Conroy, James C

English

Loyola Marymount University

Catholic Education: A Journal of Inquiryand PracticeVolume 9 | Issue 3 Article 13-1-2006Faith-Based Schools and the State: Catholics inAmerica, France and England, by Harry JudgeJames C. ConroyFollow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/ceThis Book Review is brought to you for free with open access by the School of Education at Digital Commons at Loyola Marymount University andLoyola Law School. It has been accepted for publication in Catholic Education: A Journal of Inquiry and Practice by the journal's editorial board andhas been published on the web by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons at Loyola Marymount University and Loyola Law School. Formore information about Digital Commons, please contact digitalcommons@lmu.edu. To contact the editorial board of Catholic Education: A Journalof Inquiry and Practice, please email CatholicEdJournal@lmu.edu.Recommended CitationConroy, J. C. (2006). Faith-Based Schools and the State: Catholics in America, France and England, by Harry Judge. Journal of CatholicEducation, 9 (3). http://dx.doi.org/10.15365/joce.0903132013FAITH-BASED SCHOOLS AND THE STATE:CATHOLICS IN AMERICA, FRANCE, ANDENGLAND HARRY JUDGESYMPOSIUM BOOKS, 2002$38.00, 278 pagesReviewed by James C. ConroyRecent years have witnessed a resurgence of interest in Catholic schoolingand education. Despite some important structural differences on both sidesof the Atlantic, this interest has been fueled by important questions of fund-ing, which in turn give rise to consequent issues of principle. This contribu-tion to the debate by Harry Judge opens up refreshingly new channels ofexploration and inquiry.Judge develops a historical comparison of the evolution of Catholiceducation in the different political contexts of the United States, France,and England. This comparative method offers us a different heuristic struc-ture for exploring Catholic education in the three jurisdictions. Rather thandeveloping three parallel historical descriptions and subsequently drawingcomparisons, Judge weaves together the three stories of Catholic educationrefracted through the lives and thoughts of key personalities and eventsthrough the 19th and 20th centuries. Thus, the volume is organized into anintroductory chapter, four main sections, and a conclusion. The introducto-ry chapter outlines and justifies Judge’s innovative method, suggestingthat, despite their differences, the three countries share the sense that a crit-ical moment was reached around the turn of the 20th century.Consequently the first section deals with three key figures in Catholic edu-cation: Archbishop John Ireland (American), Emile Combos (French), andRobert Morant (English). Here Archbishop John Ireland is cast as a pivotalfigure in late 19th century Amero-European Catholic culture. Educated inFrance, Ireland became an advocate for Catholic involvement and integra-tion into the life-stream of democratic republicanism and consequently apromoter of the state school and a form of the 1870 English Compromisewhereby the state funded substantial parts of the activity of the Catholic386 Catholic Education/March 2006school. However, events were to overtake Ireland in the Vatican, at home,and, most importantly, in France where the church and state were to end upat loggerheads, due in no small part to the machinations of the radical sec-ularism of Emile Combes. The result was that Ireland’s integrationist viewwould not prevail in America, where the lobby for separate Catholicschooling would grow in intensity resulting in the pattern seen throughoutmost of the 20th century.Combes is the focal character of the next chapter, and one who pushedin the opposite direction from Ireland, with it would seem, more success. Anadvocate of the complete separation of church and state, he would come todecouple the two as Prime Minister during the Third Republic. Like Ireland,Combes was a seminarian, but there the similarity appears to have ended.Combes spent much of his political life as a kind of deist Freemason intenton disentangling the complex set of relations between church and state andensuring that the church (especially its religious congregations) stayed out ofpolitics. The infamous Dreyfus affair was the catalyst for hardening of theRight-Left divide in French politics which enabled Combes to enact seriousand severe anti-clerical laws. In education these were to take the form ofpressing forward with the laicization of what had been heretofore religiousschooling and shifting the balance of power from church to state. Amongother strategies this entailed the confiscation of property, the exercise of sub-stantial control over clergy, and the withdrawal of state support for ecclesi-astically sponsored activities.Robert Morant was to play a very different role in the English context.A civil servant, Morant entered the not uncomplicated world of denomina-tional schooling at the end of the 19th century. His major achievement wasto secure, in