All programmes of The Gilbertine Institute support parents in their role as the primary educators of their children.  This priority complies with the Alberta Education Act which guarantees that parents are the “primary guide and decision-maker with respect to the child’s education.”  More importantly, this priority flows from the Magisterium of the Catholic Church, clearly expressed in The Catholic School on the Threshold of the Third Millennium, by St. John Paul II.

20. Parents have a particularly important part to play in the educating community, since it is to them that primary and natural responsibility for their children’s education belongs. Unfortunately in our day there is a widespread tendency to delegate this unique role. Therefore it is necessary to foster initiatives which encourage commitment, but which provide at the same time the right sort of concrete support which the family needs and which involve it in the Catholic school’s educational project. The constant aim of the school therefore, should be contact and dialogue with the pupils’ families, which should also be encouraged through the promotion of parents’ associations, in order to clarify with their indispensable collaboration that personalised approach which is needed for an educational project to be efficacious.

The Gilbertine Academy is an accredited independent high school, grades nine through twelve, and The Holy House of Our Lady & St. John in Calgary and its satellite, The Holy House of Our Lady & St. Benedict in Edmonton, are the shared responsibility programmes of The Gilbertine Academy for grades one through eight.  All are apostolates of the parish of St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church with a mission to support parents of the congregation in the education of their children.  Specifically, to assist parents in: 

1. the spiritual formation of their children though regular instruction and prayer according to the prescribed forms of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter;

2. the immersion of their children in the excellence of the Catholic academic tradition; and

3. the imbuing of a love in their children for the historic patrimony of the Anglican and Catholic choral traditions as well as the great artistic treasures of the Church. 

The Gilbertine Academy and Holy House are integrated educational programmes that honour the theological order of the domestic Church, affirming parents as the primary educators of their children. All programmes at The Gilbertine Academy and Holy House are informed by the knowledge that children are persons with dignity and a supernatural destiny.

The Gilbertine Academy and Holy House have an intentional monastic ordering.  The rhythm of the day revolves around the chanting of the daily offices, the Little Hours, and attendance at Mass.   The influence of monastic spirituality, industriousness and orderliness permeate The Gilbertine Academy and Holy House in tangible ways.

The wholesome environment of The Gilbertine Academy and Holy House allows each child to mature academically and in virtue with gentle and charitable guidance. Studies are meant to emphasise and nurture the intellectual,  historical, artistic, and spiritual gifts of the faith. The ultimate goal is for students to discover the influence and beauty of Catholicism in every aspect of culture and their own lives, growing in holiness and drawing ever closer to the Triune God.

What Makes The Gilbertine Academy and Holy House Unique? 

We go to school with Jesus, present in the Blessed Sacrament. We begin and end our day before him, seeking His guidance and singing His praise. The most important class of each day is the Mass, where the True, the Good, and the Beautiful are not absorbed through the subjects studied, but consumed as the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus Christ.  

The Gilbertine Academy is the only parochial school in the Province of Alberta that is both an apostolate of a Roman Catholic parish and that takes place in that parish: St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church.

“It is in the Church, in communion with all the baptized, that the Christian fulfills his vocation. From the Church he receives the Word of God containing the teachings of ‘the law of Christ’ (Gal. 6:2). From the Church he receives the grace of the sacraments that sustains him on the ‘way.’ From the Church he learns the example of holiness and recognizes its model and source in the all-holy Virgin Mary; he discerns it in the authentic witness of those who live it; he discovers it in the spiritual tradition and long history of the saints who have gone before him and whom the liturgy celebrates in the rhythms of the sanctoral cycle.”

Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 2030

“[I]n a special way, the duty of educating belongs to the Church, not merely because she must be recognized as a human society capable of educating, but especially because she has the responsibility of announcing the way of salvation to all men, of communicating the life of Christ to those who believe, and, in her unfailing solicitude, of assisting men to be able to come to the fullness of this life.(14) The Church is bound as a mother to give to these children of hers an education by which their whole life can be imbued with the spirit of Christ and at the same time do all she can to promote for all peoples the complete perfection of the human person, the good of earthly society and the building of a world that is more human.(15)”

Pope Paul VI, Gravissimum Educationis (Declaration on Christian Education)