ABSTRACT
The study of Catholic schooling has yielded strikingly different answers to such questions over time. Until recently, as Vincent Lannie has pointed out, the study of Catholic education has been characterized by triumphalism and inward directedness. Catholic schooling in the English-speaking American colonies was slow in starting—only in Pennsylvania did Catholic education make much headway. The shaping influence of ethnicity and religion is also shown in the varying pattern of school formation in several of America’s major Catholic centers. The external forces of anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic prejudice provided, too, a motivation similar to that of the earlier era. As late as 1925 the US Supreme Court was required to rule on an Oregon law requiring public school attendance by all children. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, the nature of the attacks against public schooling by Catholic authorities had shifted.
