‘A Happy Solution to a Difficult Problem’

Abstract

The issue of separate Catholic schools has been a point of historical friction in many parts of the world, and highlights the mythologies surrounding Catholic-Protestant relations in Scotland. The journey of Catholic — and Episcopalian — Church schools from their refusal to join Scotland’s state system in 1872, to their entry in 1918, is fascinating and illuminating. Whilst relatively little has been published on Episcopalian schools, there is a broad and expanding literature on Catholic education. Missing from most accounts, however, is an explanation of Catholic educational separatism. James Treble, for example, dispensed with Catholicism’s ‘conscious repudiation’ of State education in 1872 by noting that it contained two impulses. The first was an emphasis on a Catholic ‘atmosphere’; the second — which Treble privileged — was suspicion that the new state system would either prioritise Presbyterianism or, at worst, promote religious apathy and, ultimately, secularism.¹ Yet, Catholic educational separatism can only be understood in the context of two facts: that separatism was pursued in many other spheres; and that Catholic separatism was pursued globally. Nineteenth-century Catholicism developed ‘a vast and complex system of parallel institutions’ including schools, labour and business organisations, youth movements, and — in some states — political parties.²