The history and future of our Catholic schools
By David Cooley.
Catholic Schools Week is a wonderful time to celebrate the history of Catholic schools in the U.S. and contemplate the future of our schools.
Historically speaking, the relationship between Catholic schools and the rest of the country has always been a complicated one. From the very beginning, in the colonial period of North America, Catholics were not tolerated very well. Anti-Catholic sentiments and suspicions ran deep throughout the budding culture.
They were also very outnumbered. In 1790 there were only about 35 thousand Catholics in a population of 4 million. And by 1820 the number of American Catholics was still no more than 200 thousand.
However, in the mid-1800s, there was a deluge of Catholic immigrants from Ireland, Germany, Italy, and Poland, fleeing from the turmoil in their homelands.
At the same time, beginning in the 1830s, the U.S. saw the dawn of schools owned and run by the government, funded by taxes, free from tuition, and available to all children. These were the common schools (now called public schools), and they were not secular or areligious institutions.
The common schools instilled in their pupils a general Protestant understanding of Scripture and Christian morals. These schools were not only used as tools to convert the children of Catholic immigrants but were also historically biased and explicitly anti-Catholic in instruction.
Because of this the emerging Catholic community began to modestly build their own schools. The rest, as they say, is history. By 1920, 6,551 Catholic elementary schools enrolled 1.8 million students taught by 42 thousand teachers. Enrollment continued to climb reaching an all-time high of 4.5 million students by the mid-1960s.
Despite the odds against them, Catholic schools experienced a great deal of success and growth – thanks in large part to the blood, sweat, and tears of faithful priests, women religious, and devout faithful who were willing to sacrifice a lot for the education of children. Today, Catholic schools comprise the largest parochial school system in the world and many successful people can trace their roots back to their Catholic education.
Catholic schools are centered on Christ, and, because of that, they thrive in holistic education and the pursuit of the truth. Catholic schools teach virtue and truth and hold out holiness as the vocation of all students.
While the common schools over time have evolved into secular entities, the core mission of Catholic schools remains the same as it always has: to provide an integrated education to young men and women – knowledge and virtue combined, a formula for forming outstanding citizens and, most importantly, disciples of Jesus Christ.
Today we celebrate all that has been done, and the Catholic schools that still thrive in an ever-changing, challenging environment. But we can’t rest on our laurels. Future students and families depend upon us to take what we have been given, improve where we can, and hand on to the next generation. It is time for us to double down on the Catholicity of our schools and reaffirm our unwavering faith and trust in Jesus Christ.