parochial school (UNCLASSIFIED)

[victor steinbok]

Would that make all Louisiana public schools "parochial"?

Seriously, the term may well have evolved in the 1970s. Among the OED
citations some are ambiguous, some clearly refer to Catholic schools
(particularly 1976 one that implies narrow meaning), but the 2001 cite
is clearly generic. My experience has been entirely from 1981 to the
present and, other than comments by Catholic clergy and Catholic
school officials, not once have I heard anyone restrict the meaning to
Catholic schools. Initially, I've often wondered about that precisely
because of reasoning similar to Dan's, but, eventually, I came to
accept it as jargon.

VS-)

On Tue, Apr 5, 2011 at 11:23 AM, Dan Goncharoff <thegonch at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Doesn't "parochial" mean :of a parish", so a parochial school would be run
> by a religion that has parishes?
>
> I am not Catholic, but my religion has parishes, and has always had
> parochial schools.
>
> DanG

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