In the mountain-town of Emmitsburg, Maryland, there is a historic school unfamiliar to most Americans. Its founding in 1808 is a direct consequence of 1776. Its founder, Fr. John Dubois, was mentored by James Monroe and Patrick Henry to unleash a new birth of freedom in a country weary from a long train of abuses inflicted by a British King.
This collaboration between two freedom-loving American politicians and a French priest was not unpatriotic. When Dubois escaped Revolutionary France in 1792, he discovered he shared an enemy with the patriots of Virginiaโnot opposition to the Catholic monarchies of Europe but enmity toward the dead hand of empire. Armed with an introductory letter from the Marquis de Lafayette, who fought alongside George Washington in the Revolutionary War, the young priest was welcomed into the home of Monroe, the future president, and tutored in English by Henry, the former Virginia Governor and fierce critic of British imperial power.
So it was that a Catholic priest would fulfill the 1st Amendment vision of the American founders by starting a Catholic school in Protestant America and writing religious freedom into its charter. By calling his college โMount St. Maryโs,โ Dubois tested the limits of the Constitution and the tolerance of the Protestant population. Being the first U.S. college named for a woman came with a secular risk. The existence of Mount St. Maryโs is a testament to the transformative power of 1st Amendment principles and its dynamic effect on the people of a free nation.
Mount St. Maryโs achieved in its founding the highest aspirations of the American republic. Bigger name colleges have roots that run back to the pre-United States. Harvard was founded in 1636 under the British crown. The College of William & Mary, started in 1693, was named after King William III and Queen Mary II. And Georgetown University, begun in 1789 and acclaimed Americaโs first Catholic college, was christened after a village known as โGeorgetown,โ a hamlet named for the anti-Catholic King George of England. Mount St. Maryโs is called Americaโs 2nd oldest Catholic college, but itโs the first in the fifty states given Georgetownโs redistricting to a federal territory in 1801.
Mount St. Maryโs, founded in 1808, and named for the Queen of Heaven is an example of religious liberty duly applied. It does not capitulate to secular authority, but in its name, explicitly proclaims a Catholic purpose. Prolific at producing priests from the start, it pushed the boundaries of religious freedom and confirmed the procreative power of a school named for the Mother of God. Mount St. Maryโs is the most patriotic college in the United States not because it espoused decorous words but because it embraced a radical attitude.
Writing religious liberty into his schoolโs charter, Fr. Dubois admitted students of every denomination without requiring a religious testโa searing contrast to British laws across its vast empire that blocked Catholics from higher education and from holding political office. Mount St. Maryโs, born of two revolutions, would implement revolutionary change, and its heroes would play pivotal roles in the founding of Notre Dame, Fordham, Seton Hall, Spring Hill College, and the Catholic University of America. As bishop of New York, Dubois would counsel the founders of Boston College, Holy Cross, and others to adhere to liberty and equality in the academic realm. Itโs only fitting that a religious refugee like Dubois would become a patriot himself and practice an uncompromising brand of religious freedom.
The Mountโs sons and daughters continued to blaze the trail of religious freedom by founding the Parochial School System, drafting the Baltimore Catechism, and producing the Churchโs 1st American-born saint and the 1st American-born martyr.
To apply the principle of religious freedom is to practice essential inalienable rights. Exempt of โLife, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness,โ free nations perish. Despite arguments to the contrary, the American Revolution was a Christian Revolution more aligned with the Biblical imperative of non-coercion than the compulsive chains of empire. The 1st Amendment guarantees that through free speech true religion can be found.
Forged by the French Revolution, where men like Fr. Dubois were maligned by a war on the Church, and the American Revolution, whose founders transcended European tyranny, Mount St. Maryโs became an independent Catholic college blessed with a revolutionary nature and bestowed with a maternal vitality.
How could a backwoods school in the mountains of Maryland be the most patriotic college in the United States? How could such an unheralded place execute so aptly the vision of Americaโs Founders? Mount St. Maryโs was named for the Mother of God. Taking credit is not a Marian quality, but the Blessed Mother does have a knack for getting things born. Mount St. Maryโs is not only the Mother of Catholic Education in the United States, but in our nationโs 250th year she can be thanked for her role in a new birth of freedom that declared all men are created equal and that all are made in the image of the Creator.
Image provided by the Author
