Mike, I may agree with your point that Catholic schools should receive public funding. But it doesn't look likely that they will, on any grand scale, in the near future, especially if come January 2009 both the White House and Congress are run by a party more friendly to public-school teachers' unions and more hostile to choice. And even where voucher programs exist--Milwaukee, for example--several Catholic schools that receive vouchers have closed despite boosting their enrollments. The Catholic schools' troubles can't be remedied by public funding alone, it seems.
But you haven't answered the main question: Why the big push from education-policy groups to save Catholic schools, in particular? Is the assumption that all Catholic schools are superior to their k-12 public-school, or public charter-school, counterparts? And is the assumption that closed Catholic schools cannot be replaced by high-quality charter-school alternatives?