Free Republic

In an unprecedented move, the Archdiocese of New York is trying to save six cash-strapped elementary schools by allowing an outside organization to run them. The Partnership for Inner-City Education — which has a history of working with city Catholic schools — is contracting with the archdiocese to manage the finances and oversee the academic curriculums of the schools in the Bronx and Harlem starting this fall. “We want to have full enrollment and sustainability for the very long term,” said Jill Kafka, executive director of the nonprofit. “We’re really looking to have these schools alive for a long time.”...

During sectarian riots, two Catholic churches were burned to the ground, another was saved only by military intervention. Virtually every Catholic church in Philadelphia County was threatened. Scores of houses were destroyed and dozens of people were killed. It happened in Philadelphia 169 years ago, but it still has lessons for today. The violence began in May and ended in August of 1844. It started in Kensington, where St. Michael’s Church was ultimately destroyed, spread to the older part of the city where St. Augustine’s was destroyed and flared up again in August when St. Philip Neri in the Southwark...

Thomas Nast, whose antislavery political cartoons propelled him to notoriety in the 19th century, has ignited another uproar: whether his anti-Irish and -Catholic drawings should disqualify him from the New Jersey Hall of Fame. Irish and Catholic groups are waging a campaign against including the father of the American political cartoon in that group of notable New Jerseyans, arguing that he routinely depicted them in an unfavorable light.