AN EDUCATION FOR THE LAITY

At Christendom College, in their academic, spiritual and social lives, the faculty and students aim at living out this Catholic vocation and identity in its integrity.

A Personal Education

The education at Christendom College is classical and traditional, emphasizing our Graeco-Roman and Judaeo-Christian heritage as understood in the light of the Catholic Faith. Rather than offering an array of different ideas all seen as equally valuable, courses at Christendom College focus on the truth, examining different theories not merely for their historical position but precisely for their truth. Fides quaerens intellectum, “Faith seeking understanding,” describes the intellectual pursuits of the Christendom student.

Because it is rigorous and demanding, the Christendom College curriculum is best appreciated by the student with a thirst for knowledge of the truth and best appropriated by the serious and self-disciplined student. However, the Christendom student lives and learns in a caring community. Professors counsel and work individually with students to help them overcome any special weakness and to develop their unique strengths. Although the abilities of students vary, all students are motivated, challenged, and helped to fulfill their individual potential to the utmost. Because of the small size of classes and the willingness of the professors to help on an individual basis, the students who avail themselves of the opportunities presented become well-educated men and women.

The primary aim of Christendom College is academic; but intellectual formation is never severed from spiritual, social, and personal formation. Just as the different disciplines are integrated in the Christendom curriculum, so too that curriculum is integrated with the rest of the student’s life at Christendom College. Education is furthered not only in the classroom but also in the chapel, at mealtime, in leisure time, and throughout the entire day as students converse with each other and with their professors. Christendom College is not merely a curriculum of courses: it is a season of life in which the whole person matures in wisdom, in virtue, and in ability -intellectually, morally, socially, and spiritually.

An Education for the Laity

Students educated in the liberal arts at Christendom College are well prepared for their role as laity in Christ’s Church. The curriculum is primarily designed for young men and women who will live and work in the world with other laymen, who must face the problems and challenges in that state of life, and who will contribute as laymen to the fulfillment of the mission of the Church.

The Second Vatican Council’s Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity stresses the importance of the laity’s share in the priestly office of Christ and in the salvific mission of the Church. In their jobs, their families, their schools, their society, and their personal relationships, the Catholic laity are called to promote salvation by their example and witness, by bringing the message of the Gospel to men, and most especially by informing and penetrating their temporal society with the spirit of the Gospel. It is Christendom College’s hope and expectation that the graduate of Christendom is, in the words of the Apostolic Exhortation Christefideles Laici, “to

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