The Religious School: An American Institution (1929)

[11] *

HISTORICALLY, FREEDOM OF education has always been a characteristic of our American polity. The first American schools were religious, and they continued so up to the middle of the last century.

In origin, at least, the secular school is not an American institution; it is an importation from Continental Europe, born of the compromises and ambitions of contending politicians.

Constitutionally, the religious school is as American as the secular school. If there is one point in American jurisprudence which is accepted by all, it is the principle that to the parent belongs the primary right to educate and to select the type of education he desires his children to have.

Legal decision after decision confirms that right. The Supreme Court itself, in the famous Oregon decision [i.e. Pierce vs. Society of Sisters of the Holy Names (1925) regarding an Oregon law requiring children to attend only public schools], once and forever settled that question of right. And in the pursuance of that right of American citizenship, if we elect to give at our own expense a religious education to our children, who can gainsay that right, who can accuse us of disloyalty to the Constitution, who can justly contend that we oppose one of the fundamental institutions of the country?

Since the beginning of this nation we have had religious schools; we have the constitutional right to conduct such schools; we would be traitors to our highest interests and to our profoundest beliefs in the need of religious training for the preservation of the best in American citizenship, were we to fail to maintain and support religious education.

THE reason is simple—religious education for us is not a purple patch added on to the ordinary curriculum. It is the very soul, the life-breath of all our training. It is as necessary to the preservation and development of Catholic life as is the air we breathe to the preservation of our natural life. To close our schools in the hope that our fellow-citizens would then come to understand that we do not oppose public education, would be a futile gesture; it would be to betray our faith in American justice, history, law; it would but add to the tremendous difficulties which every democracy must face in its continuous struggle for existence; it would be a denial of our very belief in the teaching of Christ which we profess to hold.

Fortunately, one need no longer defend, at least in educational circles, the religious school. There has come about a wonderful change in viewpoint in that regard in the last ten years. To an attitude of hostility there has succeeded an attitude of challenge, and I venture to think that it will be much more difficult for us to meet the latter than it was the former.

The religious school today is on trial before the bar of American education. And it will be judged in the only way that Americans know how to judge—by results. Its future will be determined not by attacks made upon it but rather by the type of men and women which the religious school produces. It is to them that we must turn, in the last analysis, for the justification of our schools.

IF the religious school continues to turn out, as it has done, strong, virile, intelligent, unusually upright men and women as citizens of this Republic, we need have little fear of those narrow partisans who go about poisoning the public conscience with the age-old cry of Catholic opposition to the public school.

The Catholic citizenship of this Republic can not [sic] rise above its source—and that source is our schools. If we are to be compelled, for any reason whatsoever, to continue to meet rancor, prejudice, hatred, and discrimination, let us meet them in the only way Christians can and should, and in the only way which will bring certain and complete victory. And what is that way? By concentrating our efforts toward the development of a Catholic body which, because of its understanding, intelligence, and virtue, will be irresistible. Knowledge can conquer ignorance; love, hatred; truth, prejudice; loyalty, distrust. And the great instrument in the production of these qualities in our men and women is the school. From elementary school to university let us make of these schools a great crucible from which shall come forth gold of the purest quality in the form of alert, sincere, educated men and women.

I WOULD particularly insist on the need of university trained men and women, since it is from them that leadership and all the accomplishments which we associate rightly with finely trained minds must come. The training of scholars may seem, at first view, no part of our Catholic duty. On second thought there is no one who can not understand that without general support the university can not function as it should, that it is to the interest of each individual, no matter how lowly his position may be, to assist in the training of that group of scholars who by their labors in the fields of science, philosophy, and religion will do more to dispel the dark clouds of ignorance and bigotry than a veritable army of men ready to lay down their lives for their beliefs.

I am not quite sure whether we would succeed, should we go out at this time to the American public and seek directly its understanding and appreciation of our position. But I am sure that if we continue to contribute to the upbuilding of the national life those qualities of heart and mind which [27] are found in every true Catholic citizen, that if particularly from our universities men go forth who will loyally do their share in the development of the intellectual and moral life of our country, I am sure that the fog of intolerance which seems to be setting down upon our fair land will soon be dispelled before this glorious sun of understanding; that in the centuries to come this nation will be illumined and go forward to ever loftier heights, led on by the pure light which comes from truth joined with that love which Christ came to bring us here below, which He foretold would bind His brethren together, would be an unfailing sign to the whole world that men were truly Christian.

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Footnote:

* From an Address delivered at the June, 1929 Commencement Exercises of the Cathedral High School, Indianapolis, Ind.

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Source: Msgr. James H. Ryan, "The Religious School: An American Institution," The National Catholic Welfare Council Bulletin 11, no. 3 (Aug. 1929): 11, 27.