4. The System of Specifically Catholic Schools. Elementary Schools and Colleges. The Activity of Male and Female Monastic Orders. The Catholic School as an Anti-Protestant Agency. Female Academies and the Protestant Element in Them. General Dissatisfaction With Secularized Schools and the Preference for Private Schools. Peculiarities of the Latter. Female Education. (Cont.)

All these convent schools are undoubtedly a solid stronghold of Roman Catholicism in America, serve as the main source of its strength and give promise of success in the future. In them all the Catholic female youth of more or less wealthy class—those capable of bearing the expenses for monastic education mentioned above—are educated. Beyond that, they enjoy great popularity even among the Protestant population, and this constitutes another aspect of their significance for Roman Catholicism. “Who can calculate the sum of good done by these institutions, the greatness of the labor accomplished by them?” exclaims a Catholic author. Prudent Protestants know their value and send their daughters to receive education from these virtuous and educated ladies who have devoted themselves to God. In many of our convent boarding schools one third, and in some even half of the pupils are Protestant girls. Parents who care about the purity and honor of their daughters know that they are completely safe with the brides of Christ[1]. The fact of Protestants sending their daughters for education in Catholic convent schools is beyond question; it is acknowledged by the Protestant leaders themselves and constitutes for them a matter of concern and indignation. Many pamphlets of various kinds have been published by different Protestant writers on this subject, depicting in vivid colors the harm done by these schools to Protestantism, and stories often appear intended to show the proselytizing significance of monastic education[2]. The sharply hostile and indignant tone of these pamphlets only shows more clearly the significance of Catholic convent schools. “It has been much talked about,” writes a Protestant author, “that Romanism uses its educational institutions chiefly to influence the Protestant population. This is especially true with regard to their female schools. While asserting that they do not teach Romanism, Catholics nonetheless calculate that seven out of every ten Protestant girls entering these institutions become Roman Catholics. While thousands of their own children grow up unable to read or write, they will not fail to take for education at almost no cost a young girl from a prominent Protestant family, merely to convert her to the Roman faith. Their various female academies serve as the best agency for this work in our country; and all Protestant parents who do not wish the ruin of their children should guard them from Roman Catholic schools as they would guard them from the gates of death”[3]. One lady, educated in a convent school in Montreal, declares that of forty girls from Protestant families in the United States educated with her, thirty-eight became Catholics[4]. Another lady, also educated in a convent school, at the conclusion of her public lecture on Romanism, said: “Warn the people everywhere against the danger of sending their children to Roman Catholic schools. For a real education they are the worst schools in the country, but they serve as the chief agency of Romanism for converting the children of respectable families to the Roman Church. I have been through a terrible trial, and I know what it is”[5]. “And yet, with regret and indignation exclaims a Protestant author, some Protestants, and further Methodists, send their children to Papist schools to save a few dollars or under the false pretense that these schools are better than Protestant ones. We have often heard of wealthy Methodist families who, living next to their own denominational seminaries, sent their children to distant Catholic schools! In some cases this is done to secure trade with Catholics, and more often from political motives, thus sacrificing their sons and daughters to Moloch for the sake of securing Catholic votes”[6]. In some parts of the country, and especially in the Far West, where Protestantism has not yet developed a more or less stable organization, Roman Catholicism declares itself with a force that fills Protestants with horror. “The Papists,” says one of the latter, “are rapidly subjugating the Great West. Their agency is the school. The property of the Roman Church in the new Kansas city of Leavenworth amounts, according to published estimates, to $475,000, while the property of all other Christian denominations in the same city is less than $100,000. Supported by all this wealth, the great agency of the Roman Church in the work of proselytism is the school, and especially the school for girls. Such schools are established in all large settlements and they are filled with pupils chiefly through the courtesy of Protestants”[7]. Pointing to the special effort of Catholics to attract Protestant female youth to their schools, the author says: “A Papist will go farther to secure one girl, a future mother of a family, and perhaps an obedient and submissive ‘sister’ or nun, than to secure a half-dozen boys. If now the girls are secured, the families of the next generation will be under the power of the Catholic Church. O you who have daughters to educate, remember this!” exclaims the Protestant pamphlet author.

Despite such warnings, Protestants fill Catholic convent schools with their daughters, and the latter enjoy great popularity among them. The reason for this should be sought first of all in the genuine scientific and educational merits of these schools. They provide a complete education for young women and most of them have the right to issue collegiate diplomas, which confer considerable rights and privileges. Then the strict discipline of these schools, usually situated at a distance from large population centers, in the eyes of Americans, who mostly view girls’ education from a strict Puritan perspective, has great advantages over public schools surrounded by the distracting bustle of noisy city life. Finally, what attracts Protestants to these schools is also the strictly religious character of the education given in them. Very many Protestants are dissatisfied with the existing system of public education, in which too limited a place is allotted to the religious element, and therefore prefer Catholic schools, in which the religious element is given paramount importance. The usual indifference of Protestants to external denominational form enables them to disregard the warnings of the most zealous Protestants concerning Catholic proselytism in convent schools, and the earnest assurances of the “sisters” that they carefully avoid any intrusion into the sphere of denominational religious convictions, any proselytism in religious instruction, calm and dispel the fears even of suspicious Protestant parents. To what extent Americans, without distinction of faith, prefer religious monastic education to secular public education can be judged from the remarkable fact that Protestants themselves have their own convent schools modeled after Catholic ones, in which they are also taught by “sisters” who fully imitate the Catholic form, even wearing Catholic monastic dress[8].

Americans generally use the state’s secularized school only out of necessity and need. They apparently do not satisfy themselves with it and at the first opportunity send their children to private institutions, which cover the country with a dense network, representing an independent system of education—from elementary schools to higher colleges. And in these free colleges there prevails a strong religious spirit—almost with a Puritan tint. This is especially noticeable in female colleges. The best college for higher female education is the so-called Vassar College, seventy-five miles from New York. It provides solid classical and real education and stands outside any religious sect or church; “but at the same time,” remarks an American author of an essay on higher female education in America, “its direction is positively Christian in character. Daily prayers are held in the college chapel; on Sunday mornings religious worship is performed, and the afternoon is devoted to Bible study. Besides, religious meetings are held twice a week[9], although attendance is not obligatory.” Such is the character of American free schools. This would be instructive indeed for our spiritual educational institutions. At Boston University there are medical courses open to young women, with three professors and one anatomical demonstrator being ladies. “The University stands outside religious sects, but every morning regular devotional exercises (similar to religious meetings) are performed under the direction of board members, and all students are required to attend.” We can limit ourselves to these facts and simply say: a word to the wise is sufficient.

In conclusion let us note one interesting aspect of the practical nature of Americans. While we engage in fruitless disputes between extreme adherents of classicism and realism, Americans without any dispute combined the two together, recognizing that both equally have educational and instructive significance, and by this doubtless achieve better results compared to us. From an external perspective, there is also a remarkable fact that higher female education in America does not at all result in shorter women’s hair, and shorn ladies are unknown in America. But this may depend more on differences in climatic conditions which, as is known from Buckle, have paramount importance in all things.

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