Since his time as a pastor and college president, McQuaid was particularly dedicated to the cause of Catholic education. As he described in an address in August 1872: "I have ever said that I would rather see the school house without the church than the church without the school house." In his view, the parochial school was a spiritual necessity because "unless children are trained, nurtured, [and] schooled under Catholic influences and teachings, they will be lost to God's Church." Public schools, he believed, were dominated by "the Protestant or the godless."
