Cross Purposes: Pierce v. Society of Sisters and the Struggle over Compulsory Public Education

CHAPTER 12. Delicate and Difficult Questions

CHAPTER 12 Delicate and Difficult Questions To Archbishop Christie, the choice of plaintiff could not be more obvious . The Society of the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary maintained the oldest and most extensive system of Catholic schools in the state. The Sisters owned six schools throughout Oregon, including St. Mary’s Academy in Portland, and schooled over 865 students. The Sisters also maintained, but did not own, six additional schools with over one thousand students attending. St. Mary’s Academy, as the oldest, continuously operated Catholic high school in the state, bore a particularly distinguished history. St. Mary’s Academy opened its doors on November 6, 1859, the same year that Oregon became a state. Oregon archbishop Francis Norbert Blanchet found inspiration for the school while traveling by horseback to visit Catholics in small towns and wilderness throughout the state. Blanchet observed the poor or nonexistent education opportunities and encountered scores of orphans, the smallest victims of the harsh frontier existence. The archbishop purchased a block in bustling downtown Portland, which counted among its population of 2,900 many struggling families who came to Oregon after failing in the California gold‹elds. Archbishop Blanchet then set off for the village of Longueuil, Canada, near Montreal, to persuade nuns from the order of the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary to start a school in Portland. 125 The sisters responded to the archbishop’s heartbreaking tales of homeless children orphaned in the wilderness. Although most of them did not know English, twelve sisters, led by Mother Superior Alphonse, embarked on September 15, 1859, on a monthlong journey to Portland. The sisters traveled by rail to New York City, where they stopped long enough to purchase a square piano and send it to Portland by way of Cape Horn. The nuns then boarded the steamer Star of the West, bound for the Isthmus of Panama. They crossed the isthmus by rail, then sailed for Portland, where they arrived , exhausted by seasickness and homesickness, on October 21. They spent their ‹rst night in Portland in a dilapidated frame house that was bordered by dense forest, ‹lthy with garbage from vagabonds, drafty with chill autumn winds, and wet with leaks from the relentless rain. The Portland newspaper greeted their arrival by commenting, “What a foothold Romanism is gaining in our state!” Only two weeks later, on a gray November 6, St. Mary’s Academy welcomed its ‹rst six pupils—three Catholics, two Jews, and one Episcopalian. Thus started a tradition of administering to a diverse student body from varying religious and ethnic heritages, or as the Portland Daily Herald described St. Mary’s students, “young ladies . . . of all European nations, making a most cosmopolitan throng . . . , all mingled together and making a most interesting study for the lover of ethnology.”1 Ten days later, the school brought in its ‹rst boarder, a seven-year-old orphaned girl. People in town peeked in the windows of the school and inquired if the sisters were Indians , for many had never seen a religious habit. The ‹rst harp and the ‹rst sewing machine in Oregon made their way to the school around Cape Horn. The curriculum spanned the full range of academic subjects, including sciences , art, and music. St. Mary’s prospered and quickly became an educational force in the community. The order opened new schools throughout Oregon on almost an annual basis through the 1860s, including elementary and high schools and, eventually, a college. Archbishop Christie claimed that the prominence and economic value of the educational network maintained by the Sisters would make the order an effective plaintiff. Judge Kavanaugh saw legal bene‹ts to the selection. The order had ‹led articles of incorporation with the state on November 9, 1880. As a registered Oregon corporation, the Sisters stood in a contractual relationship with the state. Kavanaugh intended to argue that the School Bill caused the state to impair its obligation of contract—in violation of Article I, Section 10, of the federal constitution—by destroying the plaintiff’s 126 cross purposes educational mission and economic worth. He explained to Mother Mary Flavia, “One of the arguments advanced . . . is . . . a contract cannot be annulled unless both parties consent to the act of annulling it.”He argued that through the School Bill, “this contract has been broken without the consent of the Sisters, which is unconstitutional.”2 Kavanaugh brought...