c. 1998 Religion News Service

(Andrew M. Greeley is a Roman Catholic priest, best-selling novelist and a sociologist at the University of Chicago National Opinion Research Center. Check out his home page at http://www.agreeley.com or contact him via e-mail at agreel(at)aol.com.)

UNDATED _ Anti-Catholicism is raising its ugly head again in the wake of the decision by the Wisconsin Supreme Court to permit vouchers so some poor children in Milwaukee can attend parochial schools.

A nasty _ and scary _ manifestation of this anti-Catholic animus was a lead editorial in The New York Times following the decision. Two buzz words in the editorial echo out of the country’s nativist, anti-Catholic past:”coffers”and”indoctrination.” We are told by the editorial writer we will see a huge transfer of taxpayer money”… into parochial school coffers.”And we are warned parochial schools”have religious indoctrination as their core purpose.” It is easy enough to rebut both allegations.

While”coffers”suggest priests and nuns in full regalia deep down in a basement counting their money, in fact, all money from a voucher plan would go to pay educational expenses for students. To put it mildly, parochial schools are not a profit-making venture for the Roman Catholic Church.

Moreover, Catholic schools do not strive to”indoctrinate”_ not any more, at any rate, if they ever did. You really can’t indoctrinate in schools anyway.

Whatever success Catholic schools may have in deepening the Catholic faith of their students arises from the school’s affiliation with the parochial community based in the parish church. That more than half the students in inner-city Catholic schools are and remain members of other denominations is sufficient proof indoctrination is not part of the schools”core purpose.” Such rational refutations, however, are irrelevant.

The words are tocsins that in the past have generated bias against Catholics and Catholic schools. They do the same thing today.

There are a number of reasons for the reaction to the Wisconsin decision.

Teachers’ unions, for example, are opposed because a pluralism of educational choice would make contract negotiations more difficult.

School administrators see their power base in jeopardy. As defenders of the bankrupt”common school”ideology, they do not want to concede the massive failure of the public schools to respond to the problems of the very poor.

Thus, in another article _ this in the Times Sunday magazine _ public schools are described as a”beloved public institution handed over to the market place.”Who exactly loves the public schools? Certainly not the African-American parents of inner-city Milwaukee who hope to use the voucher plan.

At the same time, I must confess I don’t understand why more African-American politicians don’t support some kind of voucher program. The freedom of choice the plans offer is especially aimed at voters in their communities.

I also don’t understand why freedom of choice is a”conservative”position while a monopolistic system demands a”liberal”defense.

Still, the major opposition to vouchers is based on religion.

Mainstream American Protestant culture simply has never liked Catholic schools and still doesn’t.

To that culture, the schools still appear sinister, obscurantist, and rigidly narrow. How can a student, it is argued, learn anything in an environment dominated by a religious organization, especially one as rigid as the Catholic Church? That test scores in Catholic schools are higher than those in public schools simply cannot be true, the argument adds.

Added to the religious argument is the notion of the separation of church and state.

But if the wall of separation is not breeched by the equivalent of vouchers given to college students for the past 50 years, how can it be breeched by vouchers given to the parents of grammar school students?

Yet once the furies have been stirred by words like”coffers”and”indoctrinate”there is no need to answer questions like that.

Catholics have maintained their school system for some 150 years with their own funds. They can continue to do so if they wish _ and, despite the timidity of priests and bishops, they do wish. The issue is not the survival of Catholic schools. The issue is freedom of choice for poor parents. It is a shame that age-old religious bigotry should obscure that issue.

DEA END GREELEY