Mission

School of Faith is a public association of the faithful that provides ongoing adult catechesis at schools and parishes throughout the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas. Through collaboration with My Faith Delivered, School of Faith is expanding its outreach beyond archdiocesan boundaries through the implementation of state-of-the-art online classes.

School of Faith offers doctrinal and spiritual formation for Catholics through catechetical programs that stress the call to prayer, virtue, and holiness of life, with a particular emphasis on mentoring those who have the responsibility to teach the faith to others.

Objectives

School of Faith is a program of adult catechesis primarily designed to provide doctrinal and spiritual formation for Catholic school teachers and administrators. Its purpose is to lay the theological foundation upon which an authentic Catholic culture can be developed. It is comprehensive in its content, but always with the goal of explaining the faith in a simple and engaging way. School of Faith currently serves at nineteen archdiocesan schools, as well as nine parishes and the St. Lawrence Center at the University of Kansas.

As stressed by the Church at the Second Vatican Council, Catholic schools have the task of leading young people to a deep encounter with Jesus Christ. This entails providing them an apprenticeship in Christian living as well as renewing Catholic culture through the development of the physical, intellectual, moral, social and especially spiritual capacities of the next generation.

The religious who graced Catholic schools in previous generations had an amazing depth and breadth of formation in the Catholic faith. Today, however, the vast majority of our teachers are lay people who were not given this same depth of religious training. If the primary mission of a Catholic school is to provide an authentically Catholic education, then equipping the teachers who have the responsibility to carry out this mission must be a priority. Teachers must be well formed in the Catholic faith and way of life themselves, as they cannot be expected to hand on what they do not possess.

Therefore, the mission of School of Faith is to provide ongoing doctrinal and spiritual formation for Catholic school teachers in the Archdiocese of Kansas City through catechetical programs that stress the call to prayer, virtue, and holiness of life. This formation not only benefits the teachers themselves, but also equips them to build a solid Catholic environment in our Catholic schools.

Pillars of the School of Faith Program

With the intention of fostering an authentically Catholic culture in the Catholic schools in the Archdiocese of Kansas City, the School of Faith formation consists of four pillars:

1. Intellectual formation in the Catholic ideas or truths by studying the Old and New Testament, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, virtue, moral principles, social doctrine and the theology of the body.

2. Interior formation, concentrating on growth in a deep relationship with Christ through prayer.

3. Community and friendship, as our faith is relational.

4. Apostolate: Apply the truth, beauty, and goodness of the Catholic faith to everything we do in the school, as an application of our baptismal mission to draw others to Christ and His Church.

Curriculum

The curriculum itself is taught through a series of weekly one-hour lectures, with no assignments or requirements other than attendance at the lectures. The initial three-year program of formation begins with a yearlong walk through the Old Testament and salvation history.