History of Catholic education in the United States
Encyclopedia
Spanish colonies
In 1606, Spanish FranciscanFranciscan
Most Franciscans are members of Roman Catholic religious orders founded by Saint Francis of Assisi. Besides Roman Catholic communities, there are also Old Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, ecumenical and Non-denominational Franciscan communities....
missionaries established a school in what is now St. Augustine
St. Augustine
-People:* Augustine of Hippo or Augustine of Hippo , father of the Latin church* Augustine of Canterbury , first Archbishop of Canterbury* Augustine Webster, an English Catholic martyr.-Places:*St. Augustine, Florida, United States...
, Florida
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
"to teach children Christian doctrine, reading and writing," . Further north and a bit later, Jesuits instructed Native American students such as Kateri Tekakwitha
Kateri Tekakwitha
Kateri Tekakwitha or Catherine Tekakwitha was a Mohawk-Algonquian woman from New York and an early convert to Catholicism, who has been beatified in the Roman Catholic Church.-Her life:...
, who became a Catholic and taught Indian children in a Christian settlement near Montreal.
In the 1770s, Junipero Serra
Junípero Serra
Blessed Junípero Serra, O.F.M., , known as Fra Juníper Serra in Catalan, his mother tongue was a Majorcan Franciscan friar who founded the mission chain in Alta California of the Las Californias Province in New Spain—present day California, United States. Fr...
and his Franciscans established the California mission system
Spanish missions in California
The Spanish missions in California comprise a series of religious and military outposts established by Spanish Catholics of the Franciscan Order between 1769 and 1823 to spread the Christian faith among the local Native Americans. The missions represented the first major effort by Europeans to...
, whose ministry included the education of Native Americans in farming, Christian belief, skilled crafts, and other fields.
French colonies
In New Orleans, the Franciscans opened a school for boys in 1718. In 1727, the UrsulinesUrsulines
The Ursulines are a Roman Catholic religious order for women founded at Brescia, Italy, by Saint Angela de Merici in November 1535, primarily for the education of girls and the care of the sick and needy. Their patron saint is Saint Ursula.-History:St Angela de Merici spent 17 years leading a...
opened the Ursuline Academy, a school for girls.
English colonies
Catholicism was introduced to the English colonies with the founding of the Province of MarylandProvince of Maryland
The Province of Maryland was an English and later British colony in North America that existed from 1632 until 1776, when it joined the other twelve of the Thirteen Colonies in rebellion against Great Britain and became the U.S...
by Jesuit
Society of Jesus
The Society of Jesus is a Catholic male religious order that follows the teachings of the Catholic Church. The members are called Jesuits, and are also known colloquially as "God's Army" and as "The Company," these being references to founder Ignatius of Loyola's military background and a...
settlers from England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
in 1634. Maryland was one of the few regions among the English colonies in North America that was predominantly Catholic.
However, the 1646 defeat of the Royalists
Cavalier
Cavalier was the name used by Parliamentarians for a Royalist supporter of King Charles I and son Charles II during the English Civil War, the Interregnum, and the Restoration...
in the English Civil War
English Civil War
The English Civil War was a series of armed conflicts and political machinations between Parliamentarians and Royalists...
led to stringent laws against Catholic education and the extradition of known Jesuits from the colony, including Andrew White
Andrew White (missionary)
Andrew White, S.J. was an English Jesuit missionary who was involved in the founding of the Maryland colony. He was a chronicler of the early colony, and his writings are a primary source on the land, the Native Americans of the area, and the Jesuit mission in North America...
, and the destruction of their school at Calverton Manor. During the greater part of the Maryland colonial period, Jesuits continued to conduct Catholic schools clandestinely.
By the latter 17th century, English colonists had set up their own, publicly supported schools. But since all the colonies were overwhelmingly Protestant, the rudimentary education often had a heavily fundamentalist Protestant (if not blatantly anti-Catholic) flavor. Even in Catholic-founded Maryland, Catholics were a minority, although with a bit more freedom. In 1677, in Newtown, the Jesuits established a preparatory school, mostly to instruct boys considered candidates for later seminary study in Europe. The Newtown school eventually closed, but the Jesuits opened another in the 1740s at Bohemia Manor, Md.
