Purpose
Our students are formed by being immersed in the greatest minds of Western culture. Through exposure to the wisdom of Sacred Scripture and the philosophical wisdom of Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas and others the student is to acknowledge that Faith and Reason never conflict and they provide a certain guide to a future with God and the Saints in eternity.
Instead of falling into the chaotic relativism and hedonism that permeates this society the student is to acquire a knowledge of the order and law that comes from observing the scientific laws of the natural world and the unchanging moral law that guides human nature. The Catholic Church is a certain guide as to how one must live, and we intend that our students understand to their capacity why the Church is infallible in matters of Faith and Morals.
Hence these studies are foundational for the development of a truly Catholic spiritual, intellectual and moral life, which will enable our students to flourish in their God-ordained vocation.
Academic Approach
Primary sources will include all that has proven to be universally acclaimed in their scholarship, their timelessness, and their beauty. Music, Art, Literature, the Lives of the Saints, all of the finest nature, will be presented in order for the students to develop a love for all that is True, Good, and Beautiful. Evil will be properly understood in the Augustinian sense of a lack of being, a deficiency, and a culture of death as opposed to a culture of Life.
Our students will not only read the classics but will be encouraged to develop a thoroughly classical mind. They are to read Shakespeare, and other great authors, and perform plays and grasp the greatness in these plays by understanding that they meet the Aristotelian insights as to what makes a good plot, and what unchanging moral insights are found in a worthwhile theater. In the same manner by being exposed to the best music, art, prose and verse, the student will be liberated from the banal world of popular culture and he will love the ideas and authentic culture and be a companion of these artists, scientists, philosophers, and theologians
We challenge our students to test the attractions inspired by their emotions with the measure of reason that is to compare these attractions with the directions of natural law.
American society is permeated with a secular mentality that dismisses the significance of religion in public life, especially in education. Popular culture while claiming to be relativistic claims immoral actions as moral with the demand that all agree with their perverse views. It is the school’s mission to challenge this mindset. Teacher’s help students analyze all perspectives and evaluate them in the light of Catholic truth. Hence, students equipped with truly classical education will be able to fearlessly promote and defend the One, Holly, Catholic and Apostolic Church.
Family Life and HFA
The members of the Holy Family: Jesus, Mary and Joseph role models for every family at the Academy. The Church has consistently taught that the parents are the primary educators of their children. School life at Holy Family Academy is designed to complement a student’s home life. Where religion, classical literature and music are appreciated, religious, moral and political discussions will occur, and most importantly the family Rosary will be said.
We at Holy Family Academy are convinced that the distance between generations is not natural, normal or inevitable, but is created by a distortion of the common bond that exists in families. When we reinforce what it means to be a father, mother, son or daughter, the generation gap disappears. Certainly, there never was a generation gap between Jesus and His beloved parents.
Schoolwork, both in the classroom and at home is understood in the context of work as brilliantly elucidated by the writings of Saint John Paul II. By the student’s effort he will strive to mirror the Christ who physically labored with St. Joseph and the Christ whose intellectual acuity astounded the priests in the Temple.
Never before has the family been under such attack and it behooves us in honor of the Holy Family to honor them be never succumbing to political correctness, or passivity. The traditional family is the basic cell of society, modeled after Jesus, Mary and Joseph.
General Curriculum
In light of the proven superiority of a classical education, each subject of our curriculum strives to make use of original sources supported on occasion by textbooks as secondary, to provide the students with a well-rounded knowledge of God’s creation. He will have an understanding of an event from the Aristotelian view that all knowledge begins with the senses, followed by the ability of the intellect to abstract from the sense data that which is universal. The ability to grasp the four causes of reality and not to fall into the truncated view so characteristic of pragmatic education makes a school classical. Academic excellence thrives at the initial phase of wonder in the young person’s life to be followed by certainty in grasping the True, the Good, and the Beautiful. The student is to seek an awareness of God as he knows himself to be a creation of God.
Education creates a Catholic mind which guarantees the intellectual and moral insights that form young people and helps them to face the serious problems in assessing the benefits and dangers of scientific, and technological development. Ultimately a Catholic mind recognizes that life is a transient phenomenon, a test that when live in accord with the Truth will insure the person eternal bliss in heaven before the Beatific Vision.
