About

I. JPGI’s Mission

Curing the Cultural Crisis Through Catholic Education

There is a deplorable lack of vibrant Catholic schools in the United States. Further, the resources available through the institutional Church and its hierarchy to build, maintain and support such schools are woefully inadequate. Nevertheless, across the nation, there is a groundswell of families desiring Catholic schools with a robust, family-directed, and focused Catholic culture. 

The need for a Catholic educational institution that can embody and support a lively Catholic culture for its community of families is evident in data reflecting the alarming societal trends affecting the child, family and the nation as a whole: 
 
The Child  

• Two-thirds of young adults lack belief in the Eucharist (pewresearch.org)
• Gender-dysphoria and acceptance of transgenderism is rampant among teen-age children (National Catholic Register)
• Catholic-school teens believe and act much the same as public school teens in everything from premarital sex to homosexuality, from marijana usage to frequency of prayer (Topping, The Case for Catholic Education) 

The Family

• Crisis in marital vocation - Catholic divorce rate nearly indistinguishable from the general public (pewresearch.org)
• Birth-rate among Catholic families is at pace with mainstream population as well as the use of contraceptives (https://www.crisismagazine.com/2021/the-alarming-fertility-decline-among-american-catholic-women)
• Seven-in-ten Catholics believe a way of life in which a husband and wife choose not to have children is acceptable and as good as any other way of life, nearly the same as the general public’s belief (pewresearch.org)
• A crisis of priestly and religious vocations (See, https://www.pillarcatholic.com/fact-and-fiction-vatican-ii-and-the/)

The Nation

• An aggressive national pro-death agenda as found in abortion, euthanasia, and contraception 
• Acceptance of alternative definitions of marriage - 61% of Catholics in U.S. favor same-sex marriages and 76% say society should be accepting of homosexuality (pewresearch.org) 
• Lack of quality education options that effectively integrate the whole truth in Christ (50% decrease in Catholic schools since 1971 with 71 consolidations or closures in the last year, NCEA)
• Increasing threats to religious liberty 
• 214 Attacks on Catholic Churches in American since 2020 
• HR 8404 requiring state and federal recognition of immoral “marriage” unions (catholicvote.org)

Unfortunately, these trends are just as true of Catholics as the rest of the population. This is due in part to the decline in Catholic schools and Catholic school enrollment (despite the increase in Catholics over the last hundred years) but also because many existing Catholic schools inadequately serve the spiritual needs of their students while secular schools aggressively erode their faith.

Families are coming together to address these concerns through the building or renewing of Catholic classical schools that foster an authentically Catholic culture capable of evangelizing their broader communities. While there are a handful of success stories throughout the nation - John Paul the Great Academy in Lafayette, Western Academy in Houston, St. Jerome Academy in Hyattsville, and Ozark Catholic Academy in Tontitown, to name a few – these efforts are too sporadic and uncoordinated to have a national impact.  This lack of national impact historically can be attributed  to the lack of an organization of national reach that provides the resources families need to build or renew a school in their community.    

JPGI provides such resources for the formation of Catholic schools nationwide and, as a result, is turning the tide of these alarming cultural trends. JPGI’s mission is therefore timely and critical.
 

"John Paul the Great Institute provides on-going, hands-on support for family-initiated Catholic schools for the crucial purpose of saving the soul of the child, the family and the nation." 

II. JPGI’s Vision

A Brighter Future  

Through its continuous, hands-on support of family-initiated schools, JPGI’s envisions leading a renaissance of Catholic culture through its national network of over 250 schools. Formed and animated by the cultural vitality of these schools, children, families and, through them, the nation as a whole will be able to respond fully to the call to serve the kingdom of Christ. 

Children, as beneficiaries and increasingly responsible participants in the vibrant Catholic culture shared by the school community, continue to strive for holiness in their daily lives, becoming leaven for the spiritual rejuvenation of their local communities. They excel in their professional work and vocations as married, priests or religious. They walk the Way with Christ in the course of leading in industry, education, government, and in the Church. As adults they live integrated lives that aim to sanctify themselves and others in all they do by radiating their joyful love of our Lord.    

Families flourish through their schools, becoming the institutional center of a vibrant, joyful community of local families sharing their Catholic faith as the animating principle of robust Catholic culture, one capable of imparting the wonder and joy of a living faith to all who come into their orbit. Each of these schools partner intimately with their families in their role as the primary educators of their children to foster their full physical, moral, intellectual and spiritual development as persons meant to love and serve the Lord. In doing so, these schools not only support the aims of the families but provide the resources necessary to assist families in becoming more of what they strive to be. Families not not only share a deep and abiding faith, assisting each other in living that faith more fully, but form long-lasting friendships that enable each family to flourish naturally and supernaturally. 

The nation is ultimately transformed through the cultural impact of these schools nationwide. As part of their striving for holiness in all dimensions of their daily lives, families and students of these schools fully participate as citizens of a free republic, which can only remain free so long as its citizens live virtuously not only as members of the City of Man but also of the City of God. Families and students revitalize and reinvest in the Christian cultural capital upon which the American republic and its ideals were founded to transform our national culture. A transformation that cannot be accomplished principally through changes in law and policy but through revivifying the culture one person, one community at a time. Thus, families and students become as one the few birds of a flock that changes the direction of the many, the antidote for our nation’s dying soul, the force for revitalizing the founding ideals of our nation, where citizens can freely flourish in the pursuit of their ultimate beatitude.