American revolution
The American Revolution brought revolutionary changes, with the participation in the war by such patriots as Daniel and John Carroll helping to erode anti-Catholic bigotry. In 1782, Catholics in Philadelphia opened St. Mary's School, which is considered to have been the first parochial school in the United States. Not long after the Revolution ended, John Carroll saw his dream of a Catholic "college" take root with the establishment in 1789 of Georgetown, albeit mostly as an "academy" or upper-elementary-high school preparatory institution for boys aged 10 to 16.Ratification in 1791 of the Bill of Rights, with the First Amendment guarantee of religious freedom, helped Catholics further cement their place in post-Revolutionary America.
Founding of Georgetown University
It was not until after the American RevolutionAmerican Revolution
The American Revolution was the political upheaval during the last half of the 18th century in which thirteen colonies in North America joined together to break free from the British Empire, combining to become the United States of America...
in 1776 that long-term plans to establish a permanent Catholic institution for education in America were realized.
Pope Pius VI
Pope Pius VI , born Count Giovanni Angelo Braschi, was Pope from 1775 to 1799.-Early years:Braschi was born in Cesena...
appointed John Carroll
John Carroll (bishop)
John Carroll, was the first Roman Catholic bishop and archbishop in the United States — serving as the ordinary of the Archdiocese of Baltimore. He is also known as the founder of Georgetown University, the oldest Catholic university in the United States, and St...
of Maryland, a former Jesuit, as the first head of the Catholic Church in America
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore
The Metropolitan Archdiocese of Baltimore is a particular church of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States. The archdiocese comprises the City of Baltimore as well as Allegany, Anne Arundel, Baltimore, Carroll, Frederick, Garrett, Harford, Howard, and Washington Counties in Maryland...
, although the papal suppression of the Jesuit order was still in effect. Carroll orchestrated the early development of a new university; instruction at the school began on November 22, 1791 with future Congressman William Gaston
William Gaston
William J. Gaston was a jurist and United States Representative from North Carolina. Gaston was born in New Bern, North Carolina, the son of Dr. Alexander Gaston and Margaret Gaston. He entered Georgetown College in Washington, D.C., at the age of thirteen, becoming its first student...
as its first student.
In its early years, Georgetown College suffered from considerable financial strain, relying on private sources of funding and the limited profits from local Jesuit-owned lands. The Maryland Society of Jesus was restored in 1805 and given supervision of the school, which bolstered confidence in the college. The United States Congress
United States Congress
The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Congress meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C....
issued Georgetown the first federal university charter
University charter
University Charter redirects here. For the middle school in California, see University Charter School .University charter is a charter given by provincial, state, regional, and sometimes national governments to legitimize the university's existence.-Canada:In most Canadian province's university...
in 1815, which allowed it to confer degrees. The college's first two graduates were awarded the degree of bachelor of arts
Bachelor of Arts
A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...
two years later in 1817.
19th century
Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton set up a school for poor children in Emmitsburg, Md., in 1810, founded the Sisters of Charity of St. Joseph, and made the creation of parochial schools a lifetime cause.American frontier
Visionaries in the wilderness displayed a similar energy and dedication. In 1812, in rural Kentucky, a trio of intrepid women—Mary Rhodes, Christina Stuart, and Nancy Havern—aided by a Belgium immigrant, Father Charles Nerinckx, formed the Friends of Mary (later the Sisters of Loretto) and began to teach the poor children. They had company in Kentucky: The same year, the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth organized, with Sister Catherine Spalding as superior, and took up a ministry of education. And in 1822, nine young women answered a Dominican friar's call for teachers for pioneer children in Springfield. They set up their school, St. Magdalene Academy, in a former still, and when four became Dominican nuns transformed a borrowed log cabin into a convent.Mother Mary Elizabeth
Elizabeth Lange (later Mother Mary Elizabeth) established a school in Baltimore for poor children. In 1831, she founded the Oblate Sisters of ProvidenceOblate Sisters of Providence
The Oblate Sisters of Providence is a Roman Catholic women religious order, founded by Mother Mary Lange, OSP]], and Rev. James Nicholas Joubert, SS in 1829 in Baltimore, Maryland for the education of girls of color. It has the distinction of being the first Roman Catholic religious order began for...
