Atheist Wilson gives $22.5 million for Catholic fund

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May 23 (Bloomberg) -- Philanthropist and retired hedge-fund manager Robert W. Wilson said he is giving $22.5 million to the Archdiocese of New York to fund a scholarship program for needy inner-city students attending Roman Catholic schools.

Wilson, 80, said in a phone interview today that although he is an atheist, he has no problem donating money to a fund linked to Catholic schools.

``Let's face it, without the Roman Catholic Church, there would be no Western civilization,'' Wilson said. ``Shunning religious organizations would be abhorrent. Keep in mind, I'm helping to pay tuition. The money isn't going directly to the schools.''

Wilson's donation is the largest the archdiocese has ever received. The money will be used to fund the Cardinal's Scholarship Program, which was started in 2005 to give disadvantaged students attending the archdiocese's inner-city schools partial or full tuition grants, Jacqueline LoFaro, the archdiocese's associate superintendent of schools, said in a phone interview today.

``It was a chance for a very modest amount of money to get kids out of a lousy school system and into a good school system,'' Wilson said.

An anonymous donor has given an additional $4.5 million to the archdiocese after learning that Wilson's gift would be announced today, church officials said.

Future Discussion

Edward Cardinal Egan, the head of the archdiocese, didn't reconsider the donation from Wilson because of his atheism, said spokesman Joseph Zwilling. Egan and Wilson, who was raised an Episcopalian, met for the first time today, he said.

``The Cardinal said that he and Mr. Wilson are both opera lovers, and the two of them will get together to talk about opera and `move on to other things,''' Zwilling said, referring to a future discussion about religion. ``The fact is that Mr. Wilson helping to give these children a chance is a good thing, and a chance to attend Catholic school is a good thing.''

In recent years, the New York archdiocese has faced declining donations, church attendance and parish memberships, forcing the closure of some schools and churches.

In 2006, the archdiocese closed eight metropolitan-area schools, Zwilling said.

About 44,000 of the archdiocese's 107,000 students are enrolled in its inner-city schools in New York, LoFaro said. Of that inner-city student population, more than half live below the federal poverty line, she said.

Generous Donor

``This kind of money will keep this kind of education available for kids who can't afford it,'' LoFaro said. ``And it logives the families a choice.'' Applicants don't have to be Roman Catholic to be eligible for the scholarships.

Wilson gave $147.2 million in 2006 to charities, making him the 12th most generous donor in the U.S., according to a survey by the Chronicle of Philanthropy. He has made gifts in the past to the Nature Conservancy and the World Monuments Fund.

Wilson started has career at First Boston Corp. as a trainee after graduating from college and spending two years in law school. He managed money from the late 1940s until he started a small hedge fund in 1968. He turned his initial $15,000 in investment into about $200 million. He invested in stocks that he expected to rise in value and also sold stocks short -- selling borrowed securities in the expectation their prices would decline and he could buy them back cheaper.

Opera, Modern Art

A former chairman of the New York City Opera, Wilson is on the board of the Whitney Museum of American Art. In an interview with the Associated Press in 2006, Wilson said he wants to give away 70 percent of his more than $500 million in assets before he dies.

With Wilson's donation, the archdiocese's scholarship fund has raised $97 million of the program's $158 million goal. LoFaro said the archdiocese wants to raise the remaining money by 2010 in order to fund 11,700 scholarships.

``This is a good time for donors to recognize the good work that we do,'' LoFaro said. ``Catholic education has long been recognized as being particularly successful in reaching at-risk, inner-city children.''

By Patrick Cole

[voltaire]

"Let's face it, without the Roman Catholic Church, there would be no Western civilization,''

Advocates for the Byzantines might dispute that. Nevertheless...

I look forward to his donation to Muslim schools, seeing as he's so free and easy about killing off secular education.



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Advocates for the Byzantines might dispute that. Nevertheless...

CATHOLIC RITES AND CHURCHES - See Byzantine churches

Its his money. He can do whatever he wants with it and donate to whichever religious school he wants. It's odd for an Atheist to do so but i think he realises the value of education and where he should invest his money to fund the less-priviledged. "It was a chance for a very modest amount of money to get kids out of a lousy school system and into a good school system.'' His reply is very obvious.

I found this interesting response from another Atheist from his website - Daylight Atheism: "Although I always prefer to support secular organizations over religious ones, I understand Wilson's decision and can find little fault with it. The desire to help needy students from poor families get a quality education is a great and praiseworthy act of compassion, and in Catholic schools, at least, the degree of religious indoctrination is likely to be minimal. At least these schools do not discriminate against prospective students who hold a different faith, and teach good science unpolluted by superstitious notions like creationism. In any case, I hope these students remember that though they are attending a Catholic school, it is an atheist who put them there."

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"This was the most delightful day in my seven years as archbishop of New York," Edward Cardinal Egan told me in an exclusive interview following the press conference announcing the $22.5 million gift from Robert W. Wilson to an archdiocesan inner-city scholarship program. "Our schools are among our best charities. We give our students hope. We give them the tools to succeed. We give them the best spiritual guidance, which has been the basis for the schools' wonderful achievements," he said.

