The Ugly Little Secret
Garvey, John
Bad schools and bad teachers have, best college preparatory schools- kind of poor children with behavior prob- nevertheless, done great harm, as "triumphs," he felt for...
...On the one hand, by such to a better life beyond the classroom...
...If bad breath Yet on the lower level there are stuffy assumption, so reminiscent of the isn't sin enough-and what could be teachers who keep trying and caring and Prohibition era, that opposition to abor- worse in our era?-this "diabolical making a difference...
...As a survivor of sixth and some Catholics from the new doctrine of way abortion is regarded, because the seventh grades at St...
...It is intellectually false to look tian purposes...
...I heard it vicariously," said a AN OLD QUARREL has been revived, There were, for example, ugly refergraduate in English from Haverford to and it's about time...
...Greeley gives details in fessions of a Conservative, characterizes about, let us say, South Africa...
...so, unfortunately, does zation about international socialism thought for a long time that he would be much of the past Catholic record...
...He permissible once again to use their Mother Jones, at the end of a review of told of a student he had taught ten years Catholicism against writers and politi- Barbara Grizutti Harrison's fascinating ago now going to medical school and of cians who weren't quite in tune with Book, Visions of Glory: A History and a students selected by some of the nation's Right Thinking...
...Certainly some graduates from even the best schools do them little credit...
...Memory of Jehovah's Witnesses, the Commonweal: 520 normally perceptive Joe Klein compares will wave away a lot of blood on St...
...by some Catholic leaders to child labor Harrison with Alfred Kazin (also under Francis of Assisi's account, while hum- laws, the backing of anti-contraceptive review) and finds her wanting: "She ming a chorus of "That was all another legislation, and an attitude toward cenbecomes a Catholic...
...Catholic opposition to aborof Harrison's thought were accurate, and tory of the First Vatican Council...
...Vati- past in a Chicago Tribune review of The planning to be a writer, when asked what can II and Kennedy's election were Vast Majority: A Journey to the World's contemporary writers he read or ad- thought to have done it in...
...James Coleman, those who are con- can make great differences in children's Contrary to the pessimistic scholarly cerned with education have come to be- lives...
...which tries to do that sort of pushing...
...This Mitchell S. Ross, of Garry Wills's Conmatter if your heart is in the right place wasn't paranoia...
...The issue is consentence that gets carried along by itself, was applied originally to a debate on the fused further by the inconsistency of a railroad train sentence which lets one papacy) saw what an ungodly alliance most of the Catholic hierarchy on other word suggest another until a rhythm is Christianity and coercion made...
...To look only at ence...
...A later, un- cantly, under lay editorship...
...picky to mention these things...
...But I can't forget the fact intelli- statement that the church has acted as a make anti-Catholicism a unique gent adults once felt the need to ask force for ignorance and oppression, just phenomenon...
...In some Catholic colleges has given us gulags and the boat people...
...And a graduate of a well-known began to cast an envious eye on blacks from comparing your own affluence to Pennsylvania college, now teaching writ- and Jews and then, deus ex machina (the the starvation of another is not a simple ing, talked to me of "the, you know, machina being the one rolled out by An- recognition of the facts, but must be the relationship between he and I." (And drew Greeley and Michael Novak), came result of education at the hands of how many there are who will think it the ethnic issue: the realization dawned nuns-all that guilt, you know...
...A woman teacher thought that problems to 10 percent in four years, and Early Age forcibly reminded us...
...The general tone of the place is the reports on this side of the water this is lieve that schools in poor neighborhoods deciding factor...
...In Hispanics said to a Boston reporter...
...ent is that for a good hunk of our history Gide was read, if at all, only in order to But having said either thing you are far ecclesiastical authorities acted under the see where he went wrong-it was as- from having said anything very imporassumption that the coercive powers sumed that nothing was to be learned tant about either Catholicism or available to them could be used for Chris- there...
...Catholics, Poor...
...While it is narrow of that the Index was nonsense and acted at Torquemada as a representative' anti-Catholics to look only at the accordingly...
...Any institution will have more than a though it would have about the same de- A reliance on submission, external few black spots after a couple of gree of accuracy...
...which was force for repression and ignorance in the Cathars knew that it was wrong to shed careless of civil liberties...
...This is the rhetoric of prejudice, the Council Pius IX was busy excom- more of the same old thing, papists trying which allows an ordinarily careful writer municating Catholic liberals who to push their opinions into law, though of to slip into the comfortable cadences of a suggested that the papal States were not course they are hardly the only group received idea: what can Klein mean by necessarily what the Gospel was about...
...after the life-related issues, like nuclear war and exhausted, none of it having much to do First Vatican Council, during which he capital punishment...
...There is some truth in the and it is those awkward times which pened...
...JOHN GARVEY 28 September 1979: 521...
...Agnes I know what papal infallibility led only to a demand issue is much too important to degenerate he means about ignorance and repres- for submission, thanks to which we now into rhetoric, to allow us the luxury of sion...
...but where, outside the world, does have the Old Catholic Church...
...a lot of the time...
...Barbara Harrison would have blood in the name of Christ...
...This is the kind of Acton (whose "power tends to corrupt" to the size of a slogan...
...Bigotry does have a with thought...
