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Meet the ‘Catholic NRA’
Catholic Church, CURAphotography / Shutterstock.com
As the Senate takes up a heated debate over gun control and background checks, Catholic bishops have used the months since the Newtown school massacre to push gun control in email blasts and Senate Judiciary Committee testimony. But among the Catholic faithful, not everyone supports gun control measures.
Call them the NRA Catholics.
Dwindling Catholic Schools See Future in Latino Students
Schools like St Teresa of Avila are struggling with enrollment. Photo courtesy of RNS.
Martha Rodriguez always thought Catholic school was expensive and out of reach — not a place for her kids. But when the time came to send her daughter to the same public middle school she’d struggled at decades earlier, Rodriguez decided to check out what the church had to offer.
“I was intimidated, I thought everyone there would be rich,” said Rodriguez, the daughter of first-generation Mexican immigrants. “But when I went, I was surprised — and kicking myself for not sending my kids sooner.”
Rodriguez now spends $800 a month to send two of her children to Catholic schools in Los Angeles. Her husband works as a paralegal, and she’s out of work, so tuition cuts into the family budget. But Rodriguez says it’s worth it to give her kids opportunities she never had.