Catholic Schools Going Business or Bust

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TRANSCRIPT

Church lockdowns are suffocating Catholic schools, and some are turning to questionable organizations for help.

Both the director of the National Catholic Educational Association and the executive director of the U.S. bishops' Secretariat of Catholic Education point to state and diocesan lockdowns as a major cause of financial strain on parish education.

As mandatory school shutdowns continue, administrators are finding themselves asking for emergency funds from the government to prevent permanent closure.

Faculty are attempting to get payouts from both the Small Business Administration's Paycheck Protection Program and the federal CARES Act legislation.

In New Jersey for example, the Healey Education Foundation (HEF) is helping the state's Catholic Schools Association to bid for government relief.

The group claims to be Catholic, yet its website has no mention of Jesus and bears no religious imagery other than a short note in the Jesuit-educated founder's message about strengthening the Faith.

"So it is a moral and business obligation for all of us to reach out to those less fortunate," said HEF's Robert T. Healey Sr.

HEF even hosted homosexual apologist Fr. James Martin as a speaker at its annual awards ceremony in 2015.

The group uses various criteria to decide which schools they'll partner with.

Applicants must demonstrate a so-called commitment to change and want to get into "the school business."

They must also show a willingness to implement numbers-based solutions, with the website referring to families as "customers."

Despite this, the Wuhan crisis already hastened the closure of five more Catholic schools in Camden, New Jersey where HEF is headquartered, with more expected to close across the nation in May.

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