Church turns to critic to aid Catholic schools

Archbishop Sean P. O'Malley, seeking to revive the struggling Catholic school system in Greater Boston, has chosen one of the most prominent critics of archdiocesan leadership, business power broker Jack Connors Jr., to oversee a new effort to revitalize parochial education.

O'Malley and other church officials, both locally and nationally, are increasingly concerned about declining enrollment and financial troubles at Catholic schools, which historically have not only encouraged religious faith and practice among young Catholics, but also have provided a path to academic and professional achievement for low-income children who grow up in neighborhoods with weak public schools. The number of Catholic schoolchildren in the Archdiocese of Boston has plunged from 152,869 in 1965 to 50,742 today, and the archdiocese has closed multiple schools during each of the last several years.

O'Malley has asked Connors to head a task force that is supposed to come up with a plan by next spring for improving, governing, and financing the school system. The plan will probably call for closing some schools in urban areas, where the buildings are tightly clustered, and opening some new schools in suburban areas, where there are few Catholic schools.

O'Malley's choice of Connors, who was the most prominent of numerous Catholics who were effectively ostracized by chancery officials for criticizing church leadership during the sexual abuse crisis, reflects an unannounced but dramatic shift in practice by the archdiocese.

Connors is the third outspoken layman chosen by O'Malley to head a panel reviewing church practices. Peter Meade, a vice president at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Massachusetts, was named to cochair a committee reviewing the controversial parish closings, and David Castaldi, chairman of the lay reform group Voice of the Faithful, was chosen to chair a committee reviewing the archdiocese's handling of the financial assets of closed parishes.

Connors, Meade, and Castaldi are churchgoing Catholics and long-time church insiders: Connors served two terms as chairman of Boston College's board of trustees; Meade is currently the chairman of Catholic Charities; and Castaldi was once the chancellor of the archdiocese.

But each has been highly critical of archdiocesan leadership following the clergy sexual abuse crisis, and each has continued to publicly voice occasional disagreements with the archdiocese even while advising O'Malley: Meade and Connors have been particularly critical of O'Malley's ouster of a popular Newton priest, the Rev. Walter H. Cuenin, for reported financial improprieties, while Castaldi has criticized the archdiocese's use of funds from closed parishes to subsidize the archdiocesan administration.

In an interview about the Connors appointment, O'Malley for the first time addressed the issue of the archdiocese's relationship with its critics publicly and directly, and denied a widespread perception that he or his aides have sought to ostracize, and in some cases punish, laypeople who have challenged archdiocesan management and priests who in 2002 called for Cardinal Bernard F. Law to resign.

''Despite the mythology that is out there, no one is keeping score," O'Malley said.

''Everybody is a Catholic who wants to be on board and wants to help the church," he said. ''There is no blacklist here. I don't know who signed what document, and I don't care. That is history. Every day we are called to conversion, to renewal, to support the mission of the church, and if people love their church and want to support it, they should come forward and do so."

Connors -- a businessman who made a fortune as a founder of the advertising firm Hill, Holliday, Connors, Cosmopulos Inc. -- has been a long-time philanthropist and a generous supporter of Catholic causes. He has served not only as chairman of the Boston College board, which completed a $440 million fund-raising campaign during his tenure, but he also has headed fund-raising events for Catholic Charities, and he currently heads the board of Partners HealthCare, the largest healthcare network in the state.

Connors has over the last three years repeatedly offered, publicly and privately, to assist the archdiocese in digging its way out of the crisis that has followed the sexual abuse scandal. His offers of help were ignored for several years, but O'Malley then agreed to Meade's request to name Connors to the panel reviewing the parish closings. Last spring O'Malley decided to ask Connors to assemble and run a task force charged with devising a strategic plan for the area's Catholic schools. ''I don't have any problem with my faith; I have problems with the leadership of my faith," Connors said last week. When describing his task force, he said, ''We're being invited in by a very suspicious archdiocese."

But Connors said he sees improvement.

''The archdiocesan model was, 'Send us your money, but stay out of our knitting,' " he said. ''The new model is, 'If you can help us, we'd be grateful for the help.' "

Connors warns that he is not a ''white knight" being sent in to save the schools, He points out that numerous other business leaders, particularly Peter Lynch of Fidelity Investments, have spent years working to help local Catholic schools.

Lynch, who as chairman of the Inner City Schools Foundation has raised millions for scholarships and computers for Catholic schools in low-income areas, said the archdiocese is wise to turn to laypeople for help.

''It wasn't that long ago that the archdiocese was thriving and Boston College was on the ropes, and lay involvement helped BC out," Lynch said. ''A lot of people want to help."

Lynch said he believes that if the archdiocese had acted sooner to broadly address its schools, it could have prevented some of the closings of recent years by forcing the merger of schools located near one another.

In fact, the archdiocese put together a strategic plan for its schools 15 years ago and then ignored, by its own admission, many of the recommendations. O'Malley pledged not to do the same this time.

''Now we have a sense of urgency that we didn't have 15 years ago," he said. ''We're really anxiously awaiting the work of these consultors to see what we need to do to save Catholic education, to improve it, and to make it available to as many children as possible."

The system is clearly struggling with multiple challenges. Catholic priests no longer tell families they are obliged to send their children to Catholic schools, and the anti-Catholicism that once drove Catholics to Catholic schools has largely vanished from the public schools.

In the Boston Archdiocese, the Catholic schools are concentrated in the older cities and suburbs ringed by Route 128, even as many Catholic families have moved farther south, west, and north.

The buildings of many Catholic schools have aged, leaving them at a competitive disadvantage, and the precipitous decline in the number of nuns and priests in the United States has forced Catholic schools to pay laypeople to teach, making the schools more difficult to finance and more expensive to attend.

''The problem is an archaic structure that doesn't meet the needs of today," said the Rev. Joseph O'Keefe, , dean of Boston College's Lynch School of Education, which is named to honor Peter Lynch and his wife, Carolyn. O'Keefe said that concern about Catholic schools is so great that next spring Boston College is holding a conference with the title, ''Endangered Species: Urban and Rural Catholic Schools."

O'Keefe said a central challenge facing Catholic schools is that many are run by parishes, which often do not have the necessary money or administrative knowhow. He said that other dioceses, such as Washington, have moved away from the parish-based school system; Connors and O'Malley said the Archdiocese of Boston will consider new systems of administering the schools.

O'Malley and Connors said they want the archdiocese to find a way to serve suburban Catholics in areas where there are too few Catholic schools but also maintain enough Catholic schools in cities to serve low-income and immigrant children, regardless of religious affiliation.

Scholars say Catholic schools do a better job than public schools with low-income children.

''Nationally, low-income students of color in Catholic schools outperform their peers in public and private schools on a variety of achievement measurements," said Janine Bempechat, an associate professor of human development at Wheelock College. Bempechat studies Catholic education.

''Catholic schools serve low-income students exceedingly well," she said.

Michael Paulson can be reached at mpaulson@globe.com.