SACRED HEART CATHEDRAL PARISH AND SCHOOL
13 April AD 2021
+Tuesday of the Third Week of Easter
Dear Parents,
As the current school year draws to a close, we would like to urge you to consider enrolling your children in our parish school for next year. While there are many options for schooling and education in town, we firmly believe that what we offer here at Sacred Heart Cathedral School significantly outranks them. This is specifically because we are unabashedly Catholic: the students attend daily Mass, receive daily instruction from priests, and have a classical education which helps them to be formed in the fullness of the Catholic Tradition. This is more than just classroom education plus religious instruction, and means that the students are formed not just intellectually, but in body, mind, heart, soul, and spirit, and always in the light of the Truth which is Jesus Christ. Put simply, we are about making our students saints.
While we are still growing and developing as a school, these fundamental elements of our program are of the utmost importance. Pope Benedict XVI said as much in a meeting with some of the bishops from our country when he said that Catholic schools “remain an essential resource for the new evangelization, and the significant contribution that they make to American society as a whole ought to be better appreciated and more generously supported” (Address of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI to the Bishops of the USA (Regions X-XIII) on their ad limina visit, 5 May 2012).
In addition to these Catholic elements of our program, we also have the following distinctions: we serve Pre-K through 8th grade, have small class size and individualized instruction, foster a familial atmosphere, are handicap accessible, have good and healthy food options, and use instructional methods that help students not only to do better on tests but also to maintain the material more effectively. We also have some very dedicated instructors and teachers, who truly devote themselves to the education of your children, even to the point of making financial sacrifices of their own to do so. Finally, we are looking forward to having our own soccer team starting this coming fall semester.
Even with all these benefits, we recognize that it can be a sacrifice to send your children to our school. First of all, there is the possibility of financial struggle at times. To allay that, we offer partial scholarships which are rarely used. In other words, we have money specifically to aid in sending your children to our school! Second, there may be the communal struggle of friendship in a small town. As current students and alumni can attest, however, the friendships formed at our school are strong and stable.
In the same address cited above, Pope Benedict said beautifully that “the Christian vision, presented in its breadth and integrity, proves immensely appealing to the imagination, idealism and aspirations of the young, who have a right to encounter the faith in all its beauty, its intellectual richness and its radical demands.” Elsewhere, he said this:
Education is integral to the mission of the Church to proclaim the Good News. First and foremost every Catholic educational institution is a place to encounter the living God who in Jesus Christ reveals his transforming love and truth (cf. Spe Salvi, 4). This relationship elicits a desire to grow in the knowledge and understanding of Christ and his teaching. In this way those who meet him are drawn by the very power of the Gospel to lead a new life characterized by all that is beautiful, good, and true; a life of Christian witness nurtured and strengthened within the community of our Lord’s disciples, the Church” (Address of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI, 17 April 2008)
This is what we hope to do at our school.
With all of this in mind, we would like once again for you to consider seriously the possibility of sending your children to our school in the coming year.
Please know of our prayers for you, and please keep us in your prayers as well. God bless you!
Yours sincerely in Christ Crucified and Risen,
Bishop James Wall, Bishop of Gallup
Father Matthew Keller, Rector
Father Mitchell Brown, Parochial Vicar
Amy Jo Mulvaney, Principal
