Bishops propose Catholic education ‘varium’ to CCHD

'In terms of breaking the cycle of poverty — what’s the most effective way to do that?'

Nearly two dozen U.S. bishops have petitioned the USCCB to reshape the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, with a focus on providing scholarships to Catholic schools. 

U.S. bishops meet Nov. 14, 2023 in Baltimore, Maryland, as part of the fall plenary assembly of the U.S. bishops’ conference. Credit: Pillar Media.

One signatory to the request told The Pillar this week that he hopes U.S. bishops will discern together how best they can help families break out of poverty, while emphasizing Catholic education as an anti-poverty measure.

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Twenty-three U.S. diocesan bishops signed an Aug. 6 proposal for a measure called a “varium,” suggesting that the U.S. bishops’ conference should “transform the Catholic Campaign for Human Development” by 2026.

The proposal, a copy of which was obtained by The Pillar, urged that the Catholic Campaign for Human Development be restructured, to provide more resources for local dioceses, and to distribute grants for Catholic school scholarships while continuing to make funds available for local anti-poverty initiatives.

The proposal has been formally submitted to the USCCB’s committee on priorities and plans, and consultation with the Catholic Campaign for Human Development subcommittee is already underway. 

But with committee discussions likely to take place in November, and bishops holding a retreat in place of their spring meeting next year, there will not likely be broad discussion on the issue among the U.S. episcopate until November 2025.

The Catholic Campaign for Human Development, funded by a USCCB-organized second collection in parish churches, funds grants for community organizing initiatives and programs that aim to help address the causes of systemic and generational poverty. But the project has faltered in recent years, leading to USCCB layoffs, diminished cash reserves, and a June discussion among bishops about the future of CCHD.

The August proposal, seemingly meant to continue the anti-poverty aims of CCHD, would see the retooled collection overseen by a proposed new USCCB collections subcommittee, which would be called the Subcommittee to Assist the Poor.

After obtaining a copy of the varium proposal last week, The Pillar contacted some signatories for comment. While others reached declined questions, Bishop Thomas Paprocki, a principal organizer of the proposal, agreed to an interview on the issue.

Paprocki lamented that the document had been obtained by the media, but agreed to offer comments regarding its content, and the reason bishops have proposed a change.

The bishop said he was “dismayed” that a copy of the proposal had been obtained by The Pillar, and lamented that a “confidential process” had been disrupted by media engagement. 

“We are talking about something that’s still in process,” Paprocki explained, “which is in the proposal stage.”

But Paprocki acknowledged that he had worked with Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City to develop the proposal, which has now garnered support from more than 20 bishops. 

“I think there is a sense that we need to look at the most effective way to help poor people. We want to help people. We want to help break the cycle of poverty. We understand very well what the purposes of the Catholic Campaign for Human Development are, and as something distinct from the many charitable things that are done through organizations like Catholic Charities or St. Vincent de Paul that help provide basic needs for people in poverty,” Paprocki said.

“But in terms of breaking the cycle of poverty — what’s the most effective way to do that?” Paprocki asked. 

“Traditionally, the Catholic Campaign for Human Development has funded community organizers, and ways of getting people in a community organized to pursue various issues and causes. We're not saying that that's a bad thing,” the bishop said. 

“I'm sure there are many good things that have come out of that approach, but I think after several decades of that approach now: Is the most effective approach?”

Paprocki said he believes that funding Catholic education could be a more effective way to combat cycles of poverty. 

“Really, one of the most effective ways to help people out of poverty is through education. That’s what our Catholic schools try to do, and do it well,” the bishop said, adding that he has known personally people who have seen Catholic education help them to overcome poverty.

“I have met people in leadership positions, for example, in Catholic healthcare who will tell me that they were raised in a very poor neighborhood, and that they lived in poverty, but they went to a Catholic school and they got a good education that enabled them to get into a good high school and a good college, and then eventually wound up in a very well-paying job.” 

“And so they specifically attribute that to the Catholic education that they received that enabled them to rise out of poverty,” Paprocki said.

In addition to Paprocki’s experience, experts have long recognized the impact of Catholic school education on underserved communities in the U.S. In 2021, Boston College professor Charles Cownie noted “ a long history of research identifying associations between Catholic school attendance by students of color living in poverty or lower-income environments and the development of certain positive student outcomes such as high school graduation rates, college admission and civic engagement.”

Research on the subject “has clearly demonstrated that these schools serve the mission of the Church to serve the marginalized and excluded, which also serves the public interest of breaking the legacy of poverty in these communities,” he noted.

At the University of Notre Dame Law School, dean Nicole Garnett noted in 2020 the same reality, arguing that “urban Catholic schools have a long and noble record of helping to lift students out of poverty” — and leave a demonstrable “Catholic school effect,” impacting “the academic performance and life outcomes of disadvantaged minority students.”

