The Crisis of Western Education (The Works of Christopher Dawson)

VII. Catholic Education and Culture in America

vii Catholic Education and Culture in America We have seen how the american educational system represents the culmination of the age-long development of Western education which has now become universal in scope and worldwide in its influence. it rivals the educational system of the soviet union in offering scientific and technological instruction to the members of the new nationalities and of the more backward cultures from indonesia to West africa, and therefore may be seen as an indispensable instrument for the creation of a free world. But in one important respect it has departed from its Western origins and has become similar to its Communist and totalitarian rival. as in russia it has become almost completely secularized and leaves little place for those religious studies which were the original raison d’être of the Western university. The separation of Church and state which was originally a purely political measure has been extended to the educational field and has resulted in the exclusion of religion from the domain of public education. nevertheless, as i mentioned in the last chapter, the principle of freedom of education is deeply rooted in the american tradition, and this has enabled the religious minorities to maintain their own educational institutions alongside of the public schools and the state universities . as a rule the independent Protestant schools and colleges have gradually conformed to the secular pattern of modern american education . But in the case of the Catholics this is not so. in the course of time they have created an independent educational system extending from the primary school to the university and covering the whole of 68 Catholic Education and Culture 69 the united states with the exception of the so-called “Bible Belt” in the deep south, where the whole population remains solidly Protestant. The building up of this independent educational system is an essential part of the growth of that new american Catholicism which is such a characteristic feature of, modern america. What makes this development so paradoxical is that it is, so to speak, the by-product of the social and political expansion of Protestantism in the new World, so that today the influence of the Catholicism of Protestant america has come to outweigh, in importance the Catholicism of Catholic america. from the beginning, from the time when Columbus landed in the Bahamas , the Catholic Church has played a leading, part in the discovery and settlement of america, not only in south america but in the north also—from florida to California and from the mouth of the Mississippi to the Great Lakes. But all these centuries of effort and missionary achievement did not create the american Church that we know. The conquerors and the explorers, the missionaries and the converts, represent one side of the Catholic history in the new World, but it is the other side that is responsible for everything that we think of as american Catholicism, and that side is represented by the church of the Catholic immigrants who entered the purely Protestant culture of the english colonies and the states that were their successors, gradually creating a diaspora, a network of Catholic minorities throughout the whole of the united states. This movement extended with the western advance of the american nation and, as it advanced, it incorporated and swallowed up the older Catholic communities, which owed their existence to the other earlier movements of french and spanish origin. The one exception to this process was the little colonial angloamerican Church of Maryland. its numbers were never large, and throughout the colonial period its existence depended entirely on the ministry of the Jesuits of the english province, of whom some 185 came to america in the first 140 years of Maryland’s existence. But its importance is out of proportion to its size, since it provides a vital historical link with the native english tradition of Catholicism and with the native american tradition of english culture, and at the time of the revolution it gave Catholics a modest share in the foundation of the united 70 The Crisis of Western Education states through the participation of some of its representatives, like the Carrolls. apart from this narrow thread of historical continuity with the english colonial past, american Catholicism owes everything—even its existence—to the immigrants—first to the french who left europe and the West indies at the time of the revolution, then to the irish...