Learning From Santa Margarita : Experts Watch High-Tech Catholic School : Critics Say Money Should Have Been Used Elsewhere

Some critics say the $12.5 million spent by the Diocese of Orange on Santa Margarita High School could have been spent better elsewhere, for the poor, the sick, the homeless and immigrant families.

“The people of Santa Ana are people too,” said Sister Carmen Sarati, parish sister at St. Joseph Church in Santa Ana, who works with Latinos. “Their children are not going to Santa Margarita; they barely go to our schools.”

About half the county’s 700,000 Catholics are estimated to be Latino, many of them poor and living in central Orange County.

Sarati said the underlying policy of the church and the pervasive philosophy in Orange County--”if you have the money, you can build”--is “bad for the poor, for people of color, uneducated, undocumented, welfare recipients and homeless.”

“The new Catholic high school is 15 miles away from the nearest poor neighborhood,” said Terrence W. Halloran, a former priest who lives in Garden Grove.

Diocese of Orange Bishop Norman F. McFarland acknowledged that the contributions of poor Catholics helped build the elegant school but defended the funding system of the Catholic Church as traditional.

“Just like the poor people of Paris built Notre Dame of Paris and Chartres, everybody contributes according to their means. This is a good thing.

“Catholic education helps all of us. . . . You shouldn’t look on our efforts as a quid pro quo-- you give so much, get so much.”

Contributions from the Diocese of Los Angeles parishes built Orange County Catholic schools before the local diocese was formed, McFarland noted.

Gave Without Knowing

Some parish donors gave money to the diocese’s annual donation without realizing they were contributing to the high school, said Gary Pellegrini, director of development for the diocese.

Pellegrini said they may have missed the explanation contained in annual appeal fund brochures, either mailed or handed out to parishioners, and in the Diocese of Orange Bulletin, a free monthly newsletter distributed to each parish.

Also, he said, priests unable to obtain money for their own parish projects may not have explained the high school project fully or enthusiastically. Even some who did know what the funds were for did not understand at first why they needed to support a school so far away.

“They said, ‘Gee, why do we have to build it? It’s way down south in an affluent area, and we’re not an affluent area.’ The answer is: We’re a diocese made up of parishes and we help each other. . . . We’re one church, one faith and we have to help each other,” Pellegrini said.

“The feeling now is different, because of a concerted effort to get more information to people and explain.”

Community Service

Father Michael Harris, principal of Santa Margarita High, said one of the school’s goals is to help the poor, citing one unusual graduation requirement: 80 hours of Christian service to the community, such as volunteer work in hospitals.

“We are training Christian leaders for tomorrow. And they will address many of these problems of the homeless, the poor and the immigrants,” Harris said.

Unlike many early U.S. Catholic schools, which grew out of ethnic, working-class neighborhoods with their own ethnic Catholic teachers, newer schools serve the general population in which they are located, said Sister Celine Leydon, superintendent of schools for the Diocese of Orange.

“We couldn’t serve (a Latino) immigrant population in the south county; we’d have to bus them down from the north,” she said.