We’re a parish school where your children will excel
intellectually, emotionally and spiritually.
The Holy House of Our Lady & St. Benedict provides an integrated Catholic education supporting parents as the primary educators of their children. Our programmes of study equip students to grow and thrive in a world that is often hostile to our Catholic faith. Our young people are not merely educated in this Holy House — we assist in their spiritual, human, and academic formation. Education is so much more than the transfer of knowledge and skills and so we engage the whole person, as a beloved child of God with a supernatural destiny, in the pursuit of truth, beauty and holiness.
The late Pope Benedict XVI established the Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter as a diocese that preserves and celebrates the English patrimony. Holy House as an Ordinariate school, is therefore steeped in the British academic tradition and is the only accredited school in the province of Alberta based in a parish Church under the direct authority of the clergy. We are an apostolate of the Companions of St. Gilbert of Sempringham, and of St. Benedict Catholic Church in Edmonton.
Our curriculum revolves around a four-year history cycle where materials presented in one class are reinforced by materials presented in another. We never teach one subject at a time — lessons in history beg a discussion of geography, philosophy, and political analysis; the masterworks of Catholic art and music engage conversations about those very same things; and every class is a class in religion! We value a classical and interdisciplinary approach to education, emphasising the virtues, integrated knowledge and skills, and an academic excellence that give our young people the best opportunity to succeed in this life and in the next. Specifically, Holy House is structured around the Four Pillars of Catholic Education in the Ordinariate: Sacred Worship, Sacred Wisdom, Sacred Music, and Sacred Art.
THE FOUR PILLARS of catholic Education
Sacred Worship: Primacy is given to the daily celebration of the liturgical life of the Church, since the first education of the soul is conducted not by programmes, but by the Word of God and sacramental grace. The entire day and school year is therefore punctuated by prayer and of course the Holy Mass is the ‘most important class of the day’. It is celebrated according to the Ordinariate Form: the Venerable English Mass said ad orientem in sacral English.
Sacred Wisdom: Our students are immersed in the excellence of the Catholic Classical Liberal Arts tradition which fosters the intellectual and moral virtues needed for serious study, for living a Christian life of discipleship, and for sharing the Catholic Faith. Academic rigour in the liberal arts is essential to the formation of rational, free, and virtuous persons, we therefore ensure a firm grounding in literature, grammar, science, and other core subjects.
Sacred Music: Music is an integral part of the patrimony of English Christianity, and is therefore central to the curriculum of Holy House. It provides a point of integration for the other core subjects, but is more than that: our music programmes educate the very soul.
Sacred Art: Usually viewed by other schools as an ‘extra’ or an avenue of self expression, the visual arts are taken seriously at our school. The great treasury of our Catholic faith contained in our sacred arts and architecture can only be accessed through competent visual literacy skills. Accordingly, we ensure every student is visually literate and has an appreciation for the arts. That said, sacred art is taught in the Ordinariate not just from the standpoint of appreciation, but in the creation of it. Our programme centres on drawing and painting as important foundational skills.
In the end, education through Holy House does what all good Catholic educational initiatives seek to accomplish: assist parents in the handing-on of the faith to their children towards sainthood, while equipping them for the adventure of life.
“The object of education is to teach us to love what is beautiful.”
