Religion

All that is good and true has proceeded from the Word and has its homing point in the incarnate God…

Hugo Rahner, S.J.

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

- Saint Paul

Religion at Divine Mercy Academy is not just one subject within the curriculum, but the key to its unity and integration. The cosmos is an ordered, unified whole because it is created in Christ “in whom all things hold together” (Col. 1:17).

Belief in God as our Father and the world as His beautiful and rational creation binds faith and reason, nature and culture, art and science, morality and reality into a coherent and integrated unity. This unified view reaches its summit in worship, which is the highest form of knowledge and thus the end and goal of true education. This understanding should be made explicit in religion as a subject, in the curriculum as a whole, and in the life of the school. Most of all it should be reflected in the Sacred Liturgy and the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the source and summit of the school’s life. Religious education therefore has as its ultimate goal the life of prayer and a deep, reverent participation in God’s own life through the Sacrifice of the Mass.

“God is love” (1 Jn. 4:8).

This is at the heart of what it means to say that God is Trinity, a communion of persons. If God is the source of cosmic order, then that means love is at the root of this order, a key to its meaning, and essential to our meaning as persons. Students should come to a deeper understanding of the meaning of love, both divine and human. They should begin to understand that love is at the root of reality and what this implies for civilization and for the meaning of their own nature as embodied persons.Students should understand that God’s love in the Incarnation gives rise to a distinctive Christian civilization which is their birthright. Students should learn Scripture and be familiar with the treasures of Christian culture, art, architecture, music, literature, and great deeds, all of which give expression to a Catholic view of reality. Students should begin to learn the ‘symbolic language’ of these treasures and learn how to ‘read’ religious paintings and architecture. And they should understand how a true civilization of love reaches its summit in the Mass, where our desire for God is anticipated and surpassed by God’s love for us.

At Divine Mercy Academy we are especially aware of how the great teachings of our patron, Pope St. John Paul II, on the Theology of the Body are vital to our mission of forming disciples of Jesus Christ, who are made free to realize their full potential by living joyfully in accordance with the truth of our vocation to love.

Students should understand how the vocation to love informs our very meaning as persons, soul and body.  The curriculum should reflect on how men and women live out this vocation differently in marriage, religious, and consecrated life. Upper school religion courses should therefore contemplate the ‘theology of the body’, not primarily from the point of view of ‘sex education’ or even sexual morality (though both of these remain important), but from the truth about the human person as a sexually differentiated unity of body and soul created in and for love. The goal here is not to moralize, but to provide students with a beautiful, more compelling vision of life and love that they can desire and appropriate as their own.  

The study of religion should fulfill the role of basic catechesis, conveying what the Church teaches.

By approaching catechesis in light of a broader vision of God and the human person students are helped to understand not only what the church teaches but why this teaching is true. Students see what these teachings have to do with the basic questions of the human heart, how they matter to their lives, and how they have mattered in the lives of whole cultures.

The study of religion is both the conveying of a definite body of knowledge and the cultivation of habits and qualities in the soul of the student. It should incorporate silence, adoration, mystery, and the experience of beauty through adoration, music, and the school’s observation and study of the liturgy and the liturgical calendar.

Lower Elementary (Lower Grammar)

-Begin to recognize how Christianity becomes incarnate in culture through art, music, architecture, literature, and the liturgical calendar

-Appreciate the historical setting of the Bible

-Learn the traditions of the Church and the mysteries of the faith through beauty, beautiful liturgy, and adoration

-Become acquainted with the tradition of sacred music as a form of prayer

-Acquire basic catechetical instruction in the meaning of the Incarnation, the Creeds of the Church, familiarity with the Old and New Testament and the difference between them, the meaning of the Mass, the liturgical calendar, basic prayers and practices of the church, etc.

