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INSTALLMENT FIVE- February 2003 A
New Century Brings New Challenges If the first three decades of the Christian Brothers' work on the West Coast brought a sense of accomplishment in the face of numerous challenges, the next three decades proved to be a discouraging and difficult time. The newly formed District of San Francisco had taken charge of thirteen schools between 1868 and 1900, but in the first quarter of the 20th century the Brothers added only four institutions, while ceasing their involvement in ten schools. A recurring problem in this period was physical disasters that strained the limited resources of the District. In 1894, for example, Saint Mary's College, which had relocated from San Francisco to Oakland just five years earlier, suffered a fire so ruinous that the student body was moved back to the old Mission Road building in San Francisco for a year, until a new school was built on the Oakland site. Six years later, in 1900, the novitiate in Martinez also sustained substantial damage in a fire.
In addition to these calamities, the Brothers grappled with financial difficulties that led to their departure from a number of institutions. Because many parochial schools served neighborhoods with poor, immigrant populations, their economic base was fragile, and even the very low cost of keeping the Brothers housed sometimes became too much to carry. Schools that weren't completely shut down were slowly given over to the care of teaching orders of sisters. (Apparently, it was less expensive to maintain sisters at the schools, and pastors considered them to be more tractable.)
It was a story that repeated itself in many places and eventually affected institutions outside of California. Christian Brothers Academy in Vancouver, for instance, was forced by the money crunch to close in 1911. Compounding the lack of funds was a distressing lack of Brothers to serve in them. Smaller, struggling institutions such as Holy Cross in Santa Cruz, De La Salle Institute in Walla Walla, Washington, and St. Vincent's Asylum in San Rafael were closed so that Brothers could work in the larger schools and keep them open.
But by 1901 when the Visitor, Brother Theodorus, voiced concerns that there would not be enough men to fill the need for teachers, the cause was no longer just the lure of the material world. This time, the worrisome development was aggravated by a struggle between the international Institute (headquartered in Belgium) and the entire U.S. Region. The dispute was over the teaching of Latin in the Christian Brothers' schools. It was a controversy that loomed over the future of the District of San Francisco, threatening its educational system, discouraging vocations, and hampering the American Brothers' leadership. Next installment (March 2003) - The Latin Question First
Installment: Pioneer
Brothers Leave New York for San Francisco, July 1868 |
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In
the great earthquake of 1906, which shook the whole Bay Area, Saint
Mary's College and many of the grammar schools were spared, but Sacred
Heart College in San Francisco was devastated by the fire that swept
through the city. A contemporary account of the disaster reported:
"Flames drew perilously near Sacred Heart College, but were successfully
repelled. Next day, Thursday, the flames . . . crept slowly up Eddy
Street and toward evening reached Larkin. The prominent College was
the last of that awful day's tribute to the flames." The only things
salvaged from the rubble were photograph albums and a ledger of tuition
accounts. The school continued in temporary buildings until a new
structure was completed at Ellis and Franklin Streets in 1914. 
Fire
again did severe damage to the "Brickpile" campus of Saint Mary's
College in Oakland in 1918, but through the staunch effort and determination
of the College's president, Brother Gregory Mallon, FSC, funds were
raised and the building was ready for use again the following semester.
All
of the Brothers' parish schools in Oakland eventually closed. The
litany of misfortune includes St. Francis de Sales parish, where classes
stopped in 1889 because of depleted parish finances, and Sacred Heart
parish, where the parish church was destroyed by fire in 1891; the
daunting cost of rebuilding it pushed the burden of maintaining the
boys' school beyond the parishioners' means. St. Anthony parish, which
had a strong enrollment of about 200 students and a faculty of five
Brothers during its last few years, eventually was unable to pay even
the monthly salary of 33 dollars: In 1914, St. Anthony's pastor, Father
Sullivan, reluctantly told the Brothers they would have to go.
The
San Francisco District had from the beginning suffered from a shortage
of vocations among Californians. Brother Justin, the first Visitor,
had recognized the problem, writing in 1879 that it was "very difficult
in a country like this-made up in the great part by adventurers-to
engage young men to take up a really devoted life." Under the second
Visitor, Brother Bettelin, recruiters were sent to the East Coast
to seek for candidates, and the novitiate register from the late 1800s
shows that most of the novices in the San Francisco District came
from Ireland, the eastern United States, and Canada, particularly
Prince Edward Island.