New York Archdiocese Spends Opposing Gay Rights - Now It Looks to Close 28 Schools

This blog has noted before the misplaced priority of the Roman Catholic Church leadership which has spent millions of dollars seeking to keep LGBT citizens stigmatized and deprived of civil legal rights even as its churches fall into repair and face the wrecking ball and Catholic schools across America are closed down and shuttered.  Pope Benedict XVI and his fellow arch conservatives - dare we say reactionaries - have at times spoken of a smaller, "purer" church and it appears that they may well get their wish.  The Catholic Archdiocese of New York which is headed by Cardinal Timothy Dolan (pictured above right) who verily drips with anti-gay animus is preparing to close up to 28 Catholic schools because of lack of funds - and dropping enrollment as more Americans move away from institutional religion.  The New York Times looks at the situation.  Here are highlights:

For 135 years, Holy Cross School has taught at the Crossroads of the World, educating first the offspring of longshoremen and dockworkers, now the children of bus company, hotel and office workers in Times Square.

But now, Holy Cross is one of 28 elementary schools being considered for closing this year by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York. The proposed shutdowns are the latest in a wave that has swept away Catholic elementary schools in the Northeast and Midwest in recent decades.

In the New York Archdiocese, which extends from Staten Island north almost to Albany, fewer than 75,000 students now attend 245 Catholic elementary and high schools, down from 212,000 students in 414 schools in the early 1960s. 

 Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, the archbishop of New York, closed 26 elementary schools in 2011 . . . .  The archdiocese is in the process of regionalizing elementary school management and financing, and is hoping that new revenue sources, including an archdiocesan tax levied on each parish to support all schools in its local region, will help reduce the persistent operational deficits that it says are forcing the closings. 

Among the boroughs, the Bronx is the one that is being most significantly affected. The archdiocese closed six parish elementary schools in the borough in 2011, and eight more are now deemed at-risk, including Blessed Sacrament, which Justice Sonia Sotomayor of the United States Supreme Court attended, and the neighboring St. Anthony’s School.

[I]nevitably, some children whose schools close will not transfer to another Catholic school; in 2011, the archdiocese said, 36 percent of the children whose schools were closed left its school system. 

Some of the millions spent fighting gay rights could have kept a number of these schools open.  One can only hope that some of the disgruntled parents of students impacted by the closings will come to this realization and hopefully voice their anger and "vote with their feet" and walk away from the Church.