Honoring 150 years in education: Montgomery Catholic celebrates with rededication ceremony
Students, alumni, administrators and other community members gathered at Montgomery Catholic Preparatory School on Tuesday morning to celebrate the institution’s landmark 150th anniversary.
“Today is a day where we embrace a legacy of commitment to Catholic education. Today is a day where we embrace the efforts of those that came before us and simply did the next right thing to ensure the mission of this school survived,” school president Justin Castanza said. “Today is a day where each of us also now commits to seeing that same mission move forward.”
In 1873, under the direction of Bishop John Quinlan, six nuns trekked from Kentucky to Montgomery with the goal of opening a Catholic school, and with just $500 from the state, they did it.
The St. Mary of Loretto school for girls opened with 85 students enrolled, and according to former school president Anne Ceasar, tuition costs ranged between just $4-$8. Ceasar emphasized that children of all religions could enroll in the school, and she read a quote from an 1874 copy of the Montgomery Advertiser that said: "Montgomery can congratulate itself on possessing excellent schools, and among the most prominent, it may count the Academy of St. Mary of Loretto."
From there, the school continued to grow and evolve, and by 1929, it became co-ed.
Three decades later, education leaders moved the school to its current location on Vaughn Road, where its only neighbors at the time were sweeping pastures away.
“This was the boonies. There was no Chappy’s out east. There was no Publix. But there was Montgomery Catholic,” Ceasar said.
It wasn’t until 2001 that the school took on its current name, but school leaders insist that the same goal has always been at the heart of the operation: to instill faith, virtue and wisdom in its students.
A few significant people in Montgomery Catholic’s history include Sister Martha Belke who was the last of the Sisters of Loretto to teach in the school, the inaugural president Thomas Doyle who took on a leadership role amid financial instability and former president Faustin Weber who led the creation of the middle school and band program.
“Because we are such a pluralistic society, there really isn't a consensus of which values we should aspire to. We try, in our society, to have value-neutral education, but not to teach values is to teach values. Not to teach values is to teach there are no values,” Archbishop of Mobile Thomas Rodi said. “Montgomery Catholic seeks to provide students with the truth, the truth that Jesus witnessed. There is truth that comes from God himself, and so this school is a ministry.”
Rodi blessed the school and recited a prayer of rededication on Tuesday.
After the prayer, Superintendent Chad Barwick, representatives from the Montgomery Chamber of Commerce and other leaders participated in a ribbon cutting ceremony. It symbolized a new beginning for Montgomery Catholic, and hopefully, the start of another 150 years of educating Montgomery’s children.
Hadley Hitson covers children's health, education and welfare for the Montgomery Advertiser. She can be reached at hhitson@gannett.com. To support her work, subscribe to the Advertiser.
This article originally appeared on Montgomery Advertiser: Montgomery Catholic celebrates 150 years in education with ceremony
