High School Theology at Padre Pio Academy HS

The theology program aims to help students think in a serious way about the principles of Catholic theology under the guidance of the work of St. Thomas Aquinas in order to help save their own souls and to help save the souls of others. The goal is to provide a unified view of reality by offering wisdom in the contemporary world.

To this end:

• We spend more time on less content; we go deeper into the important questions and principles.

• We focus more on thinking through arguments and less on memorizing conclusions.

• Class time is dedicated for discussion, allowing students to have a space to develop their own thinking (intellectual habits), instead of simply giving students information.

• We focus on important philosophical principles within our theological study.

• We prioritize the speculative/theoretical questions rather than the historical questions.

• We read serious texts (St. Thomas Aquinas, texts of ) we do not use the typical introductory high school textbooks (which may be helpful summaries but are not helpful for thinking deeply).

  Students are assessed on the quality of their engagement with the discussion in the classroom and through tests that largely consist of short answer questions where students need to provide an argument explaining their answer. In addition, students write longer papers that help them bring together the material that they have thought about during the semester.