children of same-sex parents,” Freml said.

While the incident involving a same-sex married couple trying to enroll their children at Christ the King was consideration for prompting the new policy, Paprocki wrote in his letter that the diocese would “not single out same-sex couples.”

Paprocki has followed Catholic teaching regarding same-sex marriage. When then-Gov. Pat Quinn signed a law making Illinois the 16th state to recognize same-sex marriage, Paprocki held a “minor exorcism” at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, calling the redefinition “contrary to God’s plan.”

Regarding the U.S. Supreme Court decision making same-sex marriage the law of the land as of June 26, Paprocki said that the court had “no moral authority to change what God has created.”

Sullivan said the church “isn’t trying to coerce people” to convert to Catholicism by making Mass attendance mandatory. He added that it’s the church’s hope that weekly Mass wouldn’t interfere with others’ religious services.

Non-Catholic families would have to situate themselves with Catholic parishes in the geographic boundaries they live in, Sullivan said.

The tithing aspect is part of a larger stewardship program modeled after one from the Wichita Diocese that will be rolled out later in the fall, Sullivan said. (That model for stewardship in Wichita goes back decades, long before Bishop Carl Kemme, the former vicar general and moderator of the curia for the Springfield Diocese, took over, Sullivan said.)

The hoped-for 8 percent tithe is “aspirational,” Sullivan said, acknowledging that non-Catholics may have other religious congregations to support.

Sullivan said he wouldn’t discount possible revisions in the agreement for next year, which would technically go to all students.

“We’re collecting feedback which we’ll present to the bishop,” he said.

 

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— Contact Steven Spearie: spearie@hotmail.com, twitter.com/StevenSpearie, facebook.com/steven.spearie.

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