Catholic schools in U.S. hit by unprecedented enrollment drop (AP) Enrollment in Roman Catholic schools in the United States dropped 6.4% from the previous academic year amid the pandemic and economic stresses — the largest single-year decline in at least five decades, Catholic education officials reported Feb. 8…
Florida bishop, Catholic school win Super Bowl wager (CNS) A friendly wager between the bishops and two Catholic schools from the dioceses of the competing cities in Super Bowl LV put food on the line for the victory days before the Feb. 7 game, which ended with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers beating the Kansas City Chiefs 31-9. Bishop Gregory L. Parkes of St. Petersburg and Bishop James V. Johnston Jr., of Kansas City-St. Joseph came up with their Super Bowl wager on the Feb. 2 episode of “Conversation with Cardinal Dolan” on Sirius XM’s The Catholic Channel, where they were talking about the upcoming matchup with teams from their dioceses. On the show, they spoke about how Catholic schools in their dioceses — St. Elizabeth’s in Kansas City and St. Paul’s in St. Petersburg — were collecting cans of soup for a Souper Bowl food drive for local food pantries also had a game wager with each other. The school from the losing team would send the other school some local food: St Paul’s would send oranges and St. Elizabeth’s would send barbecue depending on the outcome…
Dioceses dispute conclusions, methods of AP report on pandemic funding (CNS) U.S. dioceses are crying foul over an investigative report on coronavirus relief funding they say grossly mischaracterized the Catholic Church’s finances and unrestricted cash flows, leaving the crass impression the church used the 2020 CARES Act to hoard cash…
Was one of Catholic Spain’s most famous scholars secretly Jewish? (The Jerusalem Post) One of the Spanish “New Christians” most cherished by the Catholic authorities was Alfonso de Zamora (1474–1545/6). Over the course of fifteen years, at the Institute of Microfilmed Hebrew Manuscripts in Jerusalem (now part of the National Library of Israel), I examined about 70 manuscripts written or edited by Alfonso de Zamora. During these intense years I could not but conclude that the man’s notes, essays, poems, criticisms, bible commentary, historical records, books, and teaching curriculum reflected a tormented, resentful, bitter and penitent Crypto-Jew…
