It's been a long time since Bing Crosby and Ingrid Bergman came together as a fiery, electric duo to save an inner-city Catholic school in Leo McCarey’s 1945 The Bells of St. Mary’s — and boy, could Catholic education use some of that feistiness today.
With enrollment numbers for Catholic schools in freefall since the 1960s — dropping by a whopping 49 percent in the state of New York over the last 20 years alone — the coronavirus recession, which is impeding parents everywhere from paying tuition, feels like the final coup de grâce. The threat of the current fiscal crisis, materializing just as the sector already seemed to be taking its last, dying breaths, simply cannot be overstated.
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