New Report: Historic Opportunity to Empower Latinos through Catholic Schools

Last month, the Catholic School Advantage Campaign (CSA) released a monograph entitled Renewing Our Greatest and Best Inheritance: Our Historic Opportunity to Empower Latino Families through Catholic Schools. This informative booklet is available to the public and can be ordered or downloaded as a PDF.

Since the CSA Campaign was launched in 2010, it has become abundantly clear that the opportunity and challenge of increasing Latino participation in Catholic schools is among the top priorities in (arch)dioceses throughout the country. This document, the vision for which evolved out of recognition that episcopal and pastoral leaders possess a unique authority to articulate both the urgency and importance of this mission, synthesizes the insights of four cardinals, three archbishops, eleven bishops, and five pastors. Renewing Our Greatest and Best Inheritance focuses specifically on the integral role that bishops and pastors play in extending the Catholic school advantage to Latino families.

The insights offered by the bishops and pastors who contributed to this work are guided by three overarching themes:

1. We must convey and embrace the urgency – the data on sacramental participation, educational outcomes, and civic engagement all indicate a “demographic imperative” that the Church more effectively serve Latinos through K-12 Catholic schools.
2. We must celebrate the opportunity – empowering Latino families through our Catholic schools represents an exciting new chapter in the Catholic Church’s tradition of service to newly arrived people and communities.
3. We must provide authentic witness – our efforts to increase the participation of Latino families in Catholic schools are most effective when they are fully embodied by our pastoral and episcopal leadership, encountering the people of the emerging Church on a direct and personal level.

We are deeply grateful to each one of the bishops and pastors who so generously offered their experience and well-informed perspective on this historic opportunity facing the American Catholic Church today. Our hope is that this document will be most instructive as we forge a strategy to position Catholic schools as indispensable instruments of the New Evangelization and make them accessible to the Latino families who have so much to gain from them. There is so much at stake. May God continue to bless this work that he has entrusted to us.

Download the CSA Monograph

Order the CSA Monograph