The Catholics Do Better

Protestantism, which holds that each individual must seek direct comprehension of God's word, necessarily insisted on the increase of education to that end. Protestantism powered the drive for schools and colleges of the American colonies and the young American republic.

Protestant clergymen took the lead in founding the ivy-league colleges: Harvard (1636), Yale (1701), Princeton (1746), Dartmouth (1769). Between 1830 and 1860 U.S. Methodists founded 34 colleges, U.S. Baptists 21. Clergymen dominated the faculties, often the boards of trustees. By the mid-19th Century, many of these same clergymen were teaching the Sunday school that became as American as the little red schoolhouse.

But with the 20th Century, these Protestants had largely abdicated before the vast proliferation of profane education.

Protestant Weakness No. 1. In last week's Christian Century, John Paul Williams, professor of religious literature and history at Mt. Holyoke, pointed to this clerical abdication as the No. 1 weakness of Protestantism. Wrote Teacher Williams:

P: "At 'Harvard and the University of Chicago, at Wesleyan and Oberlin, associations of clergymen are no longer looked to either for support or for direction. They are but one of the minor pressure groups with which the administration must deal. . . . Yet suggesting to the average clergyman that one of his major obligations is support of the religious program of the nearest college would evoke but little more action from him than the suggestion that he give his support to the college football team. . . .

P: "This dodging of educational responsibility on the part of Protestant clergymen has had alarming results. . . . Less than half the Protestant children in the United States are even enrolled in religious schools. And the number is declining. . . .

P: "The superiority of the Roman Catholic Church as an institution is nowhere more clearly in evidence than in the Roman Catholic schools. . . . Half of the Catholic population of elementary and secondary school age attend parochial schools. There are twice as many full-time teachers in American Catholicism as parish priests (76,679 teachers; 38,451 priests). . . .

P: "Protestant pastors must begin to put as much thought and energy into Protestant education as Catholic pastors put into Catholic education--or yield religious primacy in America."

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