Local Catholic School Issue Creates Tension

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
I want to just get a fewminutes here on this story that caught my
eye and thanks to a listener whogave me a heads up about it.
And then I read this full pagead in the Sunday Oh My World Herald
taken out by the Humphrey Saint FrancisCatholic School, Humphrey, Nebraska near Columbus,

(00:22):
kind of Highway eighty one north ofColumbus a little ways. And what
it comes down to I gather fromreading this is that the amaharch Diocese has
basically ordered Humphrey Saint Francis and neighboringLindsay Holy Family Catholic schools to close and
merge and Humphrey Saint francissistant. There'sno reason to do this. And we're

(00:46):
joined for a few minutes this morningby Jamie Sunderman, a parishioner and someone
who's very active in this issue atHumphrey Saint Francis. Jamie, good morning,
good morning, great they have youon. Is that the essence of
it is the Archdiocese is saying,look, you got the declining enrollment with

(01:07):
these towns are hurting compared to therobust populations they used to have. And
we need to merge, you guys, And you're saying that's not the case
with Humphrey Saint Francis. Yes,that is absolutely true. And one thing
I should add that was not inthat article, I don't think very much
of it, was that Lindsay hasdecided to move forward with building their own

(01:32):
school to keep a school in theirtown, to keep their town functioning,
And so the whole situation just absolutelydoes not make sense anymore. There's not
going to be children coming over themajority of the members of the Lindsay community
are going to support that new schooland keep their town thriving. And our

(01:55):
school is now forced to close andchange and rebridrand and reopen this fall for
no reason, and we're wasting alot of money and doing so, and
a lot of resources and a lotof people's time. Is what Lindsay is
doing. Is that an option foryou guys too, to create an academy

(02:15):
independent of I don't know. Ithasn't really been talked about. We went
down this appeal route within the CatholicChurch to we've sent our appeal over to
the Vatican in Rome and we haven'theard back yet, but it sounds like

(02:35):
every appeal around the world goes tothis same dicastery, and so they it
takes time to get to our toour case essentially, and so we kind
of have to sit and wait.Right now. We're on a little bit
of a standstill. But that isthe route we decided to take to see
what would happen with it. Wedon't know what the outcome will be,
but it was our first try.Yeah. I read out to the AMA

(03:00):
Archdiocese and communicated a little bit withDeacon Tim McNeil, and he said that
I've wondered if the archbishop would comeon. He said, you know what,
he said, We don't want toget into it us versus them on
air thing. So they declined.But they say that this ad that you
guys took out Jamie is full ofmisinformation. Okay, is there anything in

(03:23):
there that you would that you wouldchange or take back. No. I
was interviewed by our local paper,the Humphrey Democrat, probably like six or
seven weeks ago, and a spokesit only comes out on Wednesdays, and
a spokesperson for the archdiocese made aletter to the editor the following week that

(03:46):
claimed that what I said in myarticle was also full of misinformation. And
so I tried calling that spokesperson tohave a discussion and clarify because I don't
want to be giving mith information.People are coming to me as a guide
for this appeal, and I wantto make sure that I have the right
information. My job is to notspread false, false things out there.

(04:08):
And I tried getting a hold ofhim. I left him a really nice
voicemail, asked if we could clarifysome things and what the confusion was,
so that I could clarify on myend if I needed to, and he
would never respond. And that ishow it has been this process. It's
never had transparency. Nobody responds tous. It's we make the phone calls,

(04:31):
we send the emails, we writethe letters, and there's never a
response. That's interesting. And Iknow, you know, coming from a
small town myself, how important theschool is to a community. And this
one goes back to eighteen eighty fourand so many generations of kids educated at
Saint Francis. But you say,see what I'm struggling with is I don't

(04:51):
understand if the enrollment is robust,as you say, you've got a waiting
list at Saint Francis. Why whythe archdiocese would demand that you close.
I don't understand that. We aretrying to figure that out too, and

(05:12):
it's so bizarre. They claim.They claim when this started it was because
of a teacher shortage and a priestshortage. Well, the teacher shortage is
country wide. It is not justin little rural Nebraska. And that is
our job of the head of ourschools to be recruiting appropriately. We have

(05:32):
some really quality college colleges that offergreat education programs and we need to be
reaching out to them pulling in youngteachers. Humphrey is a pretty it's a
thriving community. It's close to Columbusand Northworks. It's in a really great
location. There's things to offer forteachers here, and so we just need

(05:54):
to be doing our job to recruitthose teachers. And right now, currently
Lindsey and Humphrey, Lindsay and HumphreySaint Francis share one teacher, I believe,
and she goes back and forth alittle bit, and so we've been
sharing resources as needed for the lastcouple of years and it's worked for us
and Humphrey Public School and Lindsay HolyFamily have been consolidated in sports since got

(06:18):
maybe was it twenty sixteen, andthat has been working very very well for
both of those schools, and we'vebeen sharing the resources and the pre shortage
that's not on us. We can'tdo anything with that. I mean,
we're trying to raise our kids inthese Catholic schools to grow up and live

(06:40):
and preach about our Catholic faith.And right now what's happening with us,
it's really hard for kids. Forus to send our kids out to the
world and teach them to go bea priest because of all of this that's
happening, and it doesn't make anysense. Well, lindsay, Holy Family
going to have a Catholic so they'regoing to have their own independent academy.

(07:04):
It will be a national it's anationally accredited Catholic school, I believe.
Okay, it will still be aprivate school. They will be offering a
Christian state. I think they're goingtowards a Catholic curriculum, so they will
still be trying their best to incorporatea Catholic school. It just is not

(07:27):
tied to the Archdice. Interesting,So basically, you guys are waiting for
a response from the Vatican on yourappeal. Yes, and our attorney,
our canon law attorney that is representingus, thought that it would probably be
May sometime that we would hear something. So it is a long process.
We have a lot of waiting time, which is frustrating for so many people

(07:49):
because they just they want to hearanswers, and when you don't have answers,
it's a little disheartening. But wejust have to hang in there and
we keep praying and hope our appealgets picked up by the Catholic Keep me
posted, if you don't mind,keep us posted on what happens there and
again, the archdiocese is welcome tokman and talk about this anytime they'd like

(08:09):
to. Jamie, thank you,thank you so much for having me and
letting us tell our story a littlebit. We appreciate it. Go flyers,
right, oh flyers, that's JamieSunderman. Humphrey, Saint Francis