Reply to Reviews on GP and Landon

Forum Index » Private & Independent Schools

Reply to "Reviews on GP and Landon"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The Irish are different from most Catholics because they share the Anglo Saxon history with WASP’s that have historically been the power group in this country.  On one hand, the Irish despise the WASP’s who scorned them as a lesser group when they arrive en masse in this country.  On the other hand, the Irish wanted to be included among the WASP elite – and had a plausible path to do so since they are similar in many respects.  To be accepted among the WASP’s the Kennedy type Irish Catholics ever disassociated form the church or adopted a “lite” version of Catholicism that is hard to distinguish from the teachings of the Church of England (the Andrew Greely version of Catholicism that you’ll see in many Irish dominated parishes). The Irish Catholic/WASP interaction has been complex and manifests in two distinct ways: the insular Irish Catholics (one of whom is trolling this thread) and the WASP wannabe Catholics. The trend in recent years has been for Irish Catholics to leave the church in greater numbers than any other ethnicity and that trend should continue.

For persons with continental European heritage, the Anglo Saxons are not particularly impressive and it’s very unlikely that you’ll find an Italian Catholic, a French Catholic or a Central European Catholic that views the English as something to aspire to and the Irish Catholic obsession with the Protestants is fairly humorous.   As a non-Irish Catholic with European background, I see both Georgetown Prep and Gonzaga as schools geared more toward indoctrinating another generation of insular Irish Americans and not so much as schools geared toward traditional Catholic education.  That said, it seems that these two schools are not unique among American “Catholic” schools.  
[/quote]

Until the arrival of the Irish in the 1840's and 1850's, Roman Catholicism was just another Christian sect. It was the Irish who spearheaded the movement for separate Catholic schools and separate Catholic clubs and Catholic everything.[/quote]

The number of Catholics in the US grew tremendously in that time frame due to 1) westward expansion into majority catholic territories and 2) European immigration.  There was an equal amount of Irish and German immigration in the mid-1800's followed by Italian and Polish immigration.  Germans placed the greatest emphasis on education of any of these groups - introducing the concept of kindergarten to America.  Each group was insular in some ways, but it is true the Irish placed a greater emphasis on preserving a separate Catholic identity.  Many German immigrants were socialist or at least strong proponents of what we would today call "Big Government" - so they would ten to push for pubic schooling.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics