Independent Catholic Schools Foster Catholic Communities, by Dr. Jeff Mirus

By Dr. Jeff Mirus, Catholic Culture, Aug 18, 2023

Jeffrey Mirus holds a Ph.D. in intellectual history from Princeton University. A co-founder of Christendom College, he also pioneered Catholic Internet services. He is the founder of Trinity Communications and CatholicCulture.org. 

My wife called my attention to an article in our diocesan newspaper entitled “Halo effect” which, on its website, is more fully entitled “Once ‘Helltown,’ Front Royal emerges as a Catholic destination”. It’s all about how the move of the two-year-old Christendom College to Front Royal, Virginia stimulated the creation of a vibrant center of Catholic faith and life in and around the once wild and woolly county seat of Warren County, Virginia.

This new, independent Catholic college had been founded by Warren Carroll and four other faculty members in 1977 and moved to its permanent home in Front Royal in 1979, precipitating over time the Catholic “boom” that the article describes. But this is not the only Catholic success story built around a good Catholic school. Much the same thing happened in Manassas, Virginia after the foundation there of Seton School by Warren Carroll’s wife, Anne. This independent Catholic junior and senior high school, which started operations two years before Christendom, has been in Manassas ever since. ….

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