John Paul the Great Academy

John Paul the Great Academy is open in the Lafayette, Louisiana area. JPG is a private, independent, co-educational, college preparatory school, serving students and their families by providing a classical liberal arts education in service to the Roman Catholic Church. Students are expected to achieve academically beyond their expectations, to grow spiritually through study, worship, and service, and to become leaders and role models within their secular and church communities, as exemplified in their daily lives.  At opening convocation each year, faculty, staff, board members, and students make an oath of fidelity to the Magisterium, promising to serve the Church in ways that the Holy Spirit calls them to do.

John Paul the Great Academy is a private, K-12 independent school committed to teaching an exemplary, rigorous classical curriculum, and a comprehensive understanding of the Roman Catholic faith. Our co-educational, college preparatory school serves students and their families by emphasizing fidelity to the Magisterium, and by helping them to grow in their Roman Catholic faith. Students are expected to achieve academically beyond their expectations, to grow spiritually through study and worship, and to become leaders within their secular and church communities. Likewise, faculty members are outstanding role models for living the Catholic faith, and master teachers in their respective disciplines. Above all else, JPG promotes a steadfast, Roman Catholic worldview that emphasizes knowing truth and living a Christian life.

We believe that parents are the initial and primary educators of their children. It is through a cooperative, close relationship between parents and school that children are formed and reinforced in their spiritual, emotional, intellectual, and physical capacities.

The Vatican II document Declaration on Christian Education states that parents are the first and foremost educators of their children, and that “their role as educators is so decisive that scarcely anything can compensate for their failure in it.” Furthermore, we find this same thinking expressed in Pope John Paul II’s Apostolic Exhortation on the family, Familiaris Consortio, when he states that “the right and duty of parents to give education is essential…it is original and primary with regard to the educational role of others…it is irreplaceable and inalienable and therefore incapable of being entirely delegated to others or usurped by others.”

Acknowledging these truths, John Paul the Great Academy aids parents in the formation and education of their children based on the principle of subsidiarity. It does so by providing an atmosphere that maintains and fosters the Christian spiritual, intellectual, moral, and physical formation that the students receive at home. The school exists primarily to form the intellect of the student and as such aids parents in those tasks of education that they are not able to fulfill completely on their own.

In addition, we believe that it is the responsibility of the family and the school, through mutual reinforcement, to set and maintain high standards of moral conduct for all students. These morals, founded in the Gospel principles, are the basis for developing a life of virtue and the path to live in God\’s will. It is through the balanced integration of our Roman Catholic faith with our experiences of learning, life, and service that we can form JPG students into Christian role models and leaders in our secular and church communities.

In keeping with the perennial philosophy and theology that is the intellectual heritage of every Christian, JPG seeks to carry on the living tradition of authentic Christian classical education. Grounded in the seven liberal arts (the trivium and quadrivium), John Paul the Great Academy teaches its students how to think like the great thinkers that produced our civilization.

Education must not seek simply to impart knowledge of the various disciplines, but more importantly should give students the tools whereby they can live life, gaining knowledge on their own. These tools will include the ability to reason from premise to conclusion, to distinguish, to articulate well, and to persuade. These educational techniques, which have produced the outstanding men and women who have fashioned our world in the last two millennia, surely will continue to produce graduates who are capable of excellence in all arenas of life, fully armed to meet the challenges of the third millennium.