A successful executive retires…and then finds new purpose
By Robert Moynihan
Cincinnati’s Corryville Catholic School was founded by the Sisters of Notre Dame of Namur in 1877.
“The downfall of society stems from a disregard for children. Many parents seek the preservation of their estates, but not the preservation of the souls of those in their care.” —St. John Chrysostom (347-407 A.D.), Father and Doctor of the Church.
Children First
Retired corporate executive Bill Schult took a temporary position as a teacher’s aide at the inner city school.
First, care for the children.
If a society is falling apart, if confusion and misery and despair are spreading widely, then the thoughtful elders of the society must first focus on the children, on their health, welfare, education and… on the spiritual formation of their souls for eternity.
That is the constant message of the Fathers, Doctors and Saints of the Catholic Church, men like St. John Chrysostom and St. Alphonsus Liguori and women like St. Thérèse of Lisieux, who died at the age of 24, and many, many more, throughout the ages.
All of them urged parents and leaders of society to focus first on the children if they wished their society to be at peace and to prosper.
And yet, in the modern world, far too many of our children are neglected, forgotten, overlooked, and even, tragically, abused.
Into this situation of great need, a leading American Catholic businessman has decided to refocus his life, and direct all of his organizational genius, to this fundamental need: the care and education of children.
This is his story.
A “Church crisis” becomes an “educational crisis”
Despite the best interpretation put on the data by the National Catholic Education Association, our nation’s Catholic schools are emptying and closing.
Below is a chart showing the general trend over the last 85 years, from the late 1930s until today.
The number of students went up from 2.4 million in 1939 to 5.25 million in 1959, and since then, for 65 years, the number has steadily declined to just under 1.7 million:
In the decade of the 1960s, several phenomena began to occur at once, all of them affecting the nation’s Catholic children.
Nuns began to leave their convents. (According to some statistics, religious vocations have declined as much as 70% since 1965.)
This meant that there were simply too few nuns to teach in Catholic schools.
These schools, therefore, are now staffed predominantly, often exclusively, by paid lay people rather than unpaid religious.
And that translates into Catholic school tuitions that have skyrocketed in response.
Meanwhile, Catholic dioceses, which often help financially support their parochial schools to greater or lesser extents, have in many cases been crippled by large payouts to clerical abuse victims in recent decades, restricting their available amounts for school funding.
Especially vulnerable to financial pressures are broken families in which households are headed by a single parent (usually the mother). In 2021, the median income for a married two-parent household was $101,000; for a household headed by a single mother, $32,000.
Further, the failure in religious formation since the 1960s has lessened the number of well-catechized, devout teachers and school administrators, whose primary goal should be to pass on the Faith and the Catholic intellectual heritage to the next generation.
And the situation of the family is as desperate as that of the school. Nearly half of marriages, even Catholic ones, end in divorce.
And the relationship between parental divorce and teen depression, drug use and legal trouble is well-documented.
Added to this: social mores in general, particularly in the area of sexual morality — once presenting a set of “guardrails” that helped parents, and society, to enforce at least a modicum of familial and social stability — have been relaxed to the point of irrelevance.
Student Enrollment in Catholic Schools over Time the ship (called the “Italian Titanic”).
How can the Church cope with this situation?
Certainly we must try to support authentic Catholic education wherever we can — education that includes the “struggle to arrive at truth” Pope Benedict XVI spoke of in his 2012 address to Catholic Educators at the Catholic University of America.
That struggle, he said, is meant to arrive at a recognition of the Logos — “God’s creative reason” — and consequently a love of Him and His goodness as evident in all creation.
But more and more Catholics are realizing that the institutions we have been relying upon to educate our children are not in fact succeeding at this.
One answer to this conundrum, some have concluded, may be that we must take matters into our own hands.
Many have done this by leaving the parochial schools to begin homeschooling; others have started small schools in their own Catholic communities; a few have cobbled together a combination of the two, referred to as “hybrid schools.”
But there are also a few brave souls who have simply decided to go into a school and try to make a difference themselves, with their own time and talents.
One of them is a retired executive named Bill Schult.
In an age in which humanity itself is in question – in which AI and algorithms and digital identities are rapidly taking the place of genuine human interaction – the notion of performing the corporal and spiritual works of mercy oneself, in person, is becoming almost quaint.
Yet Bill Schult, 63, did precisely that.
A successful Catholic corporate executive, now retired from the business world, Bill decided that rather than donating a sum of money to a diocesan outreach program or a large Catholic NGO, he would do his part to serve his neighbor by actually doing his part, himself.
A 1957 photo of a Sr. Mary Cordis, 7th & 8th grade parochial school teacher, with her class at Holy Redeemer School
in Madison, Wisconsin.
“Give us a child for 7 years”
As in most American cities, there are not many Catholic churches left in the inner city of Cincinnati.
