Glad you got your validation lol.

The Catholic school dynamic is way different in Texas. I'm sure in some of the bigger cities there might be the "school for the elite" aspect going on but in my experience the people that went to Catholic schools went there because their parents wanted them to get a Catholic education. At least thats how it was for me going to Catholic school for elementary.

(04-21-2025 03:43 PM)MattBrownEP Wrote:  First, my condolences to our Catholic friends here. It appears the world has lost a Godly man.

Second...its funny, I was talking with a DIII commissioner about this about a week ago. While I wouldn't say there's an obvious, direct, 1:1 relationship between the Vatican and college sports, I'm coming away thinking that there really IS a relationship. Walk with me here for a second.

Many moons ago, the parochial K12 system was a MAJOR pipeline for American students, even for kids who weren't Catholic. In the 1960s, north of five million children were enrolled in Catholic schools across the United States. This huge pipeline created enough Catholic school graduates to support not just the Notre Dames and Boston Colleges of the world, but smaller Jesuit Liberal Arts colleges all over the country..but especially in the Midwest and Northeast.

Now, I believe parochial enrollment is closer to 2 million people. I've had school administrators tell me that part of the reason is that Catholic schools have largely retreated from educating poor urban areas, instead focusing more on affluent families...since nobody has enough priests and nuns to run schools on the cheap. I'm sure that American frustration with numerous church scandals, as well as good ol' demographic change, have also played significant roles.

But without as many kids graduating from your local St. Patrick High School, you don't have as many kids deciding to go to Saint Francis or Le Moyne or Canisius. Even the Notre Dames of the world have had to change how they recruit students. This stuff DOES change college sports.

I'm not a Catholic, and I couldn't begin to speculate how the papal election could change parochial K12 education enrollment in the US. But anything that happens in the Vatican that results in more empty pews in the United States, eventually, will have a college sports impact.

Good analysis. Another point I would mention (you danced around this a bit but didn't address it head on): religious vocations are in decline in the Catholic Church. In my diocese, the median age for priests probably is north of 70. What this means is that Catholic schools no longer are being taught predominantly by priests, nuns and brothers. Instead, lay teachers are teaching in this position. Those people, unlike their religious counterparts, are not in position to teach essentially for free. They need a salary to live on.

Where is that money coming from? Of course, it's coming from the parents of students at the school. That fact, in turn, is pricing a lot of families out of Catholic education who would have sent their kids to Catholic schools in the past. That's especially true of people living in suburban areas who are generally happy with the local public school options and who don't have a limitless, or near limitless, supply of money.

You mentioned that Notre Dame has had to change the way it recruits students. I would tend to agree. Notre Dame always has recruited students from around the country. But when I was a student there (1980s), the majority of students, myself included, were products of Catholic high schools. I'm not certain whether that's still the case today but I would venture a guess that it is not.

(04-22-2025 08:17 AM)Bobcat2013 Wrote:  Glad you got your validation lol.

The Catholic school dynamic is way different in Texas. I'm sure in some of the bigger cities there might be the "school for the elite" aspect going on but in my experience the people that went to Catholic schools went there because their parents wanted them to get a Catholic education. At least thats how it was for me going to Catholic school for elementary.

This is just out of curiosity, really. I went to public school in a little town in Liberty County called Dayton. And I grew up a Southern Baptist. That said, I've always had respect for those who were practicing Catholics because we did have a Catholic church in town. (It's currently across the street from the town library/civic center as well as next to what was once one of the elementary schools I went to growing up. That is now the Dayton ISD support center.) I was merely curious as to the impact the Catholic Church would have on college sports, if any at all. That's all.

Like my dad said, you don't know if you don't ask.

tf8693: I didn't know that. Thanks for pointing that out. And yeah, I would suspect that a lot of Catholic colleges and universities have had to do that as well while retaining what makes them, well, them. I once had a co-worker who was a practicing Catholic and her daughter was a volleyball player. She graduated from a public high school, then went the juco route at first, but ultimately, she transferred to the University of St. Thomas. (The one here in Houston, not up in Minneapolis, Minnesota.) Of course, St. Thomas isn't a very big school compared to Notre Dame.

I have a friend from Dayton.

I'm glad you're not weird about Catholics though. I grew up in a very small mostly Catholic town Northeast of Austin. It wasn't until I dated a girl from a mostly baptist neighboring town that I found out how much animosity there can be towards Catholics from other "Christians". I knew there were differences between Catholics and Protestants obviously but thought we were more or less on the same team. Boy was I wrong lol.

(04-22-2025 08:17 AM)Bobcat2013 Wrote:  Glad you got your validation lol.

The Catholic school dynamic is way different in Texas. I'm sure in some of the bigger cities there might be the "school for the elite" aspect going on but in my experience the people that went to Catholic schools went there because their parents wanted them to get a Catholic education. At least thats how it was for me going to Catholic school for elementary.

It was the same way for me as well, and I don't live in Texas. While there was a little bit of an "elite" sense of expectation with Catholic schools, it was less of an economic sense than it was the sense that you were getting a better education in Catholic schools. Many -- or more correctly, most -- of the students in my Catholic high school were from working class families.