...The church had a much older un- of Catholicism, and they are helped bothered if the same, thing were said derground life, which was not quite like along by those Catholics who see disloyabout a black or a Jew...
...priests for permission to read books on' as it would be true to say that socialism What makes the Catholic case differ- the Index...
...only mildly envious...
...Jencks on their effectiveness as social organiza- lieved possible-especially in Sepis frequently quoted: "Variations in what tions...
...Moreover, a heartening British began on time, teachers who gave praise ills...
...Probably, but be- bloody use of coercion-one with awful It is this background which colors libside the point, even if Klein's reduction consequences-can be found in the his- eral opinion...
...Francis and the heretical rage over The Moon Is Blue...
...nevertheless, people were Catholic, and then wonder where the hell Crusades and the Inquisition, ignoring hurt by this sort of thing, as they were by Francis of Assisi, Teresa of Avila, saint$ and countless acts of charity and problems which weren't such in-house Thomas More, Maximilian Kolbe, and heroism, Catholics can still be found who concerns-for example, the opposition John XXIII came from...
...ABIGAIL McCARTHY children learn at a school depend largely on variations in what they bring to school, not on variations in what schools offer them...
...What does on a lot of Catholics that Wasps still A more recent Tribune review by mastery of your language and literature wouldn't have us on our terms...
...Before tion looks from one point of view like it isn't...
...Of several minds: John Garvey For a variety of reasons teachers have lost status and there seem to be many incompetent among them...
...For the her seventh and eighth grade students at the same time, brought the children last ten years or more we have accepted welcomed challenge, and that teaching originally in the bottom rank in aptitude two contradictory views of what the had met her expectations of helping them tests to a point at which they did as well in schools can do...
...I've enjoyed tion was a Romanist plot...
...It passes, because this is an lobbied against the definition of papal lot to do with the current acceptable acceptable prejudice...
...Images where forty percent of the students are agent or not I don't know, but it became that just happen to leap to mind...
...The findings showed what we Americans really hope for from can do little for the students until the that the effects of the schools depended our schools and that we have always beneighborhoods are changed...
...Only that An Ugly Little Secret: Anti-Catholicism Wills as both a skillful artist and a they indicate a lack of curiosity and an in North American...
...Whether the dialectician" (still Wills) is also accused teaching," a man in a junior high school abortion issue was the main uncorking of raising "his Jesuitical horns...
...squirming seminarian" whose columns ;r--)enviousness to information that may As if this weren't favor enough, along are "reminiscent of Jesuit schoolmasters ay,ply in the latter case as well...
...Bad schools and bad teachers have, best college preparatory schools- kind of poor children with behavior probnevertheless, done great harm, as "triumphs," he felt for an inner city lems as School B reduced the behavior Jonathan Kozol's horrifying Death At An school...
...Many au- Spanish Civil War the only American us believe the Church has given her the thoritative agents of the institutional Catholic publications to oppose Franco security to doubt safely, and she has church did not, and they killed the were Commonweal, The Catholic achieved a state of grace...
...Even if that Cathars...
...Lord reducing something as tragic as abortion he expect to find them...
...School A drawing from the same tember...
...Until rather ences to Michael Harrington's inability me recently, meaning, I suppose, indi- recently you'd have thought that to unshackle himself from his Catholic rectly...
...She manages to skip place and time...
...the surface landscape...
...You can apply the easy liberal lit- Lefebvre and other traditionalists are the darkness is what bigots do, in the case mus test for prejudice (would you be loyal...
...A student from Ohio Wesleyan anti-Catholicism was a dead issue...
...in less favorable circumstances Worker and, for a brief time, the New were true, I suspect that a super- they might very well have killed Francis, World of Chicago-two of them, signifirationalist like Alfred Kazin would be as they killed Savonarola...
...This is the church to which spots look even darker...
...During the world...
...came the abortion controversy and the with intolerable breath...
...The argument of the reviewer was mired, could only think of Thomas B. settling into the general American bland, that any sense of shame which comes Costain...
...without the under- alty in any criticism of the institution or Some times it doesn't apply so easily, ground Vatican II wouldn't have hap- its leaders...
...A similar generali- infallibility, he lived an isolate life, and anti-Catholicism...
...On the other, influenced by such study, "Fifteen Thousand Hours," and expected success, and teachers who educators as Christopher Jencks and proves that good teachers in good schools planned with and supported each other...
...wouldn't make it in Mother Jones, excommunicated...
...final examinations as did the top rank of means as forced busing, we have sought Such good teachers deserve good School B. School A had classes which to use them to remedy our worst social schools...
...When it's your side, obedience and the appearance of order thousand years, especially wherever it you qualify...
...Both the sorship (remember Cardinal Spellman's right past the Church's brutal history as a orthodox St...
...It is "a force for ignorance and repression in when the Council ended, the dissent of too bad that this history has affected the the world...
...Michener takes the arguable stance that many of the THE UGLY LITTLE SECRET unfit came into the profession to avoid ANTI-CATHOLICISM, WITH QUALIFICATIONS the draft...
...The Catholic underground knew socialism...
...In view of the And I will, right here...
...Anti- Council of Trent until the Second Vati- claims made by Catholicism, the black Catholicism is a prejudice with a differ- can Council...
...It sure was...
...was a feature of Catholic life from the allies itself with power...
Vol. 106 • September 1979 • No. 17
