How US Catholics fought for their schools

WITH reference to Archbishop Diarmuid Martin’s recent remark about Catholic schools that “pluralism does not mean watering down identity” and recalling some of those great educators of earlier days — Nano Nagle, Catherine McAuley, Edmund Rice and Yorkshire woman Mary Ward — may I take you outside this island to see what has driven people in other lands.

I know about this from the inside as I was a curate in the middle of New York for four years.

Many in Ireland are not aware of this almost unbelievable fact and are astonished when they hear of it... Catholics in the US, when they saw they could get nowhere with the state school system, decided early on to set up their own and put a Catholic school in every parish from coast to coast across America.

When those who did not wish this nationwide project well saw that economic crippling could not stop a determined people, they became alarmed and went to court. The state of Oregon claimed that the need for any kind of school other than that provided by the state had ceased to exist, that these schools were a fatal menace to its system and, of course, ample use was made of the epithets “divisive” and “undemocratic”.

The US supreme court ruled to the contrary and unanimously observed: “The child is not the mere creature of the state. Those who nurture him (sic) and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognise and prepare him for additional obligations.”

This supreme court decision is deemed the Magna Carta of the Catholic school system in the US.

Fr Tom Kelleher

Courceys

Kinsale

Co Cork