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Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, public security funding for congregations and religious schools has climbed into the billions of dollars. While much of it has been secured by religious minorities, the deadly shooting this week at a Minneapolis parish could be a moment of change for Catholics, the country's largest faith group.
"Heretofore, and understandably, the risk was greater to Jews and Muslims because that's where threats occurred. This incident may be more isolated, but it's clearly a wake-up call for Catholics that this not only can but does happen anywhere," said Jim Cultrara, director of education for the New York State Catholic Conference, the church's policy arm in the state, and co-chair of the state organization representing nonpublic schools.
Images of gunshots smashing through stained glass and killing praying children have spurred emotional debate and soul searching among Catholics and others about how to provide safety in holy places. Two children were fatally shot and 18 people were injured in the attack Wednesday on Annunciation, authorities said, and the shooter died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
The Catholic Facebook page Marcus Aurelius posted a photo of three figures in hooded medieval crusader cloaks with red crosses, standing before a church with machine guns and the words: "Protect Your Churches." Others on social media said they didn't like the idea of heavy security at Catholic buildings. Still others debated whether additional security funding should come from the government or Catholic fundraising.
Rabbi A.D. Motzen, national government affairs director for Agudath Israel, an fervently-Orthodox group that nationally does advocacy around security funding, said that while the increase in the past decade in violent hate crimes has made bigger faith groups more aware of potential attacks, the impact of this week's shooting may be more dramatic.
"This may be their Tree of Life, unfortunately," he said, referring to the 2018 attack by a right-wing gunman on a Pittsburgh synagogue that killed 11 people. It was the deadliest attack on a Jewish community in U.S. history.
People who advocate for the Catholic Church in state capitals said they now expect more attention to getting public dollars for security at religious schools and houses of worship. Their confidence that such dollars would come - especially at a time when public school funds are increasingly heading to private schools through tuition vouchers - varied.
In Minnesota, religious advocates have been pressing in recent years for more state funds - for public and private schools.
The state in 2023 passed a $50 million grant program for building and cybersecurity for public schools. Leaders of Catholic and independent school groups had sent a letter to Gov. Tim Walz (D) asking him to urge the legislature to include nonpublic schools.
"The exclusion of one sector of schools … is a discriminatory act against our students," read the letter, which said there were 72,000 students in the state in nonpublic schools.
Besides federal nonprofit security grants that religious groups can apply for, Minnesota is one of about 20 states that have state-level security funding programs for nonprofits and religious schools, said Ethan Roberts, deputy executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota, an umbrella group. However, he said, it has provided only about $250,000 per year since it launched in 2017.
The state's Catholic Conference in 2022 urged the state to pass a measure called Safe Schools, which would create a per-pupil funding stream for all schools to use on security.
"While it's true that virtuous people need fewer laws, our reality is a permissive society that has become an incubator for alienation, mental illness, spiritual poverty and other pathologies. It breeds nihilistic killers," read a Conference statement in 2022. That year, Conference Executive Director Jason Adkins told the local Fox 9 channel that the legislature didn't appear to have the "political will or ability to find common ground" on gun control.
According to the National Catholic Register, Minnesota's bishops "did not take a public stance on security funding for Catholic schools in 2024 or 2025."
The Minnesota Catholic Conference declined to comment for this report, referring questions to Roberts.
"The overarching point is there is just more need than funding available. … What we really need is a commitment. We just cannot be reactive," he said. Security funding for religious institutions simply needs to be more of a priority. "I hate to be cynical, but maybe now it will refocus leaders. It feels awful. I so wish what happened didn't happen, but how can people say, having experienced this, ‘We won't do this?'"
Stephanie Graff, deputy commissioner for Minnesota's Department of Education, said the state has two "long-standing" public funding streams for nonpublic schools that connect to safety: One is for transportation, and the other is for prevention-oriented initiatives like counselors and mental health support. Those add up to $53 million this year and $57 million next year.
"I hear so much more from private schools about maintaining those two funding streams. Those are the ones I hear about," she said.
In the wake of the Annunciation shootings this week, she said, "we're hearing about [more security funding] now. These pieces really need to be worked through with the legislature. Those are the conversations we need to have. We are always interested in all ideas on the table. These are all of our kids."
Major government funding for nongovernmental security started in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks with the creation of the Nonprofit Security Grant Program. It's run out of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which is under the Department of Homeland Security, and includes a risk assessment, based on the threat level to the group or building. When it began in 2005, about $25 million was allocated, said Motzen, of Agudath Israel.
Annual spending wavered in the low eight figures until the mid-2010s, around the time of a slew of violent hate crimes, including the killing of nine people by a white supremacist during a Bible study at a Charleston, South Carolina, church in 2015; a shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando in 2016 that killed 49; and the Tree of Life shooting in 2018.
In 2021 the program gave out $180 million, in 2023 $305 million, and $450 million this year, in part because of a surge in antisemitic incidents, according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
However, the DHS programs don't come close to meeting the need, said Rabbi Avi Schnall, Agudath Israel's director of federal education affairs. In 2023, for example, about 60 percent of nonprofits that applied were turned down, he said.
State-level security funding for religious institutions widely varies. Schnall said New Jersey is one of the most generous, raising nonpublic, per-pupil security spending from $25 in 2015 to $250 now. Cultrara, of the New York State Catholic Conference, said New York lawmakers have included security funding for nonpublic schools since the 2012 Sandy Hook killings in Connecticut. Such funding has risen, he said, from $7 million that year to $70 million, with the largest increases coming under Gov. Kathy Hochul (D).
Responding to people who say private schools should cover their own costs, Motzen said security should, in his view, be in the same bucket as school lunches: basic survival services that the government should provide to all schools.
At the moment, he said, the majority of security funding for Jewish institutions is raised privately.
In Fort Worth's diocese, safety officials have a different strategy. Leadership prefers to not take any money from the federal government - which can come with strings attached - and has managed the biggest cost, of security personnel, by training church members as armed volunteers. It's called a "guardian ministry" and has a 500-person team of armed, trained people in churches, said Mike Short, the diocese's director of security.
Churches, he said, need a "complete paradigm shift" from having people instructed to hide and wait for police to instead having armed, trained congregants.
The most helpful thing legislators in Texas have done, he said, is to pass laws such as one in 2018 that allowed volunteers to get security permits without needing security guard training. Another, in 2023, gave civil immunity to security volunteers who "act reasonably and use force," he said.
Paul Stankewitz, policy advocate at the Michigan Catholic Conference, said the state has generally included nonpublic schools in its allocations for safety since they began in 2015. Negotiations are ongoing for the upcoming year, he said, adding he expects that "we will get a proportional share" of school safety funding.
It's hard to know when you have sufficient security, he said. He noted that the students in Minneapolis were shot through the windows.
"You can't prepare for everything," he said. "If people intend to cause harm, they will find a way to do it."
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