"Supported Principally by the Funds of Protestants": Wheeling Female Academy and the Making of the Catholic Community in Antebellum Western Virginia
In antebellum America, no Catholic institution elicited a more mixed response from the nation's Protestant majority than did the convent school. Catholic clergy and women religious attempted to capitalize on this ambivalence by establishing more than 200 female academies throughout the United S...
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
|
| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
American Catholic Historical Society
2003
|
| In: |
American catholic studies
Year: 2003, Volume: 114, Issue: 1, Pages: 41-79 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | In antebellum America, no Catholic institution elicited a more mixed response from the nation's Protestant majority than did the convent school. Catholic clergy and women religious attempted to capitalize on this ambivalence by establishing more than 200 female academies throughout the United States by 1860. Close study of convent schools, therefore, can serve as a valuable window on Protestant/Catholic relations in the nineteenth century. In particular, it illuminates the minority side of sectarian contact -the antebellum Catholic encounter with Protestantism — with Catholics acting as subjects in their own right rather than simply as the objectified "Other" of the Protestant imagination. This article examines the reception to Catholic female academies at the local level by focusing on the founding decade of one school on the urban frontier of western Virginia — the Wheeling Female Academy (WFA). When planning this school, Richard Whelan, then Bishop of Richmond, anticipated that its foundation would attract not only Protestant support but also hostility. Ultimately, Whelan proved an accurate forecaster on both counts. Establishing the WFA did spark both conflict and cooperation between Catholics and non-Catholics. On the one hand, its presence spurred some local civic and religious leaders to erect a rival boarding school as competition. On the other hand, its prosperity depended on an ability to enroll a majority of Protestant pupils. Indeed, tuition from non-Catholic families supported not only the WFA but also its convent, thereby permitting the nuns to engage in unpaid educational and spiritual services to the city's Catholic population. Thus Protestant dollars and good will filtered through the WFA and contributed indirectly, but critically, to the development of the nascent Catholic community in antebellum Wheeling. |
|---|---|
| ISSN: | 2161-8534 |
| Reference: | Errata "Erratum: "Supported Principally by the Funds of Protestants": Wheeling Female Academy and the Making of the Catholic Community in Antebellum Western Virginia (2003)"
|
| Contains: | Enthalten in: American catholic studies
|