The religious identity of many of these communities, once built by Catholic European immigrants, is now heavily Protestant.
Yet in the heart of Cincinnati, Corryville Catholic School remains a faithful Catholic presence that has endured, shedding light into a sometimes dark place.
The Church has always taught that the teaching and guidance of children is not just a nice thing for the students; it is a bedrock of society and of human flourishing; and an avenue to the building up of the Body of Christ.
So there is a long heritage of Catholic education; a saying associated with the Jesuits is “Give us a child for seven years, and we will give you the man.”
Early spiritual formation — or lack of it — they recognized, is profoundly etched upon the soul of the human being.
The Jesuits are just one religious order that recognized the tremendous value in the formation of children; another is the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, founded in 1804 by St. Julie Biliart in Amiens, France.
Corryville Catholic is an elementary school founded by those Sisters in 1877. It serves children of all faith backgrounds, and none, and only a small percentage are Catholic.
But with a strong sense of community and dedication to academic and moral excellence, the school, led by its principal, Mr. Jessie Back, strives to be a source of hope, guidance, and opportunity for every child it serves.
St. Julie Biliart, 19th century foundress of the teaching order Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur
From the boardroom to the classroom
“After completing my corporate career, I knew that I wanted to work in the Catholic world, ” Bill Schult says.
“I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, but I knew that I have been given much and therefore much was expected from me.
“So it was out of the question that I would simply retire.
“When I exited my last company in June 2021, I resolved to take a few months off to do some kind of service before searching for new employment in earnest. Instead I became aware of an interim (4-month) opportunity as a teacher’s aide in an inner city Catholic elementary school, and I took it.
“At the time,” he continues, “I figured I could do anything for four months.”
This was not Bill Schult’s comfort zone.
“When I first arrived at the school in November 2021, I hated the work that I was assigned,” Schult said. “I thought that I would be tutoring, but it was much more mundane…I was responsible for greeting the children and helping them with breakfast — opening cereal boxes, pouring milk and cleaning up spills.
“I had just concluded 38 years in Finance and Accounting, where I led teams of 200 people including various levels of assistants.
“I had been to dozens of countries, and interacted with prominent individuals in the worlds of business and even in politics.
“I was largely responsible for strategy and high-level tactical execution, and suddenly I was cleaning up milk spills for a bunch of children.”
A crisis in education, a crisis in society
The situation confronting Bill Schult upon his arrival at Corryville Catholic was similar to the one present in virtually every American inner city.
Though he found the children to be delightful — as all children are, in their native innocence and beauty of soul — the home situations of some were difficult, whether due to financial hardship or familial instability – or, often, both.
“Some come from broken families,” says Schult. “Some have experienced family separation and even neglect.
“Many of them have never been told that they are children of God.
“I’ve learned that many are starving for that truth.
“When I started, on top of the difficult home lives that many of the children have, they had only recently returned to school after the Covid lockdowns, and were still wearing masks…the impact has been devastating.
“I have hope that over time, they ‘catch up’ from the Covid disaster, and as we continue to emphasize God and faith…But the biggest factor continues to be a safe and loving environment at home,” he adds.
Bill Schult with one of the students he tutors at Coryville Catholic Elementary School, located in the inner city of Cincinnati, Ohio.
“At first I was embarrassed…”
“To be honest, at first I was embarrassed to be seen by my former colleagues doing the work of a teacher’s aide.
“When I interacted with visitors to the school, I always made sure to tell them that I was ‘only there on an interim basis’ and that I would be ‘leaving shortly.’
“But then something strange began to happen.
“I began to see my work as a form of service.
“If Jesus could wash the feet of His disciples, why couldn’t I do all of the things that are part of an aide’s job, including the menial tasks?”
“I love you, Mr. Bill”
“I began to form relationships with the students and recognized that they looked up to me and even came to me with insightful questions I had not previously considered.
“I began to realize that God had put me in the lives of these children, and had put them in my life for a specific purpose.
“Rather than being embarrassed by what I was doing, I was happy to talk about it to others when asked…
“I began to love these children and made it my aim to treat them as well as I treat my own grandchildren in every interaction and exchange.
“I work with children from ages 4 through 10. Many of the younger ones have told me ‘I love you, Mr. Bill,’ as I think they value the stability and consistency I provide (both often missing from their lives) and because they recognize that I take an interest in them.
“One third grade girl even confided to me that she hoped she might find ‘a husband just like you’ when she grows up.”
Toward a renewal of Catholic education
I asked Bill Schult what he wished to do about the crisis in Catholic education.
“There is little we can do regarding many of the most difficult issues,” he said. “At school, we have to continue to let these kids know that God loves them and also what He has in store for them. That is the most important thing we can do.
“I would like to be in touch with others who would like to work to get this message across to children. Together we may be able to do something that will bring about the renewal of Catholic elementary education.”
