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  • Teach Me to Be Generous: The First Century of Regis High School in New York City by Anthony D. Andreassi, C.O
  • Raymond A. Schroth S.J.
Teach Me to Be Generous: The First Century of Regis High School in New York City. By Anthony D. Andreassi, C.O. (New York: Fordham University Press. 2014. Pp. xviii, 250. $35.00. ISBN 978-0-8232-5633-4.)

There is a private joke among New York Jesuits that you can always tell whether a fellow Jesuit went to Regis. He’ll tell you right away. This little glimmer of ego is understandable; for more than 100 years Regis High School has been unique: entrance is highly competitive, and it is free. In this centennial history, Oratorian priest Anthony D. Andreassi, who teaches history at Regis, lifts the veil from the mystique and reveals how Regis is just another Jesuit high school and how it is very different. In an introduction he puts the school in the context of the history of Jesuit education in America, introducing Regis as “the first freestanding Jesuit high school founded in the United States” (p. 1). He then navigates through decades of economic peril and evolving identity. [End Page 430]

Regis owes its existence to one very rich and prominent Catholic family led by Hugh J. Grant—a product of Tammany Hall with a reputation for integrity who attended St. Francis Xavier on 14th Street and Columbia Law School, and served as mayor of New York from 1889 to 1893. In 1895 he and socialite Julia Murphy, daughter of Catholic Senator Edward Murphy Jr. (D–NY), celebrated their wedding in the family’s plush Washington home, with the permission of Cardinal James Gibbons. Julia persuaded her husband to both give up politics and shave his heavy black beard. In their mansion at 261 West 73rd Street, they raised three children. But Grant’s death in 1910 and an inheritance of $9.2 million brought Julia into the circle of David Hearn, S.J., the pastor of St. Ignatius Loyola Church on Park Avenue who had long dreamed of founding a high school for the poor. He became her adviser.

So on September 14, 1914, 240 Catholic young men (joined by another thirty-nine in February 1915) came from their modest homes and faced the standard Jesuit curriculum of the time: Latin (twice a day), English, algebra, geography, Christian doctrine (only once a week), and elocution. Later Greek was added, crowding science out of the curriculum. By 1918, they produced their first full-scale play, Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 1, and continued with a Shakespeare play every year for twenty years. The football record was weak: in 1920 the team lost to Brooklyn Prep 61–0 and in 1930, to Fordham Prep 52–0. In the late 1930s the Jesuit Charles Taylor, in his master’s thesis at Saint Louis University, attributed Regis’ success to its classical curriculum, spiritual formation, and physical and recreational activities. Taylor rejected the “radical egalitarianism” of Jacksonian democracy and held that the Jesuit tradition is to educate the “natural, intellectual aristocracy” (p. 59). He also wondered why, after careful selection, more than half of the students dropped out.

In tracing Regis’ history, Andreassi piles on the statistics. In the 1930s 12 percent of graduates had religious vocations. Among other graduates, lawyers predominated, followed by civil servants, teachers, accountants, and physicians. In 1964 four men entered the seminary; in 1973 not one. In a chapter that should have been titled “Jesuits Behaving Badly,” Jesuits with Roman influence fought Julia’s determination to fund Regis rather than their project, a seminary in Yonkers. When one griped at a curia meeting that American boys are “too proud to go to a free high school” (p. 66), Julia nearly collapsed. Following her death in 1944, her son Hugh and other family members continued their support. In the 1960s and 1970s, under Robert Newton, S.J., a new “freedom” reigned, with features such as slideshows of Vietnam at Mass, hymns written by students, more science, and music appreciation. Greek was down, and Chinese was up. First-year students were no longer required to stand during...

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