The House System at St. John Paul II High School
Our House System, drawn from the thousand-year-old system with roots back to schools like Oxford and Cambridge, forms much of the competitive backbone of our school’s community life.
When students join JPIIHS, they are sorted into one of our four house for the sake of community across grade levels for their time within the school. This lively system allows for students to engage in school spirit and friendly rivalry, the four houses compete in a year-long contest that is designed to help them navigate their high school career with both teacher and peer mentorship.
The Four Houses
St. Catherine of Sienna
A saint who stood up to a period of great confusion and turmoil in the Church, St. Catherine of Sienna utilized a calm presence of mind and a great command of reason to guide the course of church history through her discourse with Pope Gregory XI, and helped to negotiate peace with the Florentine Republic. House Catherine makes prudence—the practical reason to discern true good in every circumstance and knowing how to choose the way in which to achieve it—their primary focus.
St. Gregory the Great
Pope Saint Gregory the Great, a father to us all for his papacy, was also the father of musical notation, and so is the patron saint of musicians and teachers. While in Rome and dealing with the influx of the barbarians, St. Gregory the Great made it the goal of his papacy to send missionaries to the people that were leading to tumult in the culture around Rome. He was a lover of beautiful things, and wanted people to cherish the good rather than to attempt to subjugate it. As such, the primary virtue that House Greg focuses on is temperance—the virtue which moderates in us desire, and keeping it in right relationship to reason and faith.
St. Joan of Arc
Best known for being burned at the stake by the English following the Hundred Years’ War, St. Joan of Arc was a woman of great accomplishment because of her even greater faith. Though she began as a French peasant, St. Joan led soldiers decades older than herself, bringing order and faith to the roughest of soldiers because of her own piety and decisiveness. And with her great bravery and military brilliance, the virtue that House Joan pursues most specifically is fortitude—the moral virtue allowing for staunchness and the resistance of temptation in the face of difficulties and temptation.
St. Thomas More
St. Thomas More is known for his exceptional public life as a loyal servant to England, but a more loyal subject of Heaven. When confronted by his king and demanded to support sinful action as lawful, St. Thomas More remained stalwart in the face of great adversity and spoke as witness to the Truth. As such, the virtue that members of St. Thomas More make their primary design is justice—the firm will to do the good, not tethered to a sense of matters and rules, but in direct relation to Goodness itself, giving always to each what is their due in relation to God.
info@jp2hs.com
HOURS: Monday - Friday, 8am-3pm* or by appointment.
* Staff are at Mass from 9am-9:30am
PHONE: 970-281-5269
LOCATION: Our Lady of the Valley Catholic Church
1250 7th Street | Windsor, Colorado 80550