The mission of Saint Mary’s Catholic School is to invite our students to follow the Lord Jesus Christ as faithful disciples and to prepare them for outstanding achievement in high school and later life. Our rigorous curriculum integrates academic excellence, athletic challenge, artistic expression, and character formation in service of the evangelical mission of Saint Mary’s Catholic Church and School.
The mission of Saint Mary’s Catholic School is summarized in our motto: Tradition, Virtue, Excellence.
Tradition
Along with the writings of Sacred Scripture, Catholics accept Sacred Tradition as the revealed truth of the Gospel. Sacred Tradition is the spoken teaching of Christ entrusted to Peter and the Apostles and upheld by the Holy Spirit in the teaching authority of their successors, the bishops of the world in union with the pope. From our reverence for Sacred Tradition flows a love for various liturgical and devotional traditions and even for time-honored school traditions, as well as a commitment to educational methods founded on the dignity of the human person, the primary role of parents, and a sincere respect for those in authority. (See MT 16:18-20, LK 10:16, MT 28:19-20 and Catechism of the Catholic Church #74-83, 1700, 2221.)
Virtue
A virtue is a strength, or a good habit, which allows one to choose and do what is true and good in a way that is prompt, easy, and joyful. Virtues are developed by God’s grace and the ongoing practice of good acts. The virtuous life is the happy life, the good life, because virtue is the ability to live in freedom from the slavery and weakness of sin and selfishness. The theological virtues (faith, hope, and charity) are a gift given by God at Baptism, through which God Himself dwells within us and directs our lives to Him. At Saint Mary’s we learn about the life of virtue by focusing on the practice of a specific Catholic virtue each month.
Excellence
All are called to holiness. This includes striving to develop our individual talents for the glory of God and having the zealous desire to fulfill His plan for us each day and throughout our lives. At Saint Mary’s we learn each month about Saints who fulfilled this call and our faculty and staff act as living witnesses by role-modeling the zeal of giving one’s all for God and by holding our students accountable to the highest expectations, calling them to personal excellence: spiritual, academic, artistic, and athletic. (See MT 25:14-30 and Catechism of the Catholic Church #2013-2015, 2030.)