“What is the goal of the Catholic doctrine class? To make known and loved the written Word of God and the teaching of the Magisterium of His Church; to make known and loved true theological doctrine, and to show how it should nourish one’s prayer life, and how it should enlighten all other fields of knowledge in view of working for the establishment of a Catholic social order.”

                            – Father Roger Calmel, O.P. The Renewal of the Christian School

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Education, as Frank Duff notes, is not only imparting doctrine, but also the spirit and sense of religious mission as well; i.e., knowledge with the sense of responsibility and duty to other souls.  “Catholic” must not be an adjective, but life itself.  Education is the medium to mold every child into another Christ who will Christianize the world and who will, if needs be, suffer and die in the performance of that mission.

In that regard, devotion towards Our Lady, Mother of the Church and Mediatrix of all graces, is essential.  Her whole life and destiny have been motherhood, first of Christ and then of all men.  That motherhood of souls being her essential function and her very life, it follows that, without participation in it, there can be no real union with her.  True devotion to Mary must comprise the service of soul. (Victory through Mary and The Legion of Mary Handbook).

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At Notre Dame de La Salette, religion is not just one class at one particular time.  Religion permeates every class and all our activities.  We instill in our students the realization that religion must penetrate every aspect of our lives.  Religion must be all, or else it is nothing!  In addition, as our first Pope exhorts us to be “always ready to satisfy every one that asketh you a reason of that hope which is in you” (1 Peter 3:15), instruction in Apologetics is included during the senior year as the student prepares to leave La Salette and encounter our troubled world as an adult.