, an order which devoted themselves to African-American education at a time when slavery was still in existence in Southern states.
Creation of parochial schools
American Bible Society
The American Bible Society is an interconfessional, non-denominational, nonprofit organization, founded in 1816 in New York City, which publishes, distributes and translates the Bible and provides study aids and other tools to help people engage with the Bible.It is probably best known for its...
pledged that "the Bible would be read in every classroom in the nation". In what was then a predominantly Protestant country, this was generally understood to be the King James Version of the Scriptures. The Eliot School rebellion
Eliot School rebellion
The Eliot School rebellion was a 19th century incident that played a significant role in the debate over what kind of Christian instruction would be available in American public schools and sparked the establishment of Catholic parochial schools nationwide....
, an incident involving the beating of a Catholic boy who refused to read the King James version of the Ten Commandments aloud in a Boston Public School in 1859 led to the creation of the first parochial school in Massachusetts and, according to historian John McGreevy
John McGreevy
John McGreevy is an American historian. McGreevy earned his B.A. from the University of Notre Dame and his Ph.D. from Stanford University. He has been on the Notre Dame faculty since 1997.He is the author of Catholicism and American Freedom.-Books:...
of the University of Notre Dame
University of Notre Dame
The University of Notre Dame du Lac is a Catholic research university located in Notre Dame, an unincorporated community north of the city of South Bend, in St. Joseph County, Indiana, United States...
, sparked the creation of parochial schools nationwide.
The middle of the 19th Century saw increasing Catholic interest in education in tandem with increasing Catholic immigration. To serve their growing communities, American Catholics first tried to reform American public schools to rid them of blatantly fundamentalist Protestant overtones. John Neumann
John Neumann
Saint John Nepomucene Neumann, C.Ss.R., was a Redemptorist missionary to the United States who became the fourth Bishop of Philadelphia and the first American bishop to be canonized...
organized the first diocesan school system in the United States. As the bishop of the Diocese of Philadelphia, he created a diocesan board to oversee the parochial schools in the Diocese of Philadelphia.
Failing, they began opening their own schools, ably aided by such religious orders as the Sisters of Mercy, who arrived from Ireland, under Sister Frances Warde, in 1843, and the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, organized in 1845 by Sister Theresa (Almaide) Duchemin, originally an Oblate Sister of Providence, to teach in Michigan. However, such successes sparked a bigoted backlash, fomented by such groups as the Know-Nothing Party, committed to wiping out "foreign influence, Popery, Jesuitism, and Catholicism." Mobs burnt a convent and murdered a nun in Massachusetts in 1834, destroyed two churches in New England in 1854, and, that same year, tarred-and-feathered, and nearly killed Father John Bapst, a Swiss-born Jesuit teaching in Maine and ministering to the Passamaquoddy Indians and Irish immigrants, as well as to other Catholics, including former Protestants who'd converted under his influence. Such attacks notwithstanding, the First Plenary Council of Baltimore in 1852 urged every Catholic parish in the nation to establish a school.
The Civil War divided American Catholics into North and South but also helped to further dilute religious prejudices, with Catholics fighting alongside Protestants on both sides. The post-war period brought continued growth in Catholic education, with the Second Plenary Council of Baltimore in 1866 repeating the call for parochial schools and the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore in 1884 turning the plea into a directive that all Catholic parishes open schools within two years. The third council also supported Catholic schools for African Americans and Native Americans by confirming the Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions
Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions
The Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions was a Roman Catholic institution created in 1874 by J. Roosevelt Bayley, Archbishop of Baltimore, for the protection and promotion of Catholic mission interests among Native Americans in the United States.-History:...
as an institution of the Church and establishing the Commission for the Catholic Missions among the Colored People and the Indians
Commission for the Catholic Missions among the Colored People and the Indians
The Commission for the Catholic Missions among the Colored People and the Indians has been a U.S. Roman Catholic institution that administers a national annual appeal in support of Catholic mission work.-History:...
to support Black and Native Catholic schools.
