Part 5. Conflict of Roman Catholicism With the State in the Sphere of Public Education (Cont.) (7)

Thus, despite the disadvantageous position of Roman Catholicism in the United States regarding the system of public education, it has, thanks to the energy of monastic orders, managed to organize a strong system of specifically Catholic schools, which stands face to face with the system of public schools and even rivals them in popularity and public significance. But for its complete significance, it does not yet have such scientific height as would give it full scientific completeness in higher, university knowledge. America still has no higher schools with scientific curricula like European universities; nor are there such schools among Catholic colleges, but among the latter there is already a clear indication of a desire to attain the scientific level of European university knowledge. The second plenary Council of Baltimore expressed the wish “to have among the colleges one higher college or university which would complete the convenience and usefulness of all existing colleges and in which literature and all sciences, both secular and spiritual, would be taught.”[1] Since that time, the idea of founding a Catholic university has become dominant in Catholic literature, and its actual founding will undoubtedly be laid in the not distant future. With the founding of a university, Roman Catholicism in the United States will naturally acquire a new support on the soil of the American continent.

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