Protestant to Godless

Catholic schools have a long history on our continent. Already in 1516 there were Catholic schools attached to village churches in the Spanish colonies in Central and South America and in the Caribbean area. In 1640 a Catholic elementary school was established in Maryland and a Catholic college in 1660. By 1727 there were Catholic elementary schools in French Canada, followed by French Catholic schools in 1755 and 1774 in what is now Detroit and Saint Louis. In that same 18th century there were Catholic schools attached to the California missions, most of which were established by Blessed Junipero Serra: San Diego, San Francisco, Santa Barbara, Carmel, Santa Monica, etc.

In the English colonies along the Atlantic Seaboard, which were the original building blocks of our country’s future history, all the early schools were religious and denominational. Since Catholics at first in those colonies were an extremely tiny minority, those schools were entirely Protestant and often heavily and severely anti-Catholic. Books were bigoted and gave inaccurate information about the Catholic Church and frequently about religion in general. Prayers which were said in those schools were filled with various Protestant doctrines, Bibles were read which were Protestant in their translations and versions, and graduation ceremonies and other school activities were usually held in Protestant churches, with Protestant ministers presiding and preaching. To preserve the faith of their children in those days, many wealthy Catholics in the colonies would send their youngsters to Europe for their schooling, while the poorer Catholics would have to home-school or risk losing the souls of their offspring, if they had the misfortune of living far from one of the few Catholic schools.

However, by 1775 there was a Catholic elementary school in Kentucky, and by 1790, when the first Catholic Diocese was established in the United States (in Baltimore with John Carroll named the first Bishop), the number of Catholic schools in our country had grown despite the poverty and hardships of most of the few Catholic settlers. By 1840 there were more than 200 Catholic schools in the United States, with about half of them west of the Alleghanies.

The year 1840 was something of a watershed year for Catholic schools. By that year almost the entire United States was offering tax supported, government-controlled schools for its citizens, and in some States of the Union, legally requiring education for all children and youth up to a certain age. Yet, the Protestant character and culture still prevailed, and most of those public schools were in reality simply Protestant schools supported by taxes. Catholics found this arrangement and this environment for their children to be at best uncongenial and at worst gravely hostile and perilous to eternal salvation. It was in 1840 too that the gigantic European immigration to the United States began, with huge numbers of immigrants, in one of the largest migrations in human history, pouring into the United States.

The American Catholic Bishops became deeply concerned that the soaring numbers of new Catholics, in their cultural assimilation, might also lose their faith-identity along with their cultural roots. This was particularly the case with Catholics coming from countries where English was not the predominant language. The immigrants from Ireland in this matter were better prepared for keeping the faith in a non-Catholic, English-speaking culture when they arrived in the United States than immigrants from other lands. As a consequence, the American Catholic Bishops pushed and ordered to the extent possible the construction and promotion of Catholic schools. Thus, with great sacrifices on the part of Catholic communities throughout our country, the number of Catholic schools in America grew at a fast pace.

What made this growth possible and what made those schools so successful were the large numbers of young women who gave themselves to the service of God and His people in many religious orders and communities. In their professional expertise, religious dedication, and astounding sacrifices can be found the secret to the success of the largest parochial school system in the world.

In recent times, the original Protestant hue and character of American public schools have significantly eroded, changing many public schools into something even worse from the point of view of conscientious Catholic parents. All prayer, any mention of God, all religion now must be totally excluded. The doctrines of Marx, Stalin, Hitler, etc. can be taught, but even the mention of Jesus, to say nothing of His teaching, is somehow now a crime against the US Constitution. In that "brave new world", sexual perversion is all right but reading the Bible or saying a prayer to God in a government-controlled school is almost as evil as smoking a cigarette there. There even are a significant number of public school teachers’ unions (sometimes called "education associations"), influenced by the false philosophy of John Dewey, which adopt and support issues which the Catholic Faith rightly considers immoral.

This erosion is due in large measure to the increasing numbers of Protestant sects which quarrel with each other as they multiply, to the huge national influence of non-Christians and the imposition of their world-views, especially through the mass media, to certain weird and twisted Supreme Court constitutional decisions, to the gradual secularization of our entire culture with its neo-pagan accompaniments, and to the growing decline in the numbers of Protestants and in the influence of Protestant opinions. This is the reason why even in more modern times Catholics in our country must insist on the freedom to educate and form their children with a moral and religious dimension which they cannot find in any other educational system than their own. From the Catholic viewpoint it is impossible to be "neutral" about Christ and about the one true religion. To be "neutral" is to be "opposed". Attempting neutrality in these matters is to participate, albeit implicitly and sometimes inadvertently, to the national trend of making "non-religion" into the established religion of our country. Religious tolerance and pluralism is not the same as religious indifference. Catholics do not accept a doctrine that says religion is an entirely private affair, a mere opinion that can be ignored.

Having an educated citizenry in a Democratic Republic is important, and therefore good public schools, even those with serious shortcomings, are needed and valuable. However, it is unjust not to allow Catholic parents the right to educate their children according to the truth of the Catholic Faith, and through economic discrimination and questionable constitutional court decisions prevent their hard-earned tax dollars from being used to educate their own children. Fortunately, recent court decisions have decided that "school vouchers" are entirely constitutional. Thus, a voucher system, already being used to great advantage in several States and cities, could be a method for tax-payers to save vast amounts of money now used for school taxes, for fair competition to develop and so to improve all school systems, and for Catholic parents at last to receive at least some justice and some return on their own tax dollars.