Sacrifice and Survival: Identity, Mission, and Jesuit Higher Education in the American South by R. Eric Platt (review)

In one of the lesser-known turning points in the history of American Jesuit Education, on April 20, 1921, the Jesuit provincials from across the country met at Fordham University, in the Bronx, New York, in order to face some hard truths about their schools which they had been reluctant to acknowledge. The Society of Jesus had emerged from its 1773 worldwide suppression only 107 years earlier and it had rapidly rebuilt itself, in spite of continuing persecution, partly by emigrating in national groups – especially French, Irish and German – to America, spreading out across the country, implanting themselves in cities with a parish, plus a “college” which morphed over the years into a university until there are now twenty-eight. Of these, some are soaring and some, like the colleges in R. Eric Platt’s Sacrifice and Survival, just hanging on. In fact, in their zeal, the Jesuits had built too many colleges too quickly, even though compared to American secular state and private universities, their mostly all-Jesuit faculties lacked the intellectual credentials to achieve academic excellence.

On their agenda was the report of N. de Boynes, S.J., visitor of the Province of New Orleans. A Jesuit “visitor” is like an inspector general appointed by headquarters to investigate a problem and report back to Rome. The America Jesuits had not bothered to have their institutions accredited by the state or the national professional associations that set higher education standards. While the rest of the world had divided education into four years of high school and four years of college, the Jesuit course was a seven-year experience which only a few students completed. Now they had to reset their institutions to meet new standards of academic legitimacy.

The committee decided: separate high schools and colleges to separate campuses, the word “college” would refer only to higher education, all would teach the standard Jesuit curriculum, the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius would help establish Jesuit identity, operate with no fewer than 100 students. Physical training would continue and lessons in morality would permeate all class instruction. All Jesuits should attain a terminal degree and publish articles and books.

Professor Platt, struck by the fact that three to five colleges close every year, also noticed that forty-six Catholic colleges had closed in the Southern states. How can this be? So he lines up seven Jesuit institutions – St. Charles College, Grand Coteau, LA (1837-1922); Spring Hill College, Mobile, Alabama (1930-still open); The College of the Immaculate Conception, New Orleans, LA, (1849-1912); St. Mary’s University, Galveston, TX (1854-1922); College of the Sacred Heart, Augusta, GA (1900-1917); Loyola College, New Orleans, LA (1904-1912); Loyola University, New Orleans, LA (1912-still open) – and asks where they went.

His premise is that the problems were related to either identity (curriculum, the reputations of the Jesuits) or “town and gown” relationships. For example, French Jesuits were reluctant to adjust their course offerings to the needs of their constituencies; Catholics were lower middle class, they needed courses that would lead to jobs. Protestant families were happy to have their sons trained in the liberal arts. In communities where Jesuits were maligned as international spies and conspirators, “Catholic” references were soft-pedaled. Location counted; students from New Orleans enrolled in St. Charles College in Grand Coteau took four to five days by train, Mississippi steam boat, and mule wagon to get there. Other obstacles to success included yellow fever, plagues, floods, storms, fires that leveled the buildings, and the Civil War.

All things considered, the delegates at Fordham accepted Father deBoynes’s conclusion that five schools should be sacrificed so that what are today’s Loyola University New Orleans and Spring Hill should thrive. Not all of the others “died,” but lived on in an altered incarnation. Grand Coteau still stands as a Jesuit novitiate and...