Part 5. Conflict of Roman Catholicism With the State in the Sphere of Public Education (Cont.) (6)

Parish schools, like colleges, were under the direction of various monastic orders. But while the former, in their simplicity of organization, could be entrusted chiefly to female religious orders, the latter, by the very importance of their work, required stronger and more experienced hands for their guidance. Male orders took them up, and in particular the Jesuits, to whom most of the present-day Catholic colleges owe their existence. The Society of Loyola, both in Europe and in America, devoted itself to the cause of higher Catholic education, and its members everywhere founded Catholic colleges. Upon their arrival in Quebec, they established the first college on New World soil in 1635, two years before the founding of the oldest Protestant college in the country, the so-called Harvard College.[1] This was in the French possessions. In the English colonies, strict ordinances against Jesuits existed at first, and so they had no opportunity to found colleges among English colonists. But at the first opportunity they did not fail to carry out their plan. In 1685, three Jesuits appeared in New York and founded a college. The Catholic element, however, was too weak in the city to sustain a college, and it soon closed. Yet even during its brief existence, signs appeared of the possibility of future success. The college was the best school in the city, and the children of government officials were sent to it.[2] The oldest of the colleges now in existence, in Georgetown, was founded in 1789 by the first Catholic bishop in the United States, the Jesuit Carroll.[3] In 1809, the Jesuits attempted to open a college in New York again, this time with great success. This college soon acquired such fame even among Protestants that Governor Tompkins, later Vice-President of the United States, considered it the best for educating his own children, and afterward always held its rector in the highest esteem.[4] After this followed a series of other colleges and seminaries down to the present time. Now the Jesuits have fourteen colleges under their direction.[5]

By their internal organization, Catholic colleges represent secular institutions of learning, something between secondary schools and a university. They are divided into faculties in which specialized groups of sciences are studied. Thus, the college in Georgetown has departments of literature, medicine, and law. It possesses various scientific equipment for this purpose: an astronomical observatory, a botanical greenhouse, a rich mineralogical and geological cabinet, and a library of 30,000 volumes. Students have a monthly journal, College Journal. Professors and rector are all members of the Jesuit order.[6] The other Catholic colleges, such as St. John’s College in New York, are distinguished by the same character. Education in them, up to the highest course, is permeated with a strictly Catholic spirit, almost with monastic discipline.[7] Despite the predominant secular character of the studies, education is directed in a strictly religious spirit, and many graduates of these colleges later enter the sacred ministry.[8] The colleges enjoy great popularity among Protestants, and the children of well-known representatives of the highest government circles are often sent to them.

By educating the male generation in its spirit, Roman Catholicism achieves only half its goal. Male colleges provide it with devoted defenders and supporters, literary and religious workers. But it also needs a conservative force, that more general and permanent element from which these workers could naturally emerge. Such an element can be found in the female generation. On the direction given to women, as mothers, depends the entire character of the mental, moral, and religious worldview of future generations. Therefore, Catholicism applies the most serious efforts to educating the young female generation in its spirit, and in this respect it achieves very important results.

Catholics began to show concern for establishing female educational institutions already in the past century, and the most zealous workers in this field were female religious orders. At the end of the last century, the Poor Clares, during their brief stay in America, opened a female school in Georgetown, which, upon passing into the hands of the Visitandines, soon flourished and came to be called an academy (1799). Earlier still, the Ursulines had founded a female academy in New Orleans and Louisiana, which then still belonged to France. When this territory was purchased by the United States in 1803, there were 170 pupils at the Ursuline academy. But the true era of female Catholic education begins with the present century, when female teaching orders began to arrive one after another at the shores of the New World, and upon their first settlement they established female schools. In 1809, a female academy was opened in Emmitsburg by Mother Seton, who had been converted to Catholicism; three years later, the Sisters of Loretto entered the field of female education; in 1818, the Ursulines penetrated into the very heart of Puritanism and founded a monastery with a school in Boston; in the same year, the Ladies of the Sacred Heart began their labors in educating the female generation in the South, especially in Missouri and Louisiana. In 1836, the Sisters of Saint Joseph arrived at the shores of the New World, and under their direction female academies flourished in various places. In 1840, the Sisters of Notre Dame founded a female school in Ohio. In the following year, the Sisters of the Holy Cross and the Sisters of Providence began working in Catholic education in Indiana; in 1847, the Teaching Sisters of Notre Dame founded their first academy in Milwaukee. Between 1840 and 1850, the Ladies of the Sacred Heart and the Sisters of Charity opened several schools in New York and other cities, and soon after came the Sisters of Mercy.[9] At present, there are five hundred and eleven (511) Catholic female academies or schools in the United States that have the curriculum of secondary institutions.[10] “We can point with pride and complete confidence to our academies for higher female education, which abound in all parts of the United States,” Bishop Becker exclaims with self-satisfaction.[11]

