We challenge our students to question critically, think logically, communicate clearly, act creatively, and live ethically. We support and celebrate successes, and we work hard to provide inspiring faith and educational opportunities in the classroom and beyond.
Saint Mary’s invites students into a relationship with the living God who is Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. We work to prepare students for what one must be and for what one must do here on earth, in order to gain the sublime end for which one was created.
Our focus on forming students in virtue leads us to strive especially for academic excellence. All truth brings us to Jesus Christ, so a deeper grasp of Truth grows into a deeper knowledge and love of God.
Accordingly, we have made it our mission to provide our students with an excellent liberal arts education that not only prepares them for college and career, but—more importantly—forms them into virtuous young men and women who know the Truth and love the Good. Our curriculum promotes the dialogue between faith and reason and leads student to contemplate Truth, Goodness, and Beauty, seeing in their perfection the God who calls them to ultimate happiness.
We understand a fundamental truth that is too easily and too often forgotten: people were not created for career and college; we were created for happiness.
In this Common Core era, Saint Mary’s Catholic High School stands out. To discover what makes Saint Mary’s so unique one only needs to look at our mission statement: The mission of Saint Mary’s Catholic High School is to provide a Liberal Arts education that forms virtuous young men and women who know the Truth and love the Good. Like every other college preparatory high school, we make sure our students are ready for whichever university they choose to attend, but our primary concern is not “career and college readiness” or the “challenges of a 21st century world.” On the contrary, our first concern is man’s last end. Everything we do at Saint Mary’s—our courses, our campus ministry, our athletic competitions—everything—is oriented to this end. This is because we understand a fundamental truth that is too easily and too often forgotten: people were not created for career and college; we were created for happiness.
Saint Mary’s is uniquely capable of educating the whole child. By providing an education that forms the hearts, minds, and souls of the young in virtue. Saint Mary’s prepares young men and women to be receptive to God’s grace and to recognize Him at work in all things that are good, true, and beautiful.
Liberal Arts Curriculum
Our curriculum promotes the dialogue between faith and reason and leads students to contemplate Truth, Goodness, and Beauty, seeing in their perfection the God who calls them to ultimate happiness. Our focus on forming students in virtue leads us to strive especially for academic excellence. All truth leads us to Jesus Christ, so a deeper grasp of Truth leads us to a deeper knowledge and love of God. Accordingly, we have made it our mission to provide our students with an excellent liberal arts education that not only prepares them for college and career, but—more importantly—forms them into virtuous young men and women who know the Truth and love the Good.
Traditionally, there were seven liberal arts: grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. These arts were divided between the trivium and the quadrivium. The trivium (Latin for “three ways”) consists of grammar, logic, and rhetoric. These arts are the prerequisite tools of language that must be mastered before specialized study can begin. In order to make sense of the world, one must be able to talk intelligently about it.
The first of the liberal arts, grammar, is concerned with how to communicate—how to make sense when using words to describe reality. The second, logic, deals with the arrangement of grammatically correct statements into arguments that are true. Rhetoric is the art of persuasion. It teaches how to arrange and present grammatically correct statements and logical arguments in the way most likely to convince an audience to agree with the speaker.
At Saint Mary’s, students explicitly study the trivium as freshmen in their Grammar & Composition class and as sophomores in Speech & Rhetoric class, but because language is the foundation of learning, they employ these liberal arts in all their classes, most especially in their Seat of Wisdom seminar classes, which integrate the study of history and literature while making extensive use of Socratic discussions.
In contrast to the trivium—which deals primarily with language and the communication of ideas—the quadrivium (Latin for “four ways”) equips students to quantify and measure the material world. The quadrivium is concerned with number (arithmetic), volume (geometry), extension in time (music), and extension in space (astronomy). These arts help students recognize patterns that occur in nature and in art and prepare students for all areas of study that make use of pattern recognition. Pattern recognition is universally useful, including the study of medicine, law, finance, all the sciences, and sports. Most importantly, the quadrivium shows students clearly that truth exists and that it can be known with certainty.