-Memorize and recite Scripture, Bible facts, catechism, prayers, and hymns

-Learn to pray liturgically, intercessory, and contemplatively

-Learn to regard and participate in sacred music as a form of prayer

-Cultivate longing for God

-Develop habits of stillness and adoration

-Begin to develop a habit of prayer, a love for the mysteries of the faith, and a desire for

God’s beauty and truth

-Develop a habit of noticing the presence of God

Upper Elementary (Upper Grammar)

-Begin to recognize how the Christian culture of the Middle Ages is reflected in art, music, architecture, literature, the liturgical calendar, the structure of cities, organization of labor, and the code of chivalry and how this is transformed in the Modern period

-Begin to understand importance of the Trinity and Incarnation

-Know they belong to God's chosen people and are part of his family, the Church

-Know they are made for heaven and that creatures and the created world exist to help them get there

-Memorize books of the Bible, important verses, Apostles, Beatitudes, basic prayers of the Mass in English and Latin, sacraments, major events of salvation history

-Know the parts of the Mass

-Know the major moments of salvation history from creation to Pentecost

-Understand basic teachings on Confession and Eucharist

-Understand sin, grace and the sacraments

-Know the Creed and understand each of its tenets

-Know lives of the major saints of the periods of history they are studying

-Know how to pray the Rosary

-Give more advanced theological explanations of Church doctrines

-Learn how to "assist" at Mass through acolyte training

-Memorization and recitation of Scripture, Bible facts, catechism, prayers, and hymns

-Learn to pray liturgically, intercessory, and contemplatively

-Learn to regard and participate in sacred music as a form of prayer

-Cultivate longing for God

-Develop personal relationship with Christ as friend and Mary as mother

-Begin to value silence

-Have favorite saints and relationships with them

-Examine conscience, go to Confession, "offer up" a sacrifice,

-Strengthening of the conscience to begin to love God's will and wish to avoid sin

-Take responsibility for faults or failure and apologize sincerely

-Acquire a spirit of service, collaboration and genuine friendship

Middle School (Logic stage)

-Know that God made us for Himself and that our hearts are restless until they rest in Him

-Understand history as oriented to Christ before his Incarnation and flowing from Christ after his Incarnation

-Know the major moments of salvation history from creation to the modern day

-Recognize the competing claims about God (or the gods) offered by pagans and philosophers and how the Christian understanding of God is radically different

-Recognize how Christianity transforms the classical inheritance

-Recognize how the Christian culture of the Middle Ages is reflected in art, music, architecture, literature, the liturgical calendar, the structure of cities, organization of labor, and the code of chivalry; and how this is transformed in the Modern period

-Recognize relevance of Christian faith and teachings of Church to fundamental human questions and aspirations that have animated every culture

-Begin to understand how the Trinity and Incarnation reveal both God and man

-Know the teachings of select books of the Bible

-Begin to know the theological tradition

-Begin to understand the art of apologetics and how the teachings of the Church flow from the truth about God and man

-Begin to understand the claims of the Protestant Reformers, modern atheists, and moral relativists and how the Church defends the truth in the face of these claims

-Begin to understand the Mass: its structure, its meaning, and its place in God’s plan for the world

-Understand the basic teachings on the sacraments, especially Confirmation

-Begin to understand and appreciate that a person is a unity of body and soul, created in God’s love and called to love and truth, and thus to understand the true personal meaning of their own bodies.

-Begin to understand how the Christian vision of love and Catholic sexual morality flow from the truth about God and man

-Give more advanced theological explanations of Church doctrine

-Defend the tenets of the faith against heresy and atheism, as well as the major moral teachings against confusion

-Begin to think theologically

-Memorization of Scripture and scriptural arguments

-Cultivate and reflect on longing for God

-Deepen the habit of contemplative prayer

-Deepen the familiarity with and participation in the liturgical life of the Church

-Deepen appreciation of silence

-Examine conscience, go to Confession, "offer up" a sacrifice

-Strengthening of the conscience to begin to love God's will and wish to avoid sin

-Heed the double commandment to love God and neighbor

-Cultivate friendships based on virtue