KeepIng the faIth
How religious ed is evolving while keeping traditions alive
IN this increasingly secular age, the way in which Catholic schools are approaching religious education has shifted. Take Xavier HS, a private boys Catholic high school in Manhattan, which has seen its curricula evolve since its founding in 1847.
“In recent years, we have developed offerings in engineering, entrepreneurship, coding, robotics, the arts, music and stagecraft, but even more important to us is our continued worship and our reflection on the human condition and the truths of our faith,” said president Jack Raslowsky.
He stressed that the school grows and makes changes “after deliberate and careful reflection, but we are not blown around by the wind,” remaining “anchored in ancient truths, and we use modern tools to help us understand those truths.”
Service and one-day or overnight retreat programs allow students to reflect further on their own experience and to embrace silence in a world filled with distractions, said Raslowsky.
He shared that the Catholic sacraments are “alive and well” at the school, from daily Mass in the student chapel to opportunities for reconciliation and schoolwide Masses.
At Iona Prep, a private pre-K-12 program for boys in New Rochelle, Mass also occurs every day of the week, along with weekly Eucharistic adoration. The school also hosts the increasingly popular Rosary & Cannoli, a rosary service paired with the tubeshaped Italian pastry.
Iona Prep also emphasizes the importance of community service, citing its campus ministry as the current evolution of Catholic education in the trimiliar state area. It’s spearheaded by current upper school principal Anthony Casella, Ed.D., from the Iona Prep class of ’97, who returned to his alma mater as a faculty member in 2011.
The school strives to make service a key pillar through its campus ministry program, overseeing the sacramental, social and spiritual development of roughly 1,000 students.
There’s a service requirement for graduation of a certain number of hours per year, which varies by grade level. Currently, there are more than 75 service opportunities per week, in addition to service immersion trips offered yearly beginning in middle school.
“It’s the heart and soul of our school,” the Rev. Justin Cinnante, a Carmelite, said of Iona Prep’s “flagship” campus ministry program. “That’s why we’re here.”
Casella can trace the origins of its robust ministry program to when he attended a conference held by the Edmund Rice Education Beyond Borders group, a global network of more than 280 Catholic schools from over 20 countries.
Taking place at the United Nations in Geneva, Casella was struck by the fact that while many countries teach human rights as a matter of course, US schools typically did not.
“That was the next logical evolution,” Casella said. “As a school of means, Iona Prep has power, and is therefore called to be a catalyst for change.”
Casella required every teacher to include a human rights component into their curricula. A Human Rights Club was established, and the school’s service program homed in on projects related to social justice.
After fulfilling their Christian service requirement during freshman year, students identify a pressing social issue they wish to study, such as hunger or homelessness, and learn more about how these issues impact Iona Prep’s own backyard by partnering with community organizations.
For example, when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, a student with family just outside Ternopil in Ukraine changed his project to advocate for the humanitarian crisis brought on by the war, organizing bake sales in school and clothing drives at his church. He also took up the pope’s call for a world day of prayer, assisted in organizing a service at Iona Prep’s lower school and collected funds for Catholic Relief Services to provide direct humanitarian aid.
Each year, Iona Prep hosts a service fair for students to become more fawith the school’s regular service partners. By junior year, students are bringing projects to fruition that address their issue of choice locally, and senior year revolves around advocacy efforts, presenting their findings to classmates and teachers.
“Every senior should be able to substantiate that,” Casella said, “and should be able to say: ‘This is the difference I’ve made in the world.’ ”
These days at Catholic schools, it’s not only what they do outside the classroom that has changed, but what is covered in courses themselves.
To empower those teaching religion, much of Xavier’s faculty has completed the Seminars in Ignatian Leadership program, development classes run by the Jesuit Schools Network.
Also at Xavier, Michael Aprea, the religion department chair, shared that the school’s college-level philosophy class has gained a great deal of traction in recent years, with more than 70 students enrolled.
“We bring philosophy into dialogue with religion and consider the philosophical underpinnings of a lot of Catholic doctrine,” he said, noting that the class also brings logic into discussions of the existence of God, who we are and who we’re meant to be.
Aprea also said that a new elective, called Theology and the Environment, a continuation of Xavier’s ethics course, is a projectbased course in which students apply theological tenets to issues society at large needs to consider.
He highlighted that Xavier has also placed an increased emphasis on the study of Catholicism’s relationship to other religions, especially through their world religions course.
“Religious education at Xavier is not indoctrination, and students appreciate that,” Aprea said. “There is a value in studying religion and engaging in service, where students find practical ways to engage their own skills and talents to find solutions and offer hope. Any discipline that makes us more human is relevant.”