By their internal character, all these so-called “academies” are ordinary convent schools, resembling boarding schools run by Catholic sisters. The education provided in them can be called secondary, though many of them have preparatory classes for beginning pupils. The curriculum encompasses both classical and practical sciences, with special attention given to applied sciences in the area of ordinary household management. Many of the academies have natural history museums and astronomical apparatus.[12] The entire course of study naturally has a strictly religious character, and all discipline bears the spirit of monastic order. In announcements of student admissions, academies invariably declare the Christian character of the instruction. “Parents and guardians,” states the superior of Mount St. Agnes Academy, “may be assured that the sisters, under whose direction this institute is conducted, consider themselves obligated to justify the trust shown them by the entrusting of pupils to their care, by affording them Christian and virtuous education, by giving close attention to their mental development, the cultivation of refined manners necessary for society, and by surrounding them with that degree of care in physical matters which they could only have received under parental roof.”[13] “The discipline of the school,” states the superior of St. Peter’s Academy in Rome, New York, “is gentle but firm, founded upon those Christian principles of divine charity which form the source of all true refinement and which alone ensure happiness to pupils afterward. Pupils of all faiths are admitted, and every care is taken to avoid any interference with their religious convictions.”[14] “Parents may be assured,” declares the superior of the Academy of the Immaculate Conception, “that pupils will receive every attention compatible with gentle but firm management, and every effort will be made to implant in their souls those principles of virtue and religion which alone can make education beneficial. Young ladies of every religious faith are equally admitted; however, to maintain good order, all will be required to observe the external discipline of the institute.”[15] Pupils are received as boarders at fees ranging from 200 to 300 dollars per year.[16]

All these convent schools undoubtedly constitute a firm bulwark of Roman Catholicism in America, serve as the principal source of its strength, and give promise of success in the future. In them is educated all the Catholic female generation of the more or less wealthy class, which can afford the mentioned expenses for monastic education of their children. Moreover, they enjoy great popularity even among the Protestant population, and this presents another aspect of their significance for Roman Catholicism. “Who can calculate the sum of good accomplished by these institutions, the magnitude of the work they have performed?” exclaims a Catholic author. “Prudent Protestants know their worth and send their daughters to receive education from these virtuous and accomplished 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 concerned with the purity and dignity of their daughters know that they are completely safe with the brides of Christ.”[17] The fact that Protestants send their daughters to Catholic convent schools is not in doubt; it is acknowledged by Protestant leaders themselves and is a matter of concern and indignation to them. On this subject, many pamphlets of all kinds have been issued by various Protestant writers, in which the harm of these schools to Protestantism is depicted in bright colors, and stories often appear intended to show the proselyting significance of convent education.[18] The sharply hostile and indignant tone of these pamphlets only more clearly shows the significance of Catholic convent schools. “Much has been said,” writes a Protestant author, “about Romanism resorting chiefly to its educational institutions to influence the Protestant population. This is especially true regarding their female schools. While declaring that they do not teach Romanism in them, they calculate that seven out of every ten Protestant girls entering these schools become Roman Catholics. While thousands of their own children grow up unable to read and write, they will not hesitate to take in almost free a young girl from a prominent Protestant family, merely to pervert her to the Roman faith. Their various female academies serve as the best agency in our country for this purpose; and all Protestant parents who do not wish the ruin of their children should guard them against Roman Catholic schools as they would guard them from the gates of death.”[19] One lady, who received her education in a convent school in Montreal, states that of forty girls from Protestant families in the United States who were educated with her, thirty-eight became Catholics.[20] Another lady, who also received her education in a convent school, concluding her public address on Romanism, said: “Warn the people everywhere against the danger of sending their children to Roman Catholic schools. For genuine education they are the worst schools in the country, but they serve as the principal agencies of Romanism for converting children of respectable families to the Roman Church. I passed through a terrible ordeal, and I know what it is.”[21] “And yet,” exclaims a Protestant author in sorrow and indignation, “some Protestants, and even Methodists, send their children to Popish schools to save a few dollars or under the false pretext that these schools are better than Protestant ones. We have often heard of wealthy Methodist families who, living near their own denominational seminaries, sent their children to distant Catholic schools! In some cases this is done to promote trade with Catholics, and more often from political motives, thus sacrificing their sons and daughters to Moloch for the sake of securing Catholic votes.”[22] In some parts of the country, and especially in the Far West, where Protestantism has not yet established a more or less stable organization, Roman Catholicism asserts itself with special force, arousing terror among Protestants. “The Papists,” says one of the latter, “are rapidly conquering the great West. Their agency is the school. The property of the Roman Church in the new Kansas city of Leavenworth amounts, according to a published estimate, to 475,000 dollars, while the property of all other Christian denominations in the same city is less than 100,000 dollars. Sustained 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 mainly through the generosity of Protestants.”[23] Pointing to the particular zeal of Catholics in attracting young Protestant girls to their schools, the author says: “A Papist will go further to secure one girl, the future mother of a family, and perhaps an obedient and submissive ‘sister’ or nun, than to secure half a dozen boys. If now the girls are secured, then the families of the next generation will be in the power of the Catholic Church. You who have daughters for education, remember this!” exclaims the Protestant author of the pamphlet.[24]

Notwithstanding such warnings, Protestants fill Catholic convent schools with their daughters, and the latter enjoy great popularity among them. The reason for this must be sought first of all in the actual educational merits of these schools. They provide a complete education for young ladies, and most of them have the right to issue collegiate diplomas granting significant rights and privileges. Moreover, the strict discipline of these schools, usually located away from large urban centers, has great advantages in the eyes of Americans, most of whom regard the education of girls from a strict Puritan point of view, over public schools surrounded by the distracting frivolity of noisy city life. Finally, Protestants are attracted to these schools by 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 religious instruction is given primary importance. The usual indifference of Protestants to outward denominational form allows them to disregard the warnings of the most zealous Protestants regarding Catholic proselytism in convent schools, and the earnest assurances of the “sisters” that they carefully avoid any intrusion into matters of religious conviction and any proselytism in religious teaching, reassure and dispel the fears of even suspicious Protestant parents. The extent to which Americans, regardless of religion, prefer monastic religious education to civil public education can be judged from the remarkable fact that Protestants themselves have their own convent schools similar to Catholic ones, in which they are also taught by “sisters” who fully model themselves on the Catholic form, even wearing Catholic monastic dress.[25]