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The search for the answer leads into sociology as much as religion. U.S. Catholics came mainly from Europe's humblest classes, and in America were "foreigners" struggling for security in a hostile society. American priests seemed even more foreign to the dominant Protestant society, in turn saw themselves as protectors of their flock against the moral and intellectual corruption that was all around. Their own hard-won learning was something to be passed along by rote and discipline, not challenged or enlarged by free inquiry. The stifling effects persisted well into the 20th century, even with millions of American Catholics two and three generations away from their immigrant origins and tens of thousands able to afford college. When "Americanization" might have been expected to set in, it began with the least scholarly practices of secular schools. The result was a blend, in one Catholic critic's words, of "Thomism and the split T."
Huge Effort. Canon Law 1374 says: "Catholic children must not attend non-Catholic, neutral or mixed schools, that is, those which are also open to non-Catholics." In practice, this is not fully possible in the Protestant U.S. Nearly half of the nation's Catholic grade and high school children and 60% of its Catholic collegians attend non-Catholic institutions. With some 10,000 Catholics, for example, New York University (enrollment: 43,000) has been called "the largest Catholic university in the country."
Yet the Catholic school effort is huge, the biggest complex of private education in the world. In higher education, it consists of 267 campuses, including 31 universities, enrolling 322,000 students (about 8% of all U.S. college enrollment). These colleges are fed by 12,700 grade and high schools enrolling 5,300,000 students—one out of eight U.S. schoolchildren.
Few Phi Bete Keys. Few secular colleges can match Catholic education at its Latin-and-Greek best: the "pure" B.A. offered at many Jesuit campuses (see box). But overall, Catholic colleges weigh light on the U.S. academic scales. There is no Catholic equivalent of Amherst, Oberlin, Reed or Swarthmore, let alone Harvard, Yale or Princeton. Notre Dame itself is not yet among the top schools.
One gauge of quality among the nation's colleges and universities is a Phi Beta Kappa chapter. Whereas 167 secular campuses are empowered to award a Phi Beta Kappa key, only three Catholic colleges can (Catholic University, the College of St. Catherine in St. Paul, and—beginning next month—Fordham). Another gauge is Rhodes scholarships for study at Oxford: of the 1,670 awarded in the past 57 years, students at Catholic colleges have won just 15, including five at Notre Dame. Catholic colleges do not produce enough doctoral candidates, either clerical or lay, to replenish their own faculties. In Woodrow Wilson fellowships for graduate study by prospective professors, Catholic schools do better: Notre Dame has 78, St. Louis University 36, Fordham 28—against Yale's 132, Harvard's 142, Princeton's 222.
Some of the trouble is money. The average Catholic college has 300 or 400 students, scant cash for science facilities or even faculty pay. This is particularly true of women's colleges, which heavily outnumber those for men.