Not only are modern Catholic schools in the US “not free”, many if not most of them are straight up unattainable for even many financially secure families, much less the poor.
Exactly, that’s one of the big points I was trying to make earlier. Not only are many modern Catholic schools highly expensive, they often have onerous admissions requirements that “poor students” would hardly ever be expected to meet.
Session 5 of the Council of Trent (
ewtn.com/library/COUNCILS/TRENT5.HTM) provides in Chapter 1:
…that in those churches in which there exists a prebend or a benefice with an obligation attached, or other income by whatever name it may be known, set aside for instructors in sacred theology, the bishops, archbishops, primates, and other ecclesiastical superiors of those localities compel, even by a reduction of their revenues, those who hold such prebend, benefice or income, to expound and interpret the Holy Scriptures, either personally if they are competent, otherwise by a competent substitute to be chosen by the bishops, archbishops, primates, or other superiors of those places.
So, not only were churches supposed to set aside funding for schools, they were actually expected to
cut funding to other programs in order to keep the schools operating! With regards to churches unable to afford such advanced pedagogical arrangements, it provides that:
Churches whose annual revenues are scanty and where the number of clergy and people is so small that instruction in theology cannot be conveniently had therein, may have at least a master, to be chosen by the bishop with the advice of the chapter, to teach grammar gratuitously to clerics and other poor students,[27] so that afterwards they may with the help of God pass on to the study of Holy Scripture. For this purpose let the revenues of some simple benefice be assigned to that master of grammar,[28] which he shall receive so long as he is engaged in teaching
Since the Council of Trent was in the 16th century, well past the founding of the modern university system with bachelor’s degrees, master’s degrees, etc., it seems that universities are also not what are being spoken of here.
The Tridentine decree even specifies a procedure for selecting
teachers for these free schools, and nowhere in that procedure is anything mentioned about selecting the teachers from among graduates of Catholic high schools or universities (interesting omission?), so the relationship, if any, between these schools and modern-day Catholic schools and universities remains unclear even when it could have easily been mentioned, for example by saying that free school instructors must either have graduated from a Catholic university or from a local church-based Lateran-Tridentine free school.
Am I completely misunderstanding the purpose of these decrees? Is “poor students” actually a code word for “rich children whose parents can afford to send them to the best Catholic schools, but they are poor in spirit” and there never were any literally free schools that did not charge money? If they really did exist as written, then presumably they existed at least until the time of the Council of Trent and possibly slightly beyond that - so could I call a Catholic parish that actually dates back to the 14th century (in somewhere like, say, Bavaria or Italy that has been heavily Catholic for ages and where there are actually churches that old) and ask them in what year the last Lateran-Tridentine free school sessions were held, and if they are still being held, how to register for classes/enroll?
For what it’s worth, I am very interested in the history of education and especially archaic, obsolete, or alternative “pathways”, so detailed trivia about these canons or the history of Catholic education is very welcome!