the first instance, substantial temporary funding for churchschools while simultaneously integrating them into a national networkfunded through local authorities. This he did against a background of com-plex and competing hostilities towards the idea of continued funding forAnglican and Catholic schools. Regarded by many as a somewhatMachiavellian character, he nevertheless managed to ameliorate the anxi-eties of many in the church. He was, however, to have less success with theFree Church leaders, much less the Liberals who were to take control ofParliament in 1905. These opening forays are followed by three, equally detailed, chapterson three central figures that had a profound effect on shaping the education-al thought patterns which gave form to the later political engagements oftheir successors.Interestingly, the first of these had little enough to do with Catholicismor Catholic education per se. Horace Mann is seen as one of the pivotal fig-BOOK REVIEWS 387ures, if not the seminal figure, in the evolution of American public educa-tion. The public education which Mann was to play a leading role in shap-ing was, in his image, to be founded on generalized non-sectarian Protestantprinciples. It was precisely this formulation which was to generate theCatholic reaction and thus begin the creation of a substantial separateschool system.The French figure so influential in the shaping of education wasFrancois Guizot of Modern who, like Mann, was deeply committed to theidea that education represented the best route to emancipation. The lastmember of this triumvirate was Bishop Ullathorne. Born into a recusantEnglish Catholic family, Ullathorne had to come to terms with a new bur-geoning Irish Catholic population. Like their North American relations theywere, on the whole, impoverished and illiterate. Education was forUllathorne a necessary prerequisite for maintaining moral and religious pro-bity among poor Catholics. However, paying for this would not prove easy,and Ullathorne was always suspicious of the price to be paid for state fund-ing. Despite being overruled in the end by Cardinal Manning, Ullathorne’sconcept about the price to be paid for the public financial support of Catholicschools was to continue to influence the somewhat fudged church and staterelations of the late 19th and 20th centuries.Judge’s study then moves forward into the 20th century and examinesthe three primary forums where church and state relations in educationhave been marked out. In the United States, this was to be the courts wherethe arguments for and against Church involvement in publicly funded edu-cation have raged back and forth for most of the century. In the Frenchcase, the platform for broadening this ever contentious question has beenthe streets. Here the government has continuously had to formulate legis-lation with a careful eye to the competing claims of public opinion.England has of course been quite different having always preferred to con-duct delicate negotiations, if not exactly in smoke-filled rooms, then cer-tainly in the corridors of power. Legislation on church and state relationsproved to be no exception.The final section is concerned with describing the position of Catholiceducation in the three countries today and has a concluding chapter whichraises some contrasts and some cautions.This is a good book, replete with interesting and challenging explication,discussion, and analysis. It offers a quite different perspective on a well-trod-den discussion. In doing so, Judge weaves a rich and interesting tapestrybringing into focus a variety of seemingly disparate strands which turn outto be more connected than might have been assumed initially. The finalchapter offers tantalizing comparisons and raises important questions about388 Catholic Education/March 2006the sustainability of Catholic education in the various polities.There are some minor weaknesses in this study. One is the tendency inthe commentary to overuse the label, sectarian. In a world where sectarianattracts pejorative connotations, it is inadvisable to use it generically ofschools that are religiously denominated. This tendency extends to the use ofthe term subsidy to describe the funding of church schools. Whether suchfunding is a subsidy or a distribution of public funds is itself an importantpoint of disagreement. A further minor shortcoming is to be seen here andthere where Judge implies that traditional Christian groups, especially in theUnited States, are opposed to the extension of funding to non-Christian tra-ditions, but such claims are assertion and are not underpinned by any partic-ular evidence.These are minor criticisms. Despite its having been published some 3years ago, this book will remain for some time an important source for thoseinterested in Catholic education.James C. Conroy is professor of religious and philosophical education and dean of the Faculty ofEducation at the University of Glasgow, Scotland.BOOK REVIEWS 389

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