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Gregory the Great Academy new article content Gregory the Great Academy is a private, lay-operated Catholic boarding school for boys in grades nine through twelve. Located in Northeast Pennsylvania, it was founded in 2012 after its predecessor, St. Gregory’s Academy, was closed by its parent organization, the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter. Gregory the Great Academy offers education rooted in the liturgy of the Catholic Church and the Liberal Arts, with programs in the humanities, music, juggling, rugby, agriculture, and craft guilds.

Mission

The mission of Gregory the Great Academy is happiness. By encountering good, true, and beautiful things, students are encouraged to form meaningful relationships with each other and with the world. A boy’s capacity for virtue and grace is addressed through his engagement with intellectual, physical, and spiritual challenges. The Academy embraces St. Augustine’s statement that “the happy life is rejoicing in truth,” by leading students to understand the link between happiness and truth, goodness, and beauty, not merely factual knowledge.

Foundation

The founders of Gregory the Great Academy are teachers and alumni of St. Gregory’s Academy. The school was registered as a non-public religiously affiliated school by the Pennsylvania Department of Education in 2012. In its early years, the Academy operated in rented properties. In 2017 the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter sold the former St. Gregory’s Academy buildings and acreage to Gregory the Great Academy. The property was purchased as a permanent campus in the same year and the school continues to operate at this location.

Campus

The campus comprises 193 acres in Elmhurst Township, Pennsylvania, on which are situated sports fields, woods, and camping sites. A large school building, formerly the St. Nicholas Orphanage built in 1923 and operated by the Sisters of the Order of St. Basil, accommodates classrooms, offices, dormitories, and apartments for resident staff. The school building also contains a chapel with historical paintings and stained glass windows depicting the life of Jesus and Mary. The barn houses farm animals and equipment, and a house on the property, known locally as the Throop House, provides further living space for staff.

History

In 1970, Kansas University began the Integrated Humanities Program under the leadership of Professors John Senior, Dennis Quinn, and Frank Nelick. The IHP was a course in the great books of civilization, beginning with Homer and Plato and proceeding through Roman authors such as Virgil and Cicero, and thence through the Bible and medieval Christian authors, ending with modern classics, such as Don Quixote. The intention to educate students through a poetic experience of the transcendentals outside of the books they would read. To form the imagination and bring students to be “born in wonder” was a tenet of the program. These courses attracted a great many students over the years and generated a large number of converts to the Catholic Faith although Catholicism was never expressly or explicitly proselytized. The three professors taught together in their twelve-year tenure through conversations which were spontaneous and unrehearsed discourses, as opposed to lectures that have been prepared in advance. A graduate of this program, Alan Hicks, was hired by the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter to found a boarding school in 1993, St. Gregory’s Academy, the predecessor of Gregory the Great Academy. Alan Hicks hired classmates from the IHP and graduates from Thomas Aquinas College and Christendom College to join him in founding a boys’ boarding school that would employ much of the IHP’s philosophy of education, which might be summed up in its motto, “Let them be born in wonder.” Students of Alan Hicks became the founders of Gregory the Great Academy and inheritors of the principles promoted in the IHP.

Academics

Although much of the Academy’s curriculum is based on classical texts such as Homer, Virgil, Plutarch, Herodotus, Xenophon, et al., and all students study Latin, the Academy does not consider itself a “classical school” in the popular sense The different approach taken by Academy faculty is a slow and careful unfolding of a few texts, rather than an emphasis on a large quantity of material. Students are encouraged to enjoy subjects, rather than to focus on grades.

Poetic Education

Teachers who use the poetic education approach seek to integrate their subject with all other knowledge, and to lead students to experience reality by looking at things as a whole, rather than studying in a manner that dissects or analyzes works in a scientifically critical manner. The emphasis is on an experience of the world as it is perceived by the senses unmediated by technology.

Liturgy

An emphasis on liturgy presented with ancient rubrics and traditional music is a cornerstone of the Academy’s ethos. Two forms of Eucharistic celebration are offered. These are the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite, also known as the Latin Mass, and the Byzantine Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom.

In addition to liturgies, students’ spiritual direction is formed in Religion classes, a Gregorian Schola Cantorum, daily devotions such as Lauds, the Angelus, the Rosary, and Compline. All students learn to serve at both the Latin Mass and the Divine Liturgy.

The Farm

Academy Fields Farm began an experiment in animal husbandry and vegetable growing in 2018. Students participate in farm chores, raising food for the school community. The Farm currently produces a small percentage of the total food consumption, and plans are in place to increase production year by year.

The Guilds

As an additional method to gain experience in reality and the practical arts, the Academy includes a manual crafts program, each one known as a guild, that includes juggling, leatherworking, sculpture, drawing, cooking, and carpentry.

Athletics

Gregory the Great Academy competes with local schools in soccer and rugby, and every student is required to participate in athletics unless a physical condition prevents him. Sports practice is supplemented with strength training and is held every weekday. The Highlanders have qualified for state rugby finals every year since the foundation of the Academy and have won the state rugby championship twice.

Patrons

The Academy is under the patronage of Pope St. Gregory the Great.

The Salesian spirit of St. John Bosco informs the disciplinary method, which is based on the principle that prevention of bad behavior is better than correcting faults after they occur. Beyond discipline, in emulation of John Bosco, students are offered many healthy activities designed to prevent a desire for less wholesome ones.

Gregory the Great Academy also maintains strong devotions to St. Joseph, St. Nicholas, St. Julian, and St. Patrick.