A Chance to Win a JPIIHS Sweatshirt!
As the school year wraps up, we are trying to make sure the contact information in our database is up-to-date so you all continue to receive fun and important updates about St. John Paul II High School. Fill out this form to update your contact information (whether you think we already have it or not) by Tuesday, April 12th, to be entered in a drawing to win a FREE JPIIHS SWEATSHIRT!
As one of our teachers said, “they are the softest sweatshirts ever.”
Your company could sponsor our gala!
We will be having our first-ever Adventure Gala on Saturday, September 17th! There are a number of great marketing opportunities and perks for companies/individuals who sponsor the gala (see sponsorship opportunities here).
If you are willing, consider asking your employer or companies you know to sponsor our gala. Anyone who is interested in sponsoring or connecting us to a potential sponsor can email our Director of Development, Gina Koshute, at gkoshute@jpiihs.com.
Thank you for helping to make our founding Adventure Gala a success!
Fun Student Life Updates:
Visit to St. John Vianney Seminary with Fr. CJ Mast!
10 young men from St. John Paul II High School chose to visit St. John Vianney Seminary in Denver with Fr. CJ Mast earlier this month. The students got a tour of the seminary, received a talk about discernment, and had lunch with the seminarians!
Thank you Fr. CJ for leading the trip for our students and other young men in the area!
Fr. Gregg Gives a Music Lesson!
On the Feast of the Annunciation, Fr. Gregg whipped out his electric guitar to give the whole school a music lesson and to talk about his love of guitar. Click this link to hear Fr. Gregg jamming with the students!
Thanks for the great lesson, Fr. Gregg!
Our Architect Gives the Students a Presentation on the Design Process!
Earlier this month, Adam Hermanson, from Integration Design Group, gave a presentation to the students about architecture and the ideation and design that it involves. The students specifically got to hear how Adam and his team are thinking about the school’s future building and campus: how our school’s mission of forming individuals in Christ will be translated into the very building of the campus.
Tickets for our Pancake Breakfast:
On Sale Now!
Join us for outdoor Mass and a delicious pancake breakfast cooked by the Knights of Columbus on May 7th!
Mass will be celebrated by Fr. CJ Mast and starts at 9am at Our Lady of the Valley Catholic Church, Spiritual Gardens around back.
Suggested Donation for Breakfast, $10! Donate for breakfast & reserve a spot online here or at the door. Thank you for supporting our school!
*please bring cash to purchase tickets at the door
Immaculate Heart Academy for Middle Schoolers at OLV Next Year!
Student Article
The Use of Literature in Persuasive Argument
Magdalen Pouliot, Junior
Pope Paul VI once said, “Modern man listens more willingly to witnesses than to teachers, and if he does listen to teachers, it is because they are witnesses.” The goal of persuasive argument is not simply to prove a point, or to back a claim with factual evidence or logical skill. When a person is open to the truth it is natural that he desires others to see that truth as well. The goal is not only to prove that a claim is true, but to help others understand why. Literature is the means by which persuasive arguments may succeed in doing this, because the author, as well as every character of every literary work, is a witness. As Pope Paul VI said, people are prone to listen more willingly to the one who has experienced a thing rather than to the one who simply speaks on it. Literature allows the reader to peer inside the mind of the characters, understand their motives, witness their actions, and reflect on the consequences and aftermath of those actions. It is as if literature itself creates a way in which one can witness and experience every aspect of human nature through the lens of another.
This proves extremely useful and necessary in persuasive arguments. It is the natural way of man to learn and come to understand truth through experience or relational knowledge. In literature, the lives of the characters are understood to such a great extent because the reader is able to relate his experiences in some way to theirs. Rather than taking the didactic route in proving a point through strictly instructive teaching, literature shows and makes use of man’s natural tendency to understand more deeply through relational knowledge.
Literature works in a way which penetrates not only the intellect but the heart of man. It forces the reader to experience the reality and to recognize the truth of human nature in its entirety. Franz Kafka says, “We need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.” And in forcing the reader to come to these realizations of truth, literature becomes an imperative tool for a successful persuasive argument.
Teacher Article
An Integrated Curriculum: In Defense of Philosophy
Julian Sicam, Latin Teacher
One of the aspects of our school that can be easily overlooked is our emphasis on the “integrity” of our curriculum. This doesn’t mean that our curriculum will, say, do the right thing when no one is looking. What it means is that our curriculum sees all of our disciplines as a “whole” (integrum). For it is common in many educational institutions to treat each of the disciplines as entirely disparate in subject matter, with one course, at least for the most part, not having anything to do with another. Some of them might have some order to each other, but one is often still left with a deep divide between the “left and right side of the brain,” so to speak. For example, one should know how to do algebra before one attempts physics. But what might physics have to do with history? Or literature? Or religion?
A classical curriculum, on the other hand, sees the end of education as something over and beyond, say, solelygetting a job or making money. Classical education sees the value in jobs and money, of course, which is to see them as means instead of an end. But what is the end of education? It’s important to understand that the bulk of classical education bases its answer to this question on the Medievals—who, mind you, were all Christians. As such, they understood better than anyone that the end of education was, in many ways, the end of human life: union with God. It is for this reason that they incorporated the seven liberal arts into common schooling.