I asked the cardinal how this gift to his scholarship program came about. "Mr. Wilson has been a generous supporter of our schools for some time. When we presented a statement last year indicating the availability of 8,000 seats in the inner-city schools, he asked if that figure was accurate." Susan George, the executive director of the Archdiocese's Inner-City Scholarship Fund, assured him that it was, the cardinal said.

"He's a statistician and he can probably explain it better than I can," the cardinal said. "3,000 students will be accommodated this September, another 3,000 next year and the next 2,000 by 2010."

Cardinal Egan expressed heartfelt gratitude to Mr. Wilson and disclosed that following the news of his generosity, other donations had come through in the amount of $4.5 million, bringing the total gifts to $27 million for the program.

Mr. Wilson's gift was described as the largest in the history of the archdiocese.

When I asked if that gift would stop the school closures, he asked, "What closures? The media has come up with that term, but what we have done is merged the nearby schools so that students can attend the schools with the best facilities, the best chemistry labs, etcetera." Only two schools were closed two years ago, he added, and enrollment was up last year by 480.

I wondered whether the students who are already attending the parochial schools will be eligible for these scholarships. "Alicia," he said, "as you well know, tuition costs will be kept down if the school has full enrollment. Otherwise, tuition costs will continue to rise." The cardinal knows that I've sent all six of my children to parochial school and I certainly could not have afforded the rising tuition costs without some form of scholarship assistance.

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Cardinal Egan emphasized that all children are welcome to apply but that there will be no change in the Catholic school curriculum. "Currently, 37% of our students are non-Catholic, and all the students take the Regents tests. We do not cherry pick students to take them, unlike in the public schools where only certain students take the Regents," he said. "The success of our schools is due to the fact that we have the best principals, teachers and parents."

He reminded me that the scholarships are not full scholarships but rather will cover what poor families are unable to pay towards the fees.

Cardinal Egan then expressed disappointment in Albany's failure to pass a tuition tax-deduction for parochial school parents, but he understood the pressure that the Democrat legislators were under. He also said he thinks that the governor did the best he could. The cardinal said he hopes that the legislators continue working towards this and realize that it's in everybody's best interests.

We also talked about the church closings, which have also drawn criticism from some parishioners. The most controversial closing involves St. Brigid's in the East Village. When the cardinal first came to New York, the church's pastor invited the cardinal to visit the church and showed him a caliper in place that showed how the wall was separating from the building. The pastor warned him how dangerous this was and urged him to close. Two years later, the pastor was telling the cardinal not to close. His is not an easy job.

I've known Cardinal Egan personally for around five years, since we connected after he read one of my columns praising the Catholic school education I received and for which I will be eternally grateful. I remember him telling me at the time to imagine what he could do with the $12 billion that the Department of Education gets for the public school system. Consider the results that the parochial school system gets with a fraction of those funds: The percentage of high school seniors who graduate is 96%; the percentage of graduates who pursue post-secondary education is 97%. Students attending Catholic inner city elementary schools in the Archdiocese have outperformed New York City public school students in the 4th and 8th grade math and English standardized tests in the past five years. This profile is of the inner city schools where more than 50% of the students come from single-parent homes and 50% are near or below the federal poverty level.

The results were enough to impress Mr. Wilson, who appearing with Cardinal Egan at the press conference, identified himself as an atheist who nonetheless appreciates the job parochial schools do in the inner-city.

As for the cardinal, he could not have spoken more enthusiastically when he told me, "In my opinion this is not only a tremendous gift to the Catholic school system but to the entire city of New York."

By ALICIA COLON
May 24, 2007

[voltaire]

CATHOLIC RITES AND CHURCHES - See Byzantine churches

The material in the link that you give has nothing at all to do with the point that I was making, but is still quite interesting (at least insofar as religious history goes ).

Its his money. He can do whatever he wants with it

Obviously that's true (he can spend his own money on a 500 foot inflatable diamond-embossed hippo if he wants), but in terms of this discussion, so what? I presumed that the thread was intended to open up a discussion as to whether schools should be teaching religious doctrine as truth to vulnerable children, not simply one about whether people can spend their own money as they want?



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The material in the link that you give has nothing at all to do with the point that I was making, but is still quite interesting (at least insofar as religious history goes ).

My point is that using the term "Byzantine" is almost always ambiguous especially when someone does not understand what the word actually means. So now you know "Byzantine" can mean either the Orthodox OR the Eastern Catholic Churches.

Obviously that's true (he can spend his own money on a 500 foot inflatable diamond-embossed hippo if he wants), but in terms of this discussion, so what? I presumed that the thread was intended to open up a discussion as to whether schools should be teaching religious doctrine as truth to vulnerable children, not simply one about whether people can spend their own money as they want?

Its not a matter of "so what" especially if people are getting upset at Wilson's choice of donating his money to a particular parochial school system. The purpose of this thread is about showing even Atheists have a big heart. Not many religious folks admit that.