CATHOLIC schools are overly expensive and the church has become too middle-class, losing touch with its parishioners, a Catholic leader has warned.Half of Catholic students attended public schools, Parramatta Bishop Kevin Manning said, mainly because Catholic education was too dear for many families.
"The poorer classes are not frequenting our schools, they are going to state schools. One of the main problems is the high cost of [Catholic] education," the bishop said.
His comments followed the release of a pastoral letter by 17 bishops in NSW and the ACT in which they warned that Catholic education was at a crossroads because of falling enrolments of Catholic students.
Bishop Manning also said the Catholic clergy was too focused on theology at the expense of engaging with people.
"We have lost touch with our people; that's why the numbers are dropping off," he said, adding that the church should enable children from poorer families to get a Catholic education.
"Traditionally, in Australia, that's why Catholic schools started - to give Catholic children a good religious education," he said.
Bishop Manning said that while clergy needed to study and know theology, "there's not much good knowing theology and preaching into a vacuum. We need people.
"We are not as pastoral in our attitude toward the average Catholic as we were years ago. Then, we were in touch with our people; we were close to our people."
Bishop Manning said priests and bishops were too tied down with administration. He said that in his first appointment in 1962, his sole job was to visit people.
"That was my whole job as a priest," he said. "Priests and clergy need to visit people more."
Bishop David Walker, the chairman of the Catholic Education Commission of NSW, said while the church would like its school fees to be less, it was impossible.
"We can't run the schools without money," Bishop Walker said. "The fact is that we only receive, from the Government, probably 80 per cent of what it costs to run the school system. We do try to keep [fees] down as much as we can, but inevitability there are people who can't afford that."
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