[afraidfortherepublic]

The whole Catholic school system was started because of anti Catholic discrimination in the public schools.

[Brugmansian]

I would put it this way: mandatory public education was passed in order to break Catholic kids from their faith. The schools were Protestant schools and Protestants hoped to absorb the sons and daughters of Catholic immigrants into the Protestant majority.

My larger point is, as is the case with other groups, that the history is distorted. There wasn't endless discrimination and violent hatred against Catholics. People got along more than they didn't. What made news and dominates history are the exceptions.

Parish Priest: Father Michael McGivney and American Catholicism showed the norm in New Haven in the second half of the 19th century. The relations between the old congregational churches on the New Haven Green and the upstart St. Mary's thoughtful, warm and touching.

I can't link directly but an article showing the other side is at the Library of Congress> The Nineteenth Century in Print> Periodicals.

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpcoop/moahtml/snchome.html

Search for Our Roman Catholic Brethren. I. The Atlantic monthly. Volume 21, Issue 126, April 1868 by James Parton.

It is a wonderful essay. Full of praise for Catholic priests,lay Catholics, the Church and suggestions by Parton that his fellow Protestants adopt some Catholic practices