Despite the dramatic decline in Roman Catholic devotion over the past ten years, support for Catholic schools continues to be high. Catholic Schools in a Declining Church, a massive study of American Catholicism, attributes the decline of American Catholicism in the last decade to the papal decision on birth control in 1968, rather than to the reforms of the Second Vatican Council. The study is based on two representative national samples of American Catholics taken at the National Opinion Research Center one in 1963, before the end of the Second Vatican Council, and the other in1974.