St Francis Preparatory School - San Fran Yearbook (Brooklyn, NY)

Page 5 text:

With the utterance of these words the Church was divinely commissioned by Christ, Her Founder, to carry on His work. His life, passion, death, and resurrection were to restore to man this special life of grace. So the Church, the Mystical Body of Christ, continues that work, bringing this life to men who have not yet received it. This is done, primarily, through Catholic Edu- cation, which has as its single aim the continuation of Christ's work. The primary purpose in establishing Catholic schools is not to teach fractions, biology, grammar or astronomy but to inculcate the eminent knowledge and love of Jesus Christ our Lord, a knowledge so intimate, a love so strong, that it will lead necessarily to a closer following of Christ. However, there are certain essentials necessary for the building of such an education. Pope Pius Xl in his encyclical On Christian Education expresses one of these essentials as the family. He implies that the duty and right to educate is the natural priority of the family. But, since the family is an imperfect so- ciety, and cannot always carry on the work of education completely, it may confide to other hands the supplemental education of its children, these hands being those of the Catholic educators in the Catholic schools. The Pope in his encyclical declares that for them there is but one goal to be attained, the highest possible that man can hope to have in any educational system: to cooperate with Divine grace in forming the true and perfect Christian, that is, to form Christ in those regenerated by Baptism. Attaining its ultimate goal-to instill a knowledge and a love of Jesus Christ-is a challenge readily accepted by Saint Francis Prep. In the imitation of Christ, those other values cannot be ignored-values which insure intellectual in- tegrity, social consciousness, cultural awareness, and physical fitness as well as a spiritual security-since these are also Christ-like and are of secondary importance only to the salvation of our souls. Yes, Saint Francis Prep, in the fullness of its education, is constantly aware of these things. lt success- fully develops the Catholic gentleman intellectually with its academic courses, socially with its extracurricular activities, culturally with its clubs and so- cieties, physically with its sports program and, of course, spiritually. However, these Catholic concepts of education are not accepted by all. They are greatly contorted among the leaders of the non-Catholic education. The robot theory of education which makes of a man a mere mechanism without a soulg the consequent rejection of all true freedom of the will, and so the very possibility of morality itself-these are in brief the fundamental dogmas on which a large part of our modern non-Catholic education has been built. All Catholics should help as much as possible in clarifying our educational atmosphere. By doing this we would be enabled to safeguard our Catholic concepts of education against the anti-Catholic concepts. Therefore, let the puprose of the l953 San Fran be to inspire our fellow citizens to understand and appreciate better the philosophy of life that makes us Catholics go our Catholic way in education. -. 1 -H. 1. . sa u as

Page 4 text:

I I I I I i I I I I I I

Page 6 text:

my' QF 3. gif M' aw., M5 j xf WY ,M , w X, . iw + T3sF'9 W ff, N ' W sv WW X , 'M , A 'L I ,.. ' A L-N .lv xi ,, f 'iv V Y' ,- g Q 1a5ig M- . t ff. ' K -' ' in A E mf .