Dear friends,
Another summer has come and gone, and we find ourselves once again gathering back
together as a community. Welcome back to St. Augustine Academy! We are so excited to begin the
2025-26 school year. There’s a lot that we’re packing into this year: Humanality, Mock Trial, two
plays, a trip to Rome(!), Colonial Day, star-gazing nights, high school baseball, fundraisers, family
dances, all-high school seminar, Advent and Spring concerts, and parent nights just to name a few!
There is a lot happening this year. Much of it is new or something being renewed here at the
school. Sometimes that which is new is being done in a spirit of change. In this case, however,
we’re not looking to change the school. What we’re really trying to do is dig into our roots. We’re
literally trying to become more radical (from the Latin: radix meaning root)! We want to share the
culture of the school, the Church, and the Western tradition more with our students and our families
this year so we are trying to dig more into those roots.
Where does one start when trying to do something radical? You go back to the beginning.
That’s why this year as a school, we’re focusing on the Theological Virtues: Faith, Hope, and
Charity. We wanted to go back to the three foundational virtues of the Church to investigate what
they are and try to implement them more fully into our lives and the lives of the students. We started
with Faith and plan to continue by focusing on Hope and Charity over the next few quarters of the
school year.
The teachers began this school year by reading and discussing Belief and Faith by Josef
Pieper. I personally wanted to dig into a philosophical treatment of the virtues, so that we could
understand the parts of the virtue. Josef Pieper does an excellent job of this. He shows how faith is
an action itself. He discusses how we often will try to rationalize our belief, but that we cannot prove
it to be true. At most, we can defend the belief, but, by the nature of the virtue of faith, it cannot be
reasoned to. This can create a real dilemma for the philosopher- one who prides himself on his
critical thinking skills. He actively has to suppress a natural desire to be able to prove something,
instead having to give assent to something that simply cannot be proven.
Pieper also discusses how faith is not just believing something, but that faith is having belief
in someone. Beliefs do not come from our thinking but come from a witness who has seen or has
firm knowledge of the subject. We take this witness at his word, but again, we cannot prove this
testimony to be true. At most, all we can do is take the witness to be more or less credible.
While there were many points made by Pieper, these two stick out the most in my mind.
Faith is an action which requires us to, at least in some way, put aside a distinct portion of what
makes us man, that is rationalizing something to a logical conclusion, and instead put our trust fully
into someone else. This seems akin to a child trusting a loving parent. The child has only ever
known the parent to be loving and truthful, and so there is a natural faith the child has in what the
parent says or commands. The analogy falls apart as the child grows older and begins to see the
faults of the parents, thus losing faith.
Pieper makes the point that faith really is all or nothing. You either have faith in the entirety of what the witness states or you do not have faith. In having faith in Christ and His Church, we are required to humble ourselves and become like a child once again. He describes how the critical thinker is akin to a martyr, giving up a part of himself for the sake of his faith. As we embark on the new year and try out all these new events at the school, let us continually look back to our roots. I look forward to sharing the year with you all, and to recommitting myself and the school to the Theological virtues. I will seeyou all again on Back to School Night!
God Bless, Timothy Moore
ANNOUNCEMENTS
BACK TO SCHOOL NIGHT- Back to School Night is Thursday, September 4th. This is one of two
mandatory parent events. It’s an evening where we make announcements, we go over expectations for
the school year, and you meet your children’s teachers. The event starts at 6:15 pm and will be at the
Upper Campus. Make sure to mark your calendars!
UPCOMING DATES TO REMEMBER-
Sep 1- Labor Day, NO SCHOOL
Sep 4- Back To School, 6:15 pm
Sep 5- ALL SCHOOL (K-12) Mass and Early Dismissal from Upper Campus, Mass @ 11:40 and
Early Dismissal at 12:30
Sep 6- Ivanhoe Seminar Night for High School at the Van Hecke residence!