That was back in the late 70s/early 80s. Religion in general was a more important consideration then than it is today. Piggybacking on Matt Brown's post, I think that group is the group that Catholic schools have lost since that time more than any other.

(04-21-2025 01:34 PM)Bronco14 Wrote:  

(04-21-2025 01:19 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(04-21-2025 11:01 AM)Bronco14 Wrote:  

(04-21-2025 09:06 AM)GeminiCoog Wrote:  This is meant to open discussion into what sort of impact the Roman Catholic Church has on collegiate athletics here in America. Please keep all negative comments (religion-bashing or even political) out. Thanks.

I find it interesting the D1 schools w/ religious affiliation tend to be Catholic.

We can point to a lot of historical reasons for the prevalence of Catholic universities generally (not just Division I). At a base level, the Catholic Church has a more hierarchical and centralized structure (hence the Pope as the leader) while still having a massive scale in terms of size. There are a lot of denominations and religions that that are centralized but have a smaller number of members or, alternatively, decentralized but has very large numbers of members (e.g. the umbrella of evangelical Christians that collectively have large numbers but have largely decentralized separate church leadership structures), but very few (and maybe no one) with the combination of centralization and size of the Catholic Church.

So, in countries where Catholicism is the dominant religion, the Catholic Church would often drive a lot of educational systems in society. In places where Catholicism wasn’t in the dominant position and/or faced a lot of discrimination (such as late-19th century and early-20th century America), the Church created parallel education systems with a lot of them that live on to this day. Now, plenty of religions and denominations have their own education systems, as well, but the Catholic Church could do it at scale with its combo of centralized leadership that has always focused heavily on education for centuries and the scale of the number of members that could support much larger and comprehensive educational systems.

I think this is a big reason. I'm sure a lot of those East schools were set up in response to Harvard for example. I also think there's more going on than 'the Catholic Church is big & cares about education.'

Well a lot of the reason Notre Dame is so big nationally is the history of discrimination against Catholics and Irish. Its also why as their older fans die off, I think their influence will gradually diminish.

(04-22-2025 08:17 AM)tf8693 Wrote:  

(04-21-2025 03:43 PM)MattBrownEP Wrote:  First, my condolences to our Catholic friends here. It appears the world has lost a Godly man.

Second...its funny, I was talking with a DIII commissioner about this about a week ago. While I wouldn't say there's an obvious, direct, 1:1 relationship between the Vatican and college sports, I'm coming away thinking that there really IS a relationship. Walk with me here for a second.

Many moons ago, the parochial K12 system was a MAJOR pipeline for American students, even for kids who weren't Catholic. In the 1960s, north of five million children were enrolled in Catholic schools across the United States. This huge pipeline created enough Catholic school graduates to support not just the Notre Dames and Boston Colleges of the world, but smaller Jesuit Liberal Arts colleges all over the country..but especially in the Midwest and Northeast.

Now, I believe parochial enrollment is closer to 2 million people. I've had school administrators tell me that part of the reason is that Catholic schools have largely retreated from educating poor urban areas, instead focusing more on affluent families...since nobody has enough priests and nuns to run schools on the cheap. I'm sure that American frustration with numerous church scandals, as well as good ol' demographic change, have also played significant roles.

But without as many kids graduating from your local St. Patrick High School, you don't have as many kids deciding to go to Saint Francis or Le Moyne or Canisius. Even the Notre Dames of the world have had to change how they recruit students. This stuff DOES change college sports.

I'm not a Catholic, and I couldn't begin to speculate how the papal election could change parochial K12 education enrollment in the US. But anything that happens in the Vatican that results in more empty pews in the United States, eventually, will have a college sports impact.

Good analysis. Another point I would mention (you danced around this a bit but didn't address it head on): religious vocations are in decline in the Catholic Church. In my diocese, the median age for priests probably is north of 70. What this means is that Catholic schools no longer are being taught predominantly by priests, nuns and brothers. Instead, lay teachers are teaching in this position. Those people, unlike their religious counterparts, are not in position to teach essentially for free. They need a salary to live on.

Where is that money coming from? Of course, it's coming from the parents of students at the school. That fact, in turn, is pricing a lot of families out of Catholic education who would have sent their kids to Catholic schools in the past. That's especially true of people living in suburban areas who are generally happy with the local public school options and who don't have a limitless, or near limitless, supply of money.

You mentioned that Notre Dame has had to change the way it recruits students. I would tend to agree. Notre Dame always has recruited students from around the country. But when I was a student there (1980s), the majority of students, myself included, were products of Catholic high schools. I'm not certain whether that's still the case today but I would venture a guess that it is not.

The decline of people in the ministry impacts other denominations, not just Catholics.
But, of course, that doesn't impact private denominational schools the way it does Catholic schools.

I live in a small town near a Catholic Church. They don’t have a school here but the priest is my next door neighbor. In the time I have lived here they have had four priests. The first two were older white men, one of whom died on the job. The others were a guy from Thailand and a guy from Africa.

I kinda wish this was still in the Realignment Forum because the new pope, Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, the first American Pope, who will take the name Pope Leo XIV, is a Villanova alum. I thought they'd want some bragging rights.