Catholic School went from almost closing to flourish returning to classical education

All altar boys wore black shoes, something that is not seen in most parish masses for decades, since the church clothing has become more relaxed. There were 11, a large number these days, dressed in white over -blacks on black cassocks. The children preceded Fr. Daniel O’Mullane to the altar for the weekly Mass in the escuela Our Lady of Mount Carmel (OLMC) in Bonton, New Jersey (United States), after the boys entered by degrees: girls with blue and gray frame skirts, white blouses and navy blue sweaters, and boys with gray pants and white shirts with a tie, filled the church.

For the baby boomers Catholics, the Mass from Friday morning seemed taken from the mid -60s, when 6 million American children attended more than 12,000 Catholic schools. But if they enter the classrooms of OLMC today and listen to classes conducted by open and socratic discussions, and not by plans of strict and detailed lessons, or listen to philosophical speeches about the virtues instead of memorized definitions approved by nuns, they would not believe what they hear.

“We teach that faith provides the achievement of a significant existence,” said Fr. O’Mullane. “We teach about what is true, good and beautiful. In the classroom, the principles that encourage are courage and charity, taught through the life of Christ and the Gospel, and Greek, Roman and Catholic intellectualism.”

Emphasis is placed on the great books and great thinkers, from Socrates, Plato and Aristotle to Jesus Christ, St. Paul Apostle, St. Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas. High school students read The Odyssey Homer, Offices (“On the duties”) of Cicero and The Aeneid of Virgil. Latin lessons begin in primary school.

This ancient and now modern concept of education would be alien to most people who attended primary Catholic schools of the twentieth century, which reached their maximum point with the children of the generation of World War II. For those children of Irish, Italian and Polish descent, the emphasis was to follow the rules rather than in creative thinking. The religious, then 200,000 nationwide, were the predominant teachers, and ruled with, well, rules (and physical rules).

As the nuns have disappeared, Catholic schools have fought to pay the lay teachers, a factor that, together with the aged infrastructure and the decline in assistance to the Church, has made the number of Catholic schools reduce to less than 6,000 today.

Olmc in Bonton almost became a statistic in 2014, when assistance at the K-8 school fell below 70 students and combining degrees almost became a survival medium. Then came Fr. O’Mullane in 2015, who introduced the concept of classical Catholic education, and 10 years later, the school now has 350 students and added a secondary school called Lumen Gentium High School Academy.

If OLMC’s success is an indicator, the classic approach could be the way to save Catholic education in the United States.

According to the Heritage Foundation, there are more than 1,000 classical education schools in the United States, and 250 of them have opened since 2020. The members of the Institute for Catholic Liberal Education (ICLE), such as OLMC, have tripled in the last 10 years. Today there are 237 and at least one in each of the 50 states.

Lucas Fuentes, 18, is one of the 11 students who graduated from Lumen Gentium this year and resigned from sports, large graduation dances and other normal extracurricular activities of high school to continue with the type of education of OLMC. He started in sixth grade, when his stepfather Douglas Minson arrived from the Great Hearts School Network in Texas, Arizona and Louisiana to help Fr. O’Mullane to “renew” OLMC. “My education has made me more curious above all,” Lucas said.

“My colleagues are equal. Most of us stay away from social networks and we strive for academic excellence.”

High school does have a fighting team and athletics for now, not so much in line with the ancient Greek Olympic Games, but to improve a “more robust vision of the complete human person”, which is like P. O’Mullane explains the educational philosophy of the school.

Teachers intertwine Catholic history and doctrine and their legitimate place in the formation of Western civilization in each subject, introduced to children before some can even tie their shoes. For example, teacher Kim Marion explained what her first grade students learn about the fall of Rome and the rise of Christianity.

In the history of Christians who feared persecution and hid in catacombs, children discover how the simple drawing of a fish became a Christian symbol. The first Christians drew the symbol on the doors or on earth to know if the places of hiding or meeting were safe, not because of the miracles of the breads and fish, described in the four gospels, as some believe, but because the Greek word for “fish” –Ichthýes– It translates into an acronym for “Jesus Christ Son of God Savior.”

Marion began teaching in Catholic schools 38 years ago and spent the first 25 in a school that is now closed. Then he arrived at Olmc and saw the transition.

“Here, now we start every day with prayers, our Father and Ave Mary, and we talk about how beautiful our world did,” said Marion. “Even in the first degree, we apply Socratic thought and we have open discussions while learning about Mesopotamians, ancient Egyptians and Jews, and Greeks and Romans. Children learn listening and speaking.”

“I love what Father Daniel has done here,” said Marion.

“I am also learning and receiving Catholic education as an adult that I would like to have received as a child.”

Fr. O’Mullane, 43, formed his views at the Pontifical North American College in Rome. “Studying in the same heart of the Church and being very immersed in the Catholic intellectual tradition reinforced that the Church has much to offer in the field of great philosophy and that it should be offered in Catholic education,” he said.

With his title in Sacred Theology, Fr. O’Mullane assumed assignments in his hometown of Mountain Lake, New Jersey, a neighboring city of Olmc, including the well -known Pope John High School in Sparta, New Jersey, where he was chaplain and taught theology. But a brief stay in the St. Pius X church in Montville, in the garden state, shaped his vision for OLMC.

“I worked quite close to the teachers and I saw how the school worked (primary),” said Fr. O’Mullane. “This is not necessarily a criticism of St. Pius (which has since closed), but most Catholic schools became too similar to public schools.”

“In a society where people decide what is most important for them, everything else serves that purpose,” he continued. “The United States is built on the worship of money, so education became what leads you to the place where you can win high salaries.”

In 1998, during a visit with bishops from the west of the United States, Pope John Paul II said That “the biggest challenge to face Catholic education today in the United States, and the greatest contribution it can give, if it is authentically Catholic, to American culture, consists in returning to culture the conviction that human beings can understand the truth of things and, in doing so, they can know their duties to God, to themselves and with their neighbor.”

Fr. O’Mullane expressed it like this: “A society is healthier when there is worship of God and we find joy in virtuous life. These are the virtues described in Galatians (5, 22-23): Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, fidelity, gentleness and self -domain ”.

Eze Abosi has three children in Olmc, one in the fourth grade, another in second and one that attends the preschool Montessori of Olmc.

“First and first of all, we wanted an education focused on our Catholic faith,” said Abosi, “and a classical education with emphasis on the arts. My children can read Latin. They can read music. Most of the weeks have to memorize and recite a classic poem.”

Abosi, like many parents in school, says that an education focused on faith and family values is even better compared to what is happening in some public schools.

“In these critical years of the development of my children, I prefer that you learn the things that are taught in OLMC.”

While the closure of public schools during the COVID, video learning and forced discussions about sexual orientation and gender identity led some parents to Olmc, Fr. O’Mullane says that the curriculum is what keeps them there.

“It’s transformative,” he said. “We are forming their hearts with truth, beauty and goodness together, to help them grow as noble people.”

Translated and adapted by the ACI Press team. Originally published in the National Catholic Register.