Back to School: Schools aim to foster Catholic culture

Diocesan schools will continue to focus on strengthening the Catholic culture during a new academic year that has begun for all students.

As a prelude to the opening of classes, the Office of Catholic Schools hosted a “Hope is Here” evangelization conference for teachers on Monday, Aug. 21 at St. Charles Preparatory School with featured presenters Father Dave Pivonka, TOR, who serves as president at Franciscan University of Steubenville, and national Catholic speaker Katie Prejean McGrady.

In recent comments to The Catholic Times, Bishop Earl Fernandes emphasized the importance of students and staff members having a strong sense of Christ’s presence in their schools. 

“As another school year begins, I am particularly hopeful that our goals with respect to the Catholic identity of our Catholic elementary and high schools will be met,” Bishop Fernandes said.

“Last year, a new religious course of study was promulgated. We have begun to incorporate the Theology of the Body into our religion curriculum. We have three new assistant superintendents who will continue to work on recruitment, marketing, virtue formation and formation of our administrators and school teachers, who act as spiritual leaders of our young people.”

Bishop Fernandes has experienced Catholic education at all levels, starting in grade school and high school in Toledo. In addition to seminary studies and advanced theology degrees, the bishop has taught religion at a Catholic high school in the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, served as an academic dean at Mount St. Mary of the West Seminary (The Athenaeum of Ohio) in Cincinnati and was the pastor at a Cincinnati parish with the largest Catholic grade school in the state before he was named bishop for the Diocese of Columbus in 2022.

“More and more, we are moving away from the idea that a Catholic school is a private school with religion classes,” Bishop Fernandes stressed. “Rather, the Catholic school should be a place of integral formation of the whole person, where the Spirit of Christ is encountered across the curriculum, and where Christ Himself is met in the sacraments, in the faculty and in the student body.”

Dr. Adam Dufault, Superintendent of Catholic Schools, added, “Our schools lead with our faith. As we have executed our strategic plan over the past three years, we have deepened our commitment to an unapologetically Catholic culture in our schools. The educators in our Diocese work tirelessly every day to lead our students to a love of Jesus Christ and His Church – it is our mission and our ministry.”

At the 11 high schools in the diocese, priests and religious sisters will help bring Christ to the young people with a visible presence on campuses.

Among the clergy assigned to high schools are Father Paul Noble at Columbus Bishop Watterson, Father Sesu Maria Crescensis Panguraj, SAC, at Columbus St. Francis DeSales, Father Anthony Essien, OFM Cap, at Columbus Bishop Hartley, Father Michel Wojciak, SAC, at St. Charles Preparatory School, Father David Arroyo, CR, at Columbus Cristo Rey and Father Emmanuel Ado Addai at Zanesville Bishop Rosecrans.

Fathers Crescensis and Wojciak, members of the Pallottine order, and Father Essien, a Capuchin Franciscan priest, are new to the diocese. Father Arroyo is with the Congregation of the Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

Other priests who will be on high school campuses as chaplains and/or instructors are Father Kyle Tennant at Columbus Bishop Ready, Father Tyron Tomson at Lancaster Fisher Catholic, Father Brian Beal at Portsmouth Notre Dame, Father David Sizemore at Newark Catholic and Father Jeff Coning at New Philadelphia Tuscarawas Central Catholic.

As for religious sisters, the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians (Salesian Sisters) enter their second year on staff at St. Francis DeSales High School and at Columbus St. James the Less School, and the Leaven of the Immaculate Heart of Mary sisters assist at Portsmouth Notre Dame high school and elementary.

The Apostolic Sisters of St. John will serve for the first time at Bishop Ready High School, and the Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary will be new this year at Chillicothe Bishop Flaget Elementary and Tuscarawas Central Catholic elementary and junior/senior high schools. 

Parish schools and other high schools with religious sisters on the staff include the Dominican Sisters of Mary Mother of the Eucharist at Worthington St. Michael, Daughters of Holy Mary of the Heart of Jesus at Westerville St. Paul, Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary at Columbus Our Lady of Peace and Columbus Our Lady of Bethlehem, Little Servant Sisters of the Immaculate Conception at Columbus St. John Paul II Early Childhood Education Center, Sisters of Our Lady of Kilimanjaro at Cristo Rey High School and the Dominican Sisters of the Immaculate Conception Province at Gahanna St. Matthew and Bishop Hartley High schools.  

Sister John Paul Maher, OP, begins her first year as an assistant superintendent for Catholic culture, a new role for diocesan schools. She is a member of the congregation of the Dominican Sisters of Mary Mother of the Eucharist and a former principal at Worthington St. Michael School.

In the new role, Sister John Paul will assist diocesan schools in developing a Catholic culture that radiates from an expression of authentic faith embodied in everything and everyone.