Garnett cited research which has found that “Catholic school attendance increased the likelihood that a minority student would graduate from high school from 62 percent to 88 percent and more than doubled the likelihood that a similar student would graduate from college.”

“Catholic school students, controlling for a range of predictive demographic factors, are more likely to finish high school, attend college and graduate, maintain steady employment, and earn higher wages than similar students attending other types of schools,” Garnett noted.

For his part, Paprocki added that Catholic schools face a crisis in many underserved American communities. 

“Many dioceses are seeing Catholic schools closing, which is not what we want to see happening, especially in poor neighborhoods or rural communities where it's difficult to keep raising tuition.”

“The whole financial underpinnings of Catholic education are being strained right now,” Paprocki said, adding that when CCHD was founded in the 1960s, schools staffed by religious institutes faced lower costs than they do now.

“I think we’re looking at this varium proposal as not necessarily replacing the community organizations that we’ve funded in the past, but as allowing for new possibilities as well — for example, to help with funding Catholic schools in poor neighborhoods and inner cities or rural areas.”

Indeed, the varium proposal text would seem to allow for a broad set of possibilities, with discretion afforded to local bishops. 

The text proposes that half of funds collected by an annual national collection be “retained in the local dioceses for: 1) grants to local programs that seek to help the poor to break out of structural or generational poverty as determined by the diocesan bishop, and 2) educational scholarships in Catholic schools (K-12) to benefit children living in poverty or in sparsely populated areas.”

The other half, it proposes, “would be distributed nationally to poorer dioceses, with the diocesan bishop in such dioceses deciding how the funds will best be allocated to assist the poor through educational scholarships in Catholic schools (K-12) and local programs that seek to help the poor to break out of structural or generational poverty.”

Paprocki told The Pillar that the proposal is a work in progress, and that he expects it could be changed, modified, or refined as more bishops enter the conversation.

In fact, he said, his discussions with bishops have proven “this is a work in progress,” the bishop said.

“When I first addressed this, I talked about sunsetting CCHD and replacing it with a national campaign for Catholic education,” Paprocki said. 

But through “conversation with other bishops, the sense emerged that rather than taking that direct step — like shutting down the campaign and then starting something new — [we might] transform what we’ve got … not necessarily making this radical shift from one thing to another, but starting instead to include the possibility of helping to fund Catholic education through this campaign.”

The bishop said he understands that some observers have criticized proposed changes to CCHD as attacks on the bishops’ anti-poverty efforts.

“I think there is a natural tendency for people who have been strong supporters of a certain way of doing things, that if you question that or you suggest that maybe there's a more effective way of doing things, they will perhaps be defensive, and want to maintain the status quo.”

But Paprocki said he hopes that among bishops, discussion about CCHD’s future will take on a tone of collaboration, rather than division. 

“My feeling is that this is certainly not the final product, and I don’t want to say ‘take it or leave it.’ It’s an idea that’s been submitted to the proper channels at the USCCB, and if other people want to tweak it in a different direction, I think it’s good that we can have conversations about that.”

And if potential donors “see that CCHD is looking to responsibly reform itself, and to do something that would be more attractive to people, I think that could actually be a way of saving CCHD,” Paprocki said.

The bishop added his expectation that a thorough discussion among bishops is likely to take more than a year — especially to achieve consensus among a plurality of bishops.

“The wheels of any large organization move slowly,” Paprocki said. “The USCCB has a number of relevant committees, and it’s important to have real consensus and to get people on board.”

“I’m not looking to rush something through just for the sake of getting it done in a hurry. I want there to be buy-in — with bishops across the board looking together at this and saying, ‘All right, this is the direction we need to go.’”

“For a consensus about the way we would go forward — If it takes a little while to do that, that’s fine with me.”

Among the signatories to Paprocki’s proposal were four metropolitan archbishops: Naumann, Archbishop Samuel Aquila of Denver, Archbishop Alex Sample of Portland, and Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco.

Diocesan bishop signatories were: Bishop Michael Barber of Oakland, Bishop John Barres of Rockville Centre, Bishop Joseph Brennan of Fresno, Bishop James Conley of Lincoln, Bishop Thomas Daly of Spokane, Bishop John Doerfler of Marquette, Bishop Carl Kemme of Wichita, Bishop David Konderla of Tulsa, Bishop Terry LaValley of Ogdensburg, Bishop Stephen Parkes of Savannah, Paprocki of Springfield, Bishop Erik Pohlmeier of St. Augustine, Bishop Steven Raica of Birmingham, Bishop David Ricken of Green Bay, Bishop Kevin Rhoades of Fort Wayne-South Bend, Bishop Alfred Schlert of Allentown, Bishop Robert Vasa of Santa Rosa, Bishop David Walkowiak of Grand Rapids, and Bishop Chad Zielinski of New Ulm.

It is not clear whether additional bishops have signed on to the varium proposal since it was initially submitted to the USCCB.