The Fourth "R"

As we begin a weeklong celebration of Catholic Schools this Sunday, I am mindful of the tremendous debt that we as a community owe to our Church sponsored parochial schools, high schools, and universities in this country. As both a product of and a long-time collaborator in Catholic education, I am acutely aware of the good they have done in forming our young people as both believers and good citizens.

Franciscans founded the earliest Catholic school in the present territory of the United States at St. Augustine, Florida in 1606. The first generations of Catholic schools grew up in the heavily Catholic Louisiana Territories and Maryland in the early 18th centuries. French Ursuline Sisters (1721, New Orleans) and English and American Jesuits (Georgetown, 1789 and other small schools in Tidewater, Maryland) were among the pioneers to establish schools for the children of Catholic parents.

The Northern States on the Eastern Seaboard were predominantly Protestant, and American public education developed with a decided Protestant bias in the early 19th century. The Irish Potato Famine in the 1840s followed by civil unrest in central, eastern and southern Europe brought huge numbers of Catholic immigrants to this country. Finding the public schools biased against their children, Catholic parents and the hierarchy promoted private parochial schools that would allow for the teaching of Catholic values and morality as well as the “Three Rs.” The addition of the fourth R, namely “Religion,” was met with widespread xenophobia and hate mongering against the Church and its schools. Thomas Nast—the creator of Santa Claus as we know him today—captured this attitude in his 1871 satirical cartoon “The American River Ganges,” showing Catholic bishops in the form of crocodiles invading our shores to consume Protestant children being hurled into the their path by Irish politicians. AI couldn’t have pictured xenophobia better.

Nevertheless, our parochial schools survived. Legal and financial challenges were met. Staffed largely by religious sisters and meagerly paid lay women, the network grew across the country. The Sisters of Mercy, intrepid Irishwomen, opened Sacramento’s first Catholic school in 1857, and now our diocese is served by 43 parish schools and high schools.

When St. Ignatius Parish was founded in 1954, the Parish’s first priority was construction of buildings for St. Ignatius School, staffed then by the Sisters of the Holy Names. It grew briefly to an enrollment of 800, and has now stabilized to about 400. Due to demographic changes and decreased vocations, the Sisters withdrew in 1975, and since then the school has been governed by a lay school board with guidance from the Catholic Schools Department of the Diocese of Sacramento. After 60 years of hard use, our original school buildings were replaced with our new state-of-the-art school in 2019 thanks to the generosity of our parents, alumni, and faithful parishioners.

St. Ignatius School remains our parish’s first and largest apostolate, and we are delighted to salute its faculty, administration, students, and parents in this Catholic Schools Week. We celebrate our school’s academic success, but most of all we treasure our commitment to the “fourth R,” our shared religious commitment to Catholic education, values, and virtues. Likewise, we express our gratitude to our parishioners for your generosity which enables us to continue this holy, transformative work.

Blessings,