She plans to meet with administrators at each school during the year to help them assess strengths, provide resources and generate conversations about the Blessed Sacrament, the source and summit of the Catholic faith.

“People shape Catholic culture,” Sister John Paul explained. “This is why the people we choose to be around and who we welcome into our Catholic schools is so important.  

“A Catholic culture begins to form when a community of people, sharing belief in Jesus and His teachings given to us by the Church, choose to put that faith into action through words and deeds.   

“The experience of a Catholic culture in our schools is important because it impacts the level of staying power that the faith has in the lives of our young people. When a Catholic culture is present in a school, it provides a worldview and immersion experience that bring Catholicism to life.

“Like the domestic church of family life, the life of a school community shapes the mind and habits of the young by the ideas and reality they absorb.”

To gauge students’ awareness of the faith and the Catholic culture in schools, the diocese uses the Assessment of Religious Knowledge (ARK) for religious education that provides insights into the doctrinal, liturgical, moral and spiritual areas of knowledge.

“What’s important is: How does this lead us to Jesus, and what does it tell us about our schools and the areas of growth for us that we need to work on to build our Catholic culture?” Sister John Paul said.

But she pointed out that development of Catholic culture goes well beyond how students score on a test.

“A true Catholic identity is not going to come from an accreditation goal. It’s not going to come from buying new books,” she said. “A true Catholic identity comes from people.

“Within a Catholic culture, young people can observe a convincing continuity in the lives of authentic witnesses. They are able to make sense of how the pieces of life fit together by looking at others who know how to unite what they believe with how they worship, how they live and how they pray.  

“They see that people who know Jesus and accept the truth given to us in Catholicism have a freedom and joy that isn’t found to the same degree elsewhere. They see how Catholics have a clear sense of mission and want to invite others into the way, truth and life that they have found.”

In conjunction with the three-year U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ National Eucharistic Revival to reawaken belief in the Real Presence of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, schools will be encouraged throughout the year to incorporate more opportunities for Adoration, Eucharistic processions and Benediction for faculty, staff and students.    

“A school can provide an immersion experience into Catholicism by allowing the Holy Eucharist to grace the lives of all in the school community, fostering conversion and human flourishing,” Sister John Paul said. “As the joy and freedom of living as children of God grow, people will naturally express their faith in a life of increasing witness to the Gospel and works of mercy.

“They will gravitate more consistently toward what is good, true and beautiful and want to share these with others. They will seek ways to invite others to experience the same peace, joy and freedom they have in Christ. They will understand that life is a gift from God, and they have a vocation to live, in imitation of Christ, as a gift of self for others.”

Through programs such as Pope St. John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, which the diocese rolled out last year, and resources offered by Cincinnati-based Ruah Woods Institute that emphasize the dignity of the human person, students are exposed to the immutable fact that God created each soul in His image and likeness.  

“When we’re talking about Catholic culture, we have to realize that we’re starting from the human person and the whole idea of the primacy of the Church,” Sister John Paul said. “The Church passes by way of the family; the Church passes by way of the human person, and so what we’re trying to do on a larger scale is reorientate our understanding that a Catholic culture starts with the human person.

“We need to be intentional in creating Catholic cultures in our Catholic schools so that they are a refuge from the world, that when children come in, they feel safe, and they feel loved. They’re stepping into a world where the faith is being lived, and it looks and feels and sounds like something different than other places.

“It’s not just a place of love like other places, but it’s actually love motivated by the Eucharist.”

When the Eucharist becomes the center of a school, she said, “it’s going to be a magnet that draws.”

“Bishop Fernandes spoke to all the principals last year at a retreat, and one of the things he challenged us with is: ‘What difference does it make that your kids go to Mass? What difference does it make in your local community that your school went to Mass? In other words, what impact does participating in Mass have on your school?’

“I know from personal experience the building feels totally different. The school day feels more peaceful. And sometimes (the students) would come up and say, ‘Sister, I’m just happier.’”

Administrators agree that giving young people the opportunity to be in a state of grace by partaking in the sacraments is foremost in building Catholic culture. 

“Our Catholic faith will find expression in a Catholic culture as people accept the invitation to a personal encounter with Jesus and embrace a patient commitment to ongoing conversion and the sacramental life, a reliance on grace and docility to the Holy Spirit,” Sister John Paul said. 

“The growth of a Catholic culture takes time, as it is always grounded in the human person, with their unique relationship to God. It takes patient cultivation, as in the slow journey of the acorn into the tree, or the silent growth of an interior life through the years.”

As staff members and students develop a disposition of missionary discipleship to spread the faith within their schools, the hope is that Catholic high school graduates develop lifelong devotion that forms them as evangelists.

“As people live the Catholic faith in joy and freedom,” Sister John Paul said, “the gift of their witness and human flourishing will strengthen and bring new life to a Catholic culture.”