The early history of the Roman Catholic schools in Norway 1860-1924

Abstract

The first post-Reformation Roman Catholic parish in Norway was founded in Oslo in 1843 and a school was started soon afterwards. This and most subsequent Catholic schools in Norway were run primarily for the benefit of the Catholic community. With the advent of compulsory education in 1889, Mgr. Johann Fallize, who had taken over the leadership of the Norwegian mission in 1887, published detailed regulations governing the organisation of Catholic education in Norway. The sparseness of the Catholic population led to the founding of small uneconomical parish schools. Lack of investment meant that these had difficulty in keeping pace with the rapidly improving standards in public education. A drift of pupils away from the Catholic schools was partly discouraged by Fallize's policy of publicly excommunicating Catholic parents who sent their children elsewhere. In this Fallize was partly motivated by an over-zealous wish to conform to papal demands for separate schools for Catholics and partly by the danger he saw in the Lutheran denominational character of the Norwegian public schools. The failure of Catholic schools policy in Norway was due to the inherent weaknesses in Ultramontane ideas concerning the need for denominational schools for all Catholics, a factor which caused a decline in Catholic education in other countries at a later date. Thus an analysis of the history of the Roman Catholic schools in Norway can cast light on important issues in the more general study of Catholic education and lead to a better understanding of its past, present and future role in a world which is moving towards state monopoly in education.