The Vatican’s Congregation for Catholic Education envisions Catholic schools as the privileged means of promoting the integral formation of the whole person from within. We therefore assiduously strive to not only develop the growth of each student’s full potential in their intellectual and academic capacity, but also through faith formation, to develop a robust interior life within each student by cultivating a fruitful encounter with our living God within the context of a prayerful community “that is permeated by the Gospel spirit of freedom and love.” The principles of the Gospel are therefore our “internal motivation and final goal.” The Congregation clearly identified Christ as “the foundation of the whole educational enterprise” of a Catholic school,” since “He is the One Who ennobles man, gives meaning to human life”, and so is “the Model which the Catholic school offers to its pupils.”
All Catholic schools, therefore, like our Church itself, exist for one purpose and have only one mission: to form disciples of Christ. While the congregation was aware that some in our pluralistic culture may object and hold that the Catholic vision is extreme or too narrowly focused, let us consider a reflection by C. S. Lewis:
“It is easy to think that the Church has a lot of different objects—education, building, missions, holding services. Just as it is easy to think the State has a lot of different objects—military, political, economic, and what not. But in a way things are much simpler than that. The State exists simply to promote and to protect the ordinary happiness of human beings in this life. A husband and wife chatting over a fire, a couple of friends having a game of darts in a pub, a man reading a book in his own room or digging in his own garden—that is what the State is there for. And unless they are helping to increase and prolong and protect such moments, all the laws, parliaments, armies, courts, police, economics, etc., are simply a waste of time. In the same way the Church exists for nothing else but to draw men and women into Christ, to make them little Christs. If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time. God became Man for no other purpose. It is even doubtful, you know, whether the whole universe was created for any other purpose.”
We therefore strive to foster the “development of the ‘new creature’ that each one has become through baptism” by first and foremost, building and deepening their relationship with God. This process of inner transformation comes about in and through the ongoing conversion journey of discipleship, which, through the power of the Holy Spirit, not only forms enlightened minds but most especially forms faithful hearts.
Still, for those who may object and contend that implementing a Catholic vision can only come at the expense of academic excellence, critical thinking, or in sacrificing a rigorous scholastic curriculum, I would like to assure you the converse is true. Educating the mind without educating the heart is in fact no education at all. By including the whole person in their mind, heart and soul, our Catholic scope, rather than limiting education, broadens it infinitely. To be sure, being Catholic in the deepest sense of the word, means, being universal. We are thus committed “to relate all of human culture to the good news of salvation so that the light of faith will illumine everything that the students will gradually come to learn about the world, about life, and about the human person.” Why? Because “in Christ, the Perfect Man, all human values find their fulfilment and unity.” His revelation gives “new meaning to life and helps man to direct his thought, action and will according to the Gospel, making the beatitudes his norm of life.” “When Christ is the center of all we do, then we are enabled to redirect our focus of life towards an understanding of the world in which we live that is geared towards the promotion of human dignity and the common good.”