Blaine amendments
In 1875, President Ulysses S. GrantUlysses S. Grant
Ulysses S. Grant was the 18th President of the United States as well as military commander during the Civil War and post-war Reconstruction periods. Under Grant's command, the Union Army defeated the Confederate military and ended the Confederate States of America...
, whose sympathies for the Know-Nothing party were well-known, called for a Constitutional amendment that would mandate free public schools and prohibit the use of public funds for "sectarian" schools. It was clear that Grant’s motivation was rooted in his anti-Catholicism, fearing a future with "patriotism and intelligence on one side and superstition, ambition and greed on the other" which he identified with the Catholic Church. Grant called for public schools that would be "unmixed with atheistic, pagan or sectarian teaching."
Senator James G. Blaine
James G. Blaine
James Gillespie Blaine was a U.S. Representative, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, U.S. Senator from Maine, two-time Secretary of State...
of Maine had proposed such an amendment to the Constitution in 1874. The amendment was defeated in 1875 but would be used as a model for so-called "Blaine Amendments" incorporated into 34 state constitutions over the next three decades. These amendments prohibited the use of public funds to fund parochial schools and are still in effect today although a 2002 Supreme Court ruling partially vitiated these amendments. As of March 2009, no state school system had changed its laws to allow state funds to be used for this purpose.
The Catholic University of America
The proposal to create a national Catholic universityUniversity
A university is an institution of higher education and research, which grants academic degrees in a variety of subjects. A university is an organisation that provides both undergraduate education and postgraduate education...
in America
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
reflected the rising size and influence of the nation’s Catholic population and also an ambitious vision of the Church’s role in American life during the 19th century.
In 1882 Bishop John Lancaster Spalding went to Rome to obtain Pope Leo XIII
Pope Leo XIII
Pope Leo XIII , born Vincenzo Gioacchino Raffaele Luigi Pecci to an Italian comital family, was the 256th Pope of the Roman Catholic Church, reigning from 1878 to 1903...
's support for the University and persuaded family friend Mary Gwendoline Caldwell to pledge $300,000 to establish it. On March 7, 1889, the Pope issued the encyclical Magni Nobis, granting the university its charter and establishing its mission as the instruction of Catholicism
Catholicism
Catholicism is a broad term for the body of the Catholic faith, its theologies and doctrines, its liturgical, ethical, spiritual, and behavioral characteristics, as well as a religious people as a whole....
and human nature
Human nature
Human nature refers to the distinguishing characteristics, including ways of thinking, feeling and acting, that humans tend to have naturally....
together at the graduate level. By developing new leaders and new knowledge, the University would strengthen and enrich Catholicism in the United States.
Many of the founders of the CUA held a vision that included both a sense of the Church’s special role in United States and also a conviction that scientific and humanistic research, informed by the Faith, would only strengthen the Church. They sought to develop an institution
Institution
An institution is any structure or mechanism of social order and cooperation governing the behavior of a set of individuals within a given human community...
like a national university that would promote the Faith in a context of religious freedom, spiritual pluralism, and intellectual rigor.
When the University first opened for classes in the fall of 1888, the curriculum consisted of lectures in mental and moral philosophy, English literature
English literature
English literature is the literature written in the English language, including literature composed in English by writers not necessarily from England; for example, Robert Burns was Scottish, James Joyce was Irish, Joseph Conrad was Polish, Dylan Thomas was Welsh, Edgar Allan Poe was American, J....
, the Sacred Scriptures, and the various branches of theology
Theology
Theology is the systematic and rational study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truths, or the learned profession acquired by completing specialized training in religious studies, usually at a university or school of divinity or seminary.-Definition:Augustine of Hippo...
. At the end of the second term, lectures on canon law
Canon law
Canon law is the body of laws & regulations made or adopted by ecclesiastical authority, for the government of the Christian organization and its members. It is the internal ecclesiastical law governing the Catholic Church , the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox churches, and the Anglican Communion of...
were added and the first students were graduated in 1889. In 1904, an undergraduate program was added and it quickly established a reputation for excellence.
