Legacies: A History Journal for Dallas and North Central Texas, Volume 17, Number 2, Fall, 2005 Page: 36

                                
JESUIT HIGH SCHOOL
Catholic EducationforYoung Men in North Texas
BY LIZ CONRAD GOEDECKE

y 1940 the timing was right. As the Catholic
Diocese of Dallas neared its fiftieth anniversary,
it was financially stable and supported a
well-established network of parochial schools for
the primary grades. Ursuline Academy had been
providing secondary education for young women
since 1874. But Dallas offered no equivalent high
school for young men.Adolescent boys were proving
a bit of a challenge for the nuns who ran the
co-ed St. Joseph's high school, and many felt the
boys needed a firmer hand than the nuns could
command. The Catholic population in North
Texas had grown to 50,000,' more than adequate
to support a high school for boys. And so a concerted
effort was initiated to establish one.
Meanwhile, the Society of Jesus, commonly
called the Jesuits, was enjoying steady growth during
the 1930s, reaching 450 members in the
Southern Province of the U.S. Since its founding
by St. Ignatius Loyola in 1540, the order had developed
a reputation as outstanding educators, eminent
in the fields of arts, science, philosophy, and
theology. Jesuit officials had been "surveying the
educational field in Dallas, and unanimously concurred
in the conclusion that it was full of promise
for the future."2 As early as April 1931, members
of the clergy were discussing the viability of
opening a school in Dallas. A notation in a document
in the Provincial Archives between Msgr. B.
H. Diamond, vicar general of the Diocese of
Dallas, and a Jesuit official stated that "if the
J[esuits] wanted a school in Dallas they could get
it."3 That proved a harbinger of what was to come.
On April 9,1940, in San Antonio, at the consecration
of Bishop Sidney Metzger, Bishop Joseph

Joseph P. Lynch, third bishop of the Catholic Diocese
of Dallas (1911-1954) supervised the building of 150
schools. He was instrumental in bringing the Jesuits
to Dallas to open a high school for boys.

Patrick Lynch of Dallas said to Rev. Thomas
Shields, S.J., (the Jesuit Provincial in New Orleans),
"I want to see you sometime to talk about something
that will be good for you and good for me."4
Then in November 1940, Lynch and Shields were
together in El Paso and the discussion of starting a
school in Dallas came up. "The fiftieth anniversary
of the Diocese of Dallas would be a good time."'
The subject of these casual conversations between
clergymen would soon become a reality-the

36 LEGACIES Fall 2005

I