Keeping Christ at the Center of Catholic Education
As we start the new year, our focus is again directed on the importance of Catholic education. In the last issue highlighting Catholic schools, I wrote about my experiences, both as a student and as a mother of three Catholic school students. I explained how providing a Catholic education was a sacrifice willingly accepted without dispute due to one major element: a Christ-centered environment. Keeping a gaze fixed on Christ has many advantages, among them is excellence.
As we start the new year, our focus is again directed on the importance of Catholic education. In the last issue highlighting Catholic schools, I wrote about my experiences, both as a student and as a mother of three Catholic school students. I explained how providing a Catholic education was a sacrifice willingly accepted without dispute due to one major element: a Christ-centered environment. Keeping a gaze fixed on Christ has many advantages, among them is excellence.
While different contexts yield differing views of what defines excellence, Catholic schools in the Diocese of Birmingham view excellence through the lens of faith, academics, and service.
Doing so cultivates communities of excellence, imparting benefits well beyond the confines of one school.
Realizing the responsibility to take the bigger picture into consideration, this year the Catholic Schools Office chose “Communities of Excellence” as their annual theme. For this issue, Margaret Dubose, superintendent of Catholic schools for the diocese, sat down with Cappy O’Halloran, a member of the Diocesan Advisory Council for Catholic Education, offering her thoughts on the theme and how it relates to our diocese. Building on the insight Dubose offers, this issue also features a student, a teacher, a parent, and an alumnus sharing their perspectives. The excellence of our schools, however, is best exemplified in this issue’s cover story subject, Johnna Hawkins, and her journey to the Catholic faith.
Granted, Catholic schools do not exist to win converts to the faith, but as Father Jonathan Howell shares in the cover story, “Our number one priority is to bring our young people to know and love Jesus.” What a noble mission! A mission that the Catholic schools in the Diocese of Birmingham carry out to the fullest.