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Excellence and Catholic Education, by David G Bonagura, Jr. – Brown Pelican Society of Lousiana

Excellence and Catholic Education, by David G Bonagura, Jr.

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By David G Bonagura, Jr., The Catholic Thing, January 27, 2025

David G. Bonagura Jr. an adjunct professor at St. Joseph’s Seminary and is the 2023-2024 Cardinal Newman Society Fellow for Eucharistic Education. He is the author of Steadfast in Faith: Catholicism and the Challenges of Secularism and Staying with the Catholic Church, and the translator of Jerome’s Tears: Letters to Friends in Mourning.

“Excellence,” along with its cousin “success,” is the most overused word in education. It adorns mission statements and admission pitches at all levels of both Catholic and secular schools, seeking to convince prospective students to enroll and prospective donors to give. The Catholic elementary school where I was educated, to name but one, had a citation on its outdoor sign: “A National School of Excellence.” The honor was bestowed by some accrediting agency that somehow wielded the majestic power to define what is excellent.

And there is the game: everyone uses “excellence,” but no one really knows what it means.

The dictionary defines excellence as “the state of possessing good qualities in an unusual or eminent degree; the state of excelling in anything.” For Aristotle, excellence was synonymous with virtue, arete in Greek. A thing is “excellent” if it performs its purpose at a high level. A knife is excellent if it cuts well, a calculator is excellent if it calculates well, a person is excellent if he lives well. …

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