The Introduction of Sociology at the Catholic University of America, 1895-1915

Abstract

Sociology as a scientific discipline was still acquiring its academic base when the recently founded Catholic University of America opened its department the field 1895. It was the first American Catholic institution offer the subject. Its establishment of its department followed by only three years the opening of the first department of sociology the country at the University of Chicago. The account of the university's initiative follows is intended serve two principal purposes. One is place the event the history of the discipline. The other is investigate how sociology could be received an intellectual milieu faithful Catholic teaching. Sociology, after all, had been tainted from its beginnings by positivist philosophy and, the theories of the American pioneers, by evolutionary naturalism. Thus, after a brief presentation of the facts concerning the introduction of the discipline, attention will be given the motives of its proponents, the approach of the first professor, the nature of the first courses offered, and the enrollment of the first students. The Foundation In 1895 the university, at the beginning of its seventh year, was establishing its first non-ecclesiastical faculties. Within the next five years it became, as a student of the field's institutionalization has noted, the only Catholic institution to develop sociology any serious fashion before 1900: In this latter year, according the same author, about one-third of the 637 colleges and universities then existing the United States were offering courses under the name. In addition The Catholic University of America, only five undergraduate institutions under Catholic auspices could be listed among them.3 The first course the country announced as sociology had been offered as early as 1873 when William Graham Summer at Yale University had included it the range of the many subjects he was teaching as a professor of political and social science. By the time The Catholic University of America opened its department others who also are now revered as American pioneers were at work, notably Charles Horton Cooley at Michigan, Franklin Henry Giddings at Columbia, Edward Alsworth Ross on his way Wisconsin, Albion Small at Chicago, and Lester Frank Ward at the Smithsonian Institution. Sociology was having a phenomenal growth the American academe. It has been portrayed as more a'movement' than an intellectual discipline 14 view of its ready inclusion institutions founded during the rapid national expansion of higher education and also view of its support from the several sectors of American society which a scientific basis for social reform was being sought. One of the most important and most conspicuous of these was the Protestant ministry which the Social Gospel movement was then widely influential. In 1900 one-third of the teachers of social science courses American higher education had had some theological training. As perceived by many at the time, in many respects sociology was social Christianity. There was, however, no movement Catholic circles could be compared with this American Protestant thrust. In 1891 the trustees of The Catholic University of America approved conditionally the establishment of a school of the social sciences. Later the same year, a lawyer from Yale, William Callyhan Robinson (18341911), was appointed be its dean. This school was announced the public prematurely 1893 as a of Sociology and Comparative Jurisprudence. It was opened two years later as the School of the Social Sciences with a Department of Sociology.7 It is of interest the change the name of the school may have been a result of a consultation by the dean-elect with his veteran colleague, Summer, who was reported as having said that sociology is a word having no meaning and not a suitable one use. …