Wait… what? What do the seven liberal arts have to do with union with God? The answer will sound biased, coming from me: philosophy. According to the Medievals, on whose thinking classical education is based, the liberal arts are by nature ordered to philosophy, which is, we might say, the study of wisdom. And it is by wisdom, understood rightly, that we are united to God. St. Thomas Aquinas, the pride of the Medievals, says that the liberal arts are divided and ordered the way that they are because,
they who wished to learn philosophy were instructed by way of these [arts], and for this reason they are distinguished into the trivium and the quadrivium, because by these ‘ways’ [viis, from via], as it were, the living soul enters into the secrets of philosophy. And this even agrees with the words of Aristotle who says in Book II of the Metaphysics that the mode of science ought to be taught before the sciences. And the Commentator says in his commentary of the same place that someone ought to learn logic—which teaches the mode of all the sciences—before all the other sciences, to which the trivium is ordered. Also, in his commentary on Book VI of the Ethics he says that mathematics can be known by the young, but the study of nature cannot, which requires experience [of nature]. And in such a way it is to be understood that, consequently, after logic, mathematics ought to be learned, to which the quadrivium is ordered. And thus, by these ‘ways,’ as it were, the soul is prepared for the other philosophical disciplines (Commentary on Boethius’ De Trinitate, q. 5, a. 1, ad 3, my emphasis).
Thus, the seven liberal arts are meant to be preparations for philosophy. They do this because they build the right habits of mind by which one can study philosophy well. But why is it so important that philosophy be studied? Aquinas tells us this too in another place: “But all the sciences and arts are ordered to one thing: the perfection of man, which is his beatitude. Hence, it is necessary that one of them be the ruler of all the others, which rightly claims the name of wisdom. For it belongs to wisdom to order the others.” This science is called many things, but most pertinent to our discussion is the last one Aquinas mentions: “It is called first philosophy, inasmuch as it considers the first causes of things” (Prologue to the Commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics). Thus, philosophy “rules” the liberal arts in the sense that it gives order to them, unifies them—dare I say, integrates them—since it is for its sake that they are undertaken.
So we study the liberal arts for the sake of philosophy. We study philosophy for the sake of wisdom. Wisdom is grasping the first, ultimate causes of things. The first, ultimate cause of everything is God. This is the proper order of everything studied in a classical education.
Now, I’d like to clarify two things. Firstly, I’m not saying it would be prudent to implement a Medieval curriculum word for word, discipline for discipline, for there are a number of courses that would then be missing—literature or history, for example. But they are still, in a way, preparations for philosophy, and philosophy still integrates and gives order to them.
Secondly, I’m not saying theology is unnecessary. Far be it from me to say such a thing. Theology is also ordered to wisdom, but it goes about it in a different, higher way. Whether theology is necessary is in fact the very first topic of the Summa Theologiae. Spoiler alert: it’s necessary, because (a) there are certain things about God we couldn’t know on our own that we should know in order to love Him more completely. And (b) even the things we can know about God on our own are not easy to get at. Theology takes into account all of these things. For this reason, theology is a higher discipline than philosophy. But still, this doesn’t mean philosophy can’t give order to the other sciences, because philosophy relies on reason alone, just as all the other sciences and arts do.
In any case, my principal aim in this article is to show the value of philosophy, especially in Catholic classical education, because today, if Catholics were to write a modern Summa, I’m betting they would ask the reverse question: whether philosophy is necessary. I can only hope more begin to see that for a truly classical approach to education, it is.
From the Headmaster’s Desk
In a Perfect World, or a Decrying of House Bill 22-1279
Blaise A. Hockel
About a month ago I listened to a song that came out within the last four years. I can neither recall the name nor the artist of the song, but this was something of an accomplishment for me, so it stands out to whatever minimal degree in my mind. There was a line in particular that had captured my attention where they, in complimenting the person of their designs, had said something about the beloved’s face being so perfect it ‘must have been made in a test tube.” This is, I muse, the reason why I don’t often partake in pop-culture: I have spent the last month trying to figure out in what way that line could have possibly been a compliment.
I suppose the notion is that the face of the intended recipient has a symmetry that could only have been through intentional design. However, I contend that only a face with total asymmetry would be one that would catch our attention that way. Why would the presumption be that the engineered, the manufactured, the preselected would be more intentional than the natural design?
Taking it from another angle, I have spent a lot of time looking at my daughter’s nose. Had the selection been up to me, I probably would have given her her mother’s nose, but that would, I think, have been far less fitting for her face. What I mean to say is, simply this: we have contrived so much belief that we have the perfect answer if only things could be made in the image that we’ve imagined. A necessary response is to remember that typically when we describe things as being made in our image we start dabbling with idolatry.
This maniacal willing to order all things as we desire really troubles me because it’s the most natural and self-serving form of idolatry that we can conjure up these days, and we use this same mentality in every facet of life that we can cram it into. Governor Polis has just made this very evident in the passing of House Bill 22-1279. “Let the world,” he says as he flourishes his pen, “be made in the image that I have contrived. Heed not the fact that the image is a garish, even nightmarish one. I made it, and I like that I did, so you ought to, too.” Of course, I do not mean to pretend that this distorted image of reality is the doing of Governor Polis alone. No, roping a majority of people into being active participants is actually very helpful in the painting of that picture—it is what stops them from minding that they helped to hone the hellscape.
Even amidst the anger and deep hurt, I know we ought to pray for the true conversion of Governor Polis and those who have helped to enact this bill. With the severity of the law that they helped to promote and create, there is such a denial of what is beautiful, what is real in that very life-changing and miraculous thing called pregnancy.
It seems to me that the purpose of this bill is to say, “In a perfect world, we would not need to do with abortions, but we are not in a perfect world and so we must make do.” Rather, I think that what we would be saying, if we were honest is, “To make the world perfect for me, I must be able to abort anyone I please.” I do not mean to be so bothered in my writing this month, but when it comes to the matter of children and their care, you’ll find I brook little patience with people who think the solution is elimination.