Mission and Ideals

STMA's Mission and Ideals

St. Thomas More Academy is the first independently governed Catholic school in the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend. We have been granted canonical recognition as a Catholic school in accord with CIC/83 canon 803 §1

St. Thomas More Academy’s mission is to serve Michiana families and the Church by helping our students develop the intellectual, moral, and theological virtues. STMA graduates will have grown in wisdom enlivened by charity. The ultimate purpose of an STMA education is that our students know and love God eternally, and serve Him and their neighbors in this life through their personal vocations.

    To this end, STMA provides a rigorous education in the classical liberal arts, the fine arts, and the sciences that is rooted in the Catholic intellectual tradition. The source and summit of each school day is the offering of the Mass. STMA is an apostolic community devoted to the pursuit of wisdom through a culture marked by freedom for excellence, the beauty of truth, and friendship in Christ.  

    Our Ideals

    Freedom for Excellence

    STMA seeks true freedom for its students. This is a freedom for excellence, found in the lifelong work of developing our intellects, wills, and affections in the activities of knowing truth, practicing goodness, and creating beauty. STMA students strive to embody the ideal of magnanimity in their daily study and work, seeking “greatness of soul” so that they can better serve others and glorify God.

    At STMA, we understand that teachers are indispensable mentors and guides, but teachers cannot do the work for the students of developing intellectual and moral virtues. Their challenge is to engage the students’ freedom, so that the students themselves daily strive for excellence in knowing, loving, and serving. Children are naturally attracted to truth, beauty, and goodness, and our teachers aim to draw out this deep desire. Our teachers also help students overcome obstacles like laziness and distractions and prepare themselves for their future vocations and professions. STMA believes that both extrinsic and intrinsic motivations for study are necessary, but intrinsic motivations should be stronger. Teachers master their craft when they inspire students’ desire for wisdom and charity, show students the way to these inexhaustible ideals, and accompany students on their journey.

    The Beauty of Truth 

    STMA agrees with Aristotle that all human beings by nature desire to know. Indeed, human beings are created to participate in God’s own wisdom. Truth is a relationship of love between the knower and what is known, and so truth is beautiful, and all wisdom begins in wonder and grows through the habit of attention.  Because God created human beings with a natural light, the light of reason, which enables them to see some degree of reality, and also gives them the light of faith, whereby we can participate in God’s own knowledge and see reality far more deeply, STMA believes that both faith and reason are indispensible sources of wisdom.  

    STMA’s pedagogy is thus rooted in these central ideas:

    1) Profound experience of the sacred, of human community (which includes the living and the dead), and of the natural world are necessary for reason to work properly.

    2) Wisdom begins in wonder at the beauty of reality, and a desire to know things in greater breadth and depth.

    3) Wisdom grows through the habit of attending to reality as one attends to another person or to God. 

    4) Wisdom also grows through mastery of the classical liberal arts according to an apprenticeship model of deliberate, ordered practice through imitation, followed by creative exploration, which integrates the skills learned into the original act of attending to reality.

    5) Faith and reason are two lights that profoundly depend upon each other to illuminate the beauty of truth. 

    Friendship in Christ

    At STMA, we believe that friendship in Christ is both the foundation and goal of true education. In order to be free to pursue truth, goodness, and beauty, students first need to know that they are children of God, eternally known and loved for their own sake, and given a unique mission to fulfill in God’s providential plan.   Parents, school leaders, teachers, and chaplains all strive to communicate to each student the reality of his or her divine filiation. Rooted in this identity, students are liberated to pursue truth and strive for excellence in their work out of love for God and neighbor. Their wisdom is enlivened by charity. They are ultimately motivated to study so that they can love God, themselves, and other human beings with their minds, and better serve God and others through their future vocations and professions. 

    At STMA, school leaders and faculty members love each student as a unique child of God. Students are encouraged and taught how to grow in friendship with one another and with Christ. Prayer is at the heart of each school day. STMA’s House System is an important aspect of our school culture, and opportunities to practically serve the local community and practice the corporal and spiritual works of mercy are incorporated into STMA’s curriculum.

    St. Thomas More and Our Vision

    STMA’s students are inspired to imitate our patron in his magnanimity, love of the truth, awareness of his divine filiation, capacity for friendship, and heroic charity. As we help our students grow, we look to three of St. Thomas More’s educational principles:

    • Virtue must be put in the first place, and learning in the second. If one’s loves are disordered, it is impossible to see reality clearly.  
    • Every human being has inclinations to truth, goodness, and beauty that are part of the nature of the soul. But these are given as seeds to be developed, and because of original sin, contrary inclinations impede them. The work of education is to cultivate the garden of the soul, planting and nurturing true principles and noble loves, and constantly weeding out pride, ignorance, sloth, and all other vices.
    • Children must be taught “to seek not praise, but utility” (“Letter to William Gonell,” 1518). In other words, we do not want our students to be motivated by the desire to impress others, but rather by the sincere desire to serve them.