20th century
In 1900, an estimated 3,500 parochial schools existed in the United States. Within 20 years, the number of elementary schools had reached 6,551, enrolling 1,759, 673 pupils taught by 41, 581 teachers. Secondary education likewise boomed. In 1900, there were only about 100 Catholic high schools, but by 1920 more than 1,500 were in operation. For more than two generations, enrollment continued to climb.The Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities was founded in 1899, In 1904, Catholic educators formed an organization to coordinate their efforts on a national scale: the Catholic Educational Association
National Catholic Educational Association
The National Catholic Educational Association is a private professional educational association of over 200,000 educators in Catholic schools, universities, and religious education programs...
which later changed its name to the National Catholic Educational Association.
Supreme Court upholds parochial schools
In 1922, the voters of OregonOregon
Oregon is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is located on the Pacific coast, with Washington to the north, California to the south, Nevada on the southeast and Idaho to the east. The Columbia and Snake rivers delineate much of Oregon's northern and eastern...
passed an initiative
Initiative
In political science, an initiative is a means by which a petition signed by a certain minimum number of registered voters can force a public vote...
amending Oregon Law
Oregon Revised Statutes
The Oregon Revised Statutes is the codified body of statutory law governing the U.S. state of Oregon, as enacted by the Oregon Legislative Assembly, and occasionally by citizen initiative...
Section 5259, the Compulsory Education Act. The law unofficially became known as the Oregon School Law. The citizens' initiative was primarily aimed at eliminating parochial school
Parochial school
A parochial school is a school that provides religious education in addition to conventional education. In a narrower sense, a parochial school is a Christian grammar school or high school which is part of, and run by, a parish.-United Kingdom:...
s, including Catholic schools. The law caused outraged Catholics to organize locally and nationally for the right to send their children to Catholic schools. In Pierce v. Society of Sisters
Pierce v. Society of Sisters
Pierce v. Society of Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary, , was an early 20th century United States Supreme Court decision that significantly expanded coverage of the Due Process Clause in the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The case has been cited as a precedent in...
(1925), the United States Supreme Court declared the Oregon's Compulsory Education Act unconstitutional in a ruling that that has been called "the Magna Carta of the parochial school system."
Mid-1960s
By the mid-1960s, enrollment in Catholic parochial schools had reached an all-time high of 4.5 million elementary school pupils, with about 1 million students in Catholic high schools.Present-day
The United States had 7,498 Catholic schools in 2006-07, including 6,288 elementary schools and 1,210 secondary schools. In total there were 2,320,651 students, including 1,682,412 students in the elementary/middle schools and 638,239 in high schools. Enrollment in the nation’s Catholic schools has steadily dropped to less than half of its peak at five million students 40 years ago, The New York Times reported in early 2009. At its peak in 1965, the number of U.S. parochial schools was more than 12,000, and roughly half of all Catholic children in America attended Catholic elementary schools, according to the National Catholic Educational AssociationNational Catholic Educational Association
The National Catholic Educational Association is a private professional educational association of over 200,000 educators in Catholic schools, universities, and religious education programs...
. The same share in 2009 is about 15 percent. Among Latinos, the fastest-growing church group — soon to comprise a majority of Catholics in the United States — it is three percent. The article also reported on "dozens of local efforts" to turn the tide, including by the Archdiocese of Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
and Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
and dioceses in Memphis, Tennessee
Memphis, Tennessee
Memphis is a city in the southwestern corner of the U.S. state of Tennessee, and the county seat of Shelby County. The city is located on the 4th Chickasaw Bluff, south of the confluence of the Wolf and Mississippi rivers....
and Wichita, Kansas
Wichita, Kansas
Wichita is the largest city in the U.S. state of Kansas.As of the 2010 census, the city population was 382,368. Located in south-central Kansas on the Arkansas River, Wichita is the county seat of Sedgwick County and the principal city of the Wichita metropolitan area...
, as well as in the New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
metro area.
Although the strong commitment by church and lay leaders alike to Catholic education remains constant, changing demographics have had a major impact on enrollment. The waiting list for Catholic schools is over 40 per cent. One challenge is there are many school buildings in urban areas without a nearby Catholic population to support them. On the other hand, there are thousands of potential students in suburban areas where schools have yet to be built.