A Vision Unfulfilled: The Commission on American Citizenship and the Effort to Form Catholic Citizens, 1939–1950

Abstract

Abstract:At the behest of Pope Pius XI and the U.S. Catholic bishops, the Catholic University of America launched in 1939 the Commission on American Citizenship, which sought to "reaffirm the traditional allegiance of the Catholic Church in the United States to free American institutions; and make the ideals of Christian Social Living motivating factors in the daily lives of children in Catholic schools in order that they may thereby become citizens who would exercise the responsibilities as well as the rights of their freedoms." Through a curriculum, civic clubs, and other fora, the Commission developed a program that would instill a Catholic sensibility in students and inform their political engagement as adults. Doing so would help them evangelize the public square. But this effort fell short. The generation that came of age in the 1960s and early 1970s was the primary cohort exposed to the Commission's outreach. As many of these young Catholics took opposing sides in the ever-fierier culture wars, the Commission's comprehensive and shared worldview revealed a fractured Church.