These seven arts form the basis upon which all other study is made possible. Through the study of the liberal arts, students learn how to think and how to communicate, how to recognize patterns and how to make connections between subjects. These habits are essential to being a well-formed human being, who not only knows facts and can perform certain functions, but who understands facts and sees their significance in relation to other truths. These habits help our students become wise. The liberal arts help men and women become the best possible versions of themselves.
A liberal arts education alone is insufficient for bringing man to his final, beatific end. As Pope Leo XIII writes in Divini Illus Magistri, “every method of education founded, wholly or in part, on the denial or forgetfulness of original sin and of grace, and relying on the sole powers of human nature, is unsound.” To achieve ultimate happiness one needs God’s grace which comes to us through the Church and her Sacraments. Saint Mary’s is imbued with the Sacramental life and students can receive that grace every day.
Saint Mary’s is uniquely capable of educating the whole person. By providing an education that forms the hearts, minds, and souls of the young in virtue, Saint Mary’s prepares young men and women to be receptive to God’s grace and to recognize Him at work in all things that are good, true, and beautiful.
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Seat of Wisdom Integrated Studies Program
INTEGRATED STUDY
Integrated studies programs combine the study of two or more subjects into one class, allowing students to reinforce their learning in one subject area through the study of another. The Seat of Wisdom program combines the study of history with the study of literature and composition. Seat of Wisdom classes explicitly look at those subjects through the lens of the Catholic Faith.
FORMATION AND INFORMATION
Through the reading of primary and secondary sources, students in the Seat of Wisdom program are informed about the great ideas of Western Civilization and the Catholic intellectual tradition, and formed in good habits of the mind. These habits of the mind are developed by reading texts closely, and then, through guided discussions, critically evaluating the ideas expressed within them, always from a Catholic perspective.
By integrating the study of great works of literature and history, students in Seat of Wisdom seminar classes participate in what Mortimer Adler calls “the Great Conversation.” Because this conversation takes place in the context of a Catholic school dedicated, not only to pursuing the Good, the True, and the Beautiful, but, more importantly, to knowing and loving Jesus Christ—the Way, the Truth, and the Life—the discussion is not merely an academic exercise, but rather it is a means of encountering Wisdom itself.
SEEDS OF WISDOM DISCUSSED AT THE SEAT OF WISDOM
The ideals and goals of the program are encapsulated in the program’s Latin motto, Semina sapientiae disserere sub Sedes Sapientiae—Seeds of wisdom discussed (or sown) at the Seat of Wisdom.
The “seeds of wisdom” referred to in the motto are the great ideas of the Western intellectual tradition; the “Seat of Wisdom” is a reference to the patroness of our school. The sowing and discussing of ideas takes place in the Seat of Wisdom seminars.
WHAT DO CLASSES LOOK LIKE?
The teacher conducts seminar-style classes in a two-period block. Literary works from the historical time period being studied have been carefully selected to capture students’ imagination and to provide a narrative thread showing the development of Western civilization from Greek and Roman times, through the rise of Europe and the growth of Christendom, to our modern era.
The word liberal in liberal arts and liberal education does not refer to the opposite of conservative; it refers to being free, the opposite of constrained and subjugated. The liberal arts curriculum at Saint Mary’s is designed to help students learn how to think and how to communicate as students seek to grow in wisdom.
When asked to recall memories of high school, many graduates will quote a plaque in the gym from the words of legendary trainer Horace Pieri, “We may not be the biggest, but we have the firm conviction we can be the best”. Saint Mary’s boasts 9 Boys Football Championships, 7 Girls Basketball Championships, 4 Boys Basketball Championships, and one Girls’ Softball Championship.
Saint Mary’s Catholic High School has been part of Phoenix history since 1917, just five years after Arizona became a State. Founded by the Sisters of the Precious Blood, the school served five boys and twelve girls and was located in a dedicated classroom at Saint Anthony’s elementary school. In 1920, Saint Mary’s moved to its own one story home on East Monroe Street.
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