Catholic education should not be taken for granted, John Garvey, president of The Catholic University of America in Washington, told a group of Catholic journalists Nov. 7.

“Catholic education is a gift we will have to work hard to preserve,” Garvey said.

“The past several decades have seen changes that pose a serious threat to its integrity,” he told Catholic journalists and other media professionals at a regional meeting of the Catholic Press Association.

One of the biggest changes facing Catholic higher education, he said, is the rise in secularism in society coinciding with the decline of Catholic culture.

That problem seemed unthinkable when he was growing up in an Irish Catholic family in a small steel town in Pennsylvania, he said.