Alumni Educators Become Journal-ists

The Cardinal Newman Society has assembled an impressive collection of Catholic leaders to write for Journal, its online publication aimed at promoting excellence in Catholic schooling. Among the luminaries are Dale Ahlquist, Anthony Esolen, and two Thomas Aquinas College alumni: Sean Fitzpatrick (’02) and Michael Van Hecke (’86).

The headmaster of Gregory the Great Academy in Elmhurst, Pennsylvania, Mr. Fitzpatrick writes for Journal about once a week, with recent columns touching upon such topics as the importance of play, education and imagination, and the “dangers” inherent in education. In a recent post, Science and Poetry, he laments that “conventional education has largely replaced the otherworldly with the worldly,” at the expense of the metaphysical arts. However, “the efforts of physical science can only reveal half of the world,” he warns. “The other half belongs to a different form of knowledge. And for this reason, the poetic and the scientific are not mutually exclusive, but mutually confirming.”

Mr. Van Hecke — the headmaster of St. Augustine Academy in Ventura, California, and president and founder of the Institute for Catholic Liberal Education — is, likewise, a regular Journal contributor. He focuses mostly on trends in Catholic schooling, both good and bad, at home and abroad. In his newest column, he writes about meeting Cardinal Giuseppe Versaldi, the prefect of the Holy See’s Congregation for Catholic Education, at the World Congress on Catholic Education in 2015; and he comments on advice that His Eminence gave in a recent address. “We would all do well to remember the importance of virtue and wisdom as guiding ends for our educational and parental duties,” advises Mr. Van Hecke. “And we would all do well to stand on the shoulders of the giants who built our Catholic intellectual tradition rather than embrace an historical intellectual amnesia and follow every new twist and turn of educational research.”

Look for more of their contributions in Journal, hosted on the Cardinal Newman Society website.