Molly Ivins September 8

SAN DIEGO — One of the more deliciously absurd factors in the great debate over school vouchers — otherwise known as spending public money to send kids to private schools and thus, rather obviously, leaving less money for the public schools to do a decent job — is the oblivious enchantment of certain ... er ... intellectuals with the whole nutty notion.

Said intellectuals, many of them in the journalism trade, have a horrid tendency to romanticize Roman Catholic schools in the inner city. Have we not read story after story about some inner-city school rife with crime, violence and ignorance, whereas just down the street is a Catholic school where the children all wear uniforms, behave beautifully and score above average on the standard tests?

To cite but one example of this fatuous, superficial examination of public schools vs. Catholic schools, check out Joe Klein's column in the Sept. 2 issue of Newsweek. Ah, how lavishly Klein praises St. Elizabeth's School in Chicago, which indeed deserves it. Oh, how splendidly they do at St. Elizabeth's, and at very little more cost than a public school. Why, given a teensy voucher, any inner-city parent could afford to send her kid to this dandy school.

Hello? Anyone home? Any volunteers for a reality check? Yoo-hoo, let's talk Catholic schools.

Sorry to sound tacky, but Klein clearly never attended a Catholic school. If he had, he would have noticed that they are largely staffed by priests and nuns. Are you with me?

Is the Catholic church having problems recruiting priests? Yes, it is — but not nearly as big a problem as it is having recruiting nuns. You may find this hard to believe, but many devout Catholic women would prefer to be paid for teaching rather than to do it for free. We will touch only lightly on the increasing disenchantment of American Catholics with Rome (or, as we always say in Texas, "the pope a' Rome," as though you might confuse him with some other pope).

You see, it's a lot cheaper to run a good school if you don't have to pay the teachers, who have taken vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. But it is a system in the act of crumbling before our eyes. Now, in these teachers unions that Bob Dole hates so much — the National Education Association, the American Federation of Teachers and so on — none of those teachers has taken vows of poverty, chastity and obedience.

They're so uppity that they want money for the work they do.

True, there are lay teachers in Catholic schools, and the teachers are paid — a fraction of what public school teachers make, and, as we all know, that's not much.

Not being total fools, we would naturally rather send our kids to a school where we don't have to pay the teachers much. It's cheaper. Unfortunately, your unpaid teachers are disappearing faster than stock ponds during a drought. I don't want to start the argument about whether this is caused by feminism, economics, secularism or, as Dole would say, whatever. It's just that in the name of reality, we should recognize that it's mighty hard to find a good nun anymore. You may have noticed, if you've been hanging around Catholic schools, that many of those who teach there have been imported from the Auld Sod.

According to the Sacramento Bee, the Official Catholic Directory found in 1986 that there were 113,658 nuns in the United States. By 1996, that was down to 89,125. For priests, the drop was less dramatic, from 35,155 to 32,442 — but this happened while the Catholic population as a whole increased from 52.7 million to 60.3 million. Seminary enrollment has gone down from 8,325 men in 1966 to 3,172 last year. And the Kansas City Star reported in 1995 that parochial school attendance was down from about 3 million in 1985 to 2.6 million in 1994, also according to the Official Catholic Directory.

Without your nuns — and we are rapidly getting to a Catholic church without nuns — your Catholic schools will not be (a) successful or (b) cheap. Nuns are disappearing in America, just as their remaining presence is being used to justify this batty school-voucher plan.

As they say in valley-speak: I'm, like, give me a break. In 20 years, there will be no American nuns. And you think it's a fair contest to compare public schools and Catholic schools? With all due respect to generations of Catholic educators, who have managed to beat some sense into some awfully thick heads, now is not the time to put our eggs into that basket.

Does anyone now touting Catholic schools read the Catholic press? "Nuns Leaving in Droves" is practically a standing headline. My own favorite ex-priest/ex-nun story is still the romance between the wonderful Charlie and Pauline Sullivan of CURE, the organization that works with the families of those in prison. By the way, they met at a celibacy conference at the Radisson Hotel in Minneapolis.

***

Molly Ivins is a columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

COPYRIGHT 1996 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.