Programme Foundations 2026-2027
To reverence truth, desire goodness, & rejoice in beauty
The Gilbertine Academy Holy House of Our Lady & St. John C a l g a ry, A B
The Gilbertine Academy
Holy House of Our Lady & St. John Location:
St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church 1423 8 Avenue SE Calgary, AB T2G 0N1 In-Person Schedule:
Holy House Calgary: Tuesdays & Thursdays | 8.00 AM to 4.00 PM Gilbertine Academy: Tuesdays through Fridays | 8.00 AM to 4.00 PM Division of Students:
Primary Division Beginner Division Junior Division Intermediate Division Senior Division
Gr. 1−2 Gr. 3−4 Gr. 5−6 Gr. 7−8 Gr. 9−10/11−12
Table of Contents 1 Welcome 3 Holy House at a Glance 5 Our Apostolate 6 Our Fundamental Commitments 9 Our Structure
Welcome to
The Gilbertine Academy
& Holy House.
We’re a Catholic liberal arts programme in the English schooling tradition where your children will grow in mind, heart, & soul.
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Therefore with full right the Church promotes letters, science, art in so far as necessary or helpful to Christian education, in addition to her work for the salvation of souls: founding and maintaining schools and institutions adapted to every branch of learning and degree of culture.[13] Nor may even physical culture, as it is called, be considered outside the range of her maternal supervision, for the reason that it also is a means which may help or harm Christian education. And this work of the Church in every branch of culture is of immense benefit to families and nations which without Christ are lost… Divini Illius Magistri 21-22
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Programme Overview: Grades 1-8: Shared Responsibility. Holy House Calgary will assume all legal responsibility for instruction in English Language Arts, Catholic Studies (Course Title: Catholic Culture, Catechism & Church History), and Latin. Enrichment courses will be offered in Choir, Science, Art, and Physical Education. These courses can be listed on families’ EPPs as part of the fulfillment for their plan of home studies, in consultation with their facilitator.
Grades 9-12: Full-Time Programme. Gilbertine Academy offers an accredited high school Senior Division Grade 9-10 and 11-12 classroom. The programme is held in person at St. John the Evangelist from Tuesday to Friday, with Mondays focusing on independent in-home learning with support available from teachers during office hours. Gilbertine Academy fulfills requirements for the Alberta High School Diploma.
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OuR APostoLaTe T
Our school is under the authority of the Very Reverend Robert-Charles Bengry GSmp, Magister of the Companions of St. Gilbert, and the Reverend Kenneth Noster, Head of School of the Gilbertine Institute.
he Gilbertine Academy/Holy House of Our Lady & St. John is an accredited independent school serving students from Grades 1 through 12 administered by the Gilbertine Institute, which includes WISDOM Home Schooling, Holy House of Our Lady & St. Benedict and Villa Spiritus.
Holy House & the Gilbertines
O
ur schools (Gr 1-8) take their name from the Holy House of Walsingham, a replica of the Blessed Virgin Mary’s house built in the eleventh century on the pattern of a vision given to Richeldis de Faverches, a devout noblewoman and widow known as the Lady of the Manor of Little Walsingham. The site housed one of the most important devotional objects in medieval England, the statue of Our Lady of Walsingham, as well as several chapels and the necessary accommodations and hospices for pilgrims who came to the site. For hundreds of years, the Holy House served as one of medieval England’s most important pilgrimage sites, standing as a model of the way the sacred and domestic can come together to nurture body and soul in a single physical space. This legacy of sanctified community and ordered devotion provides a natural inspiration for a Catholic school, where learning, moral formation, and communal care are intertwined, and students grow as scholars, virtuous members of Church and society, and future inhabitants of the Father’s mansions with many rooms.
The daily rhythm of the school is informed by the spirituality of another tradition which combines the secular and domestic, the Companions of St. Gilbert of Sempringham (GSmp), for which Gilbertine Academy is named. The companions serve as a modern revival of the Order of Sempringham, which was founded by St. Gilbert of Sempringham in 1131 to address the spiritual and social needs of his time. The only religious order native to England, the Gilbertines were also the Church’s only “double order,” in which men and women, both religious and lay, lived out their various vocations under the auspices of a shared rule, prayer life, and work. Drawing on the Augustinian and Benedictine traditions and influenced by Cistercian practice, Gilbertine spirituality emphasized ordered charity, intellectual formation, obedience, and mutual responsibility, particularly in service to education and the pastoral care of souls. This pattern of life and purpose provides solid groundwork for a Catholic liberal arts school in the English tradition, where the mind, heart, and soul are formed in a community ordered toward the knowledge, love, and service of the goods in this life in anticipation of their fulfillment in the next.
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About Us
About Us
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n light of our spiritual inheritance, our school cultivates a vibrant lay life embedded in a monastic rhythm. Our schools operate under the guidance of our Magister and chaplain, begin and end with Mattins and Evensong, and culminate in daily Mass. The life of the Church spills out of the Divine Office, informing our classwork as our teachers and all staff encourage students to embrace a sacramental
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“The whole fruit of their [educational] endeavors should consist in the testimony of God and a good conscience. Thus they will be inwardly calm and at peace and neither stirred by praise of flatterers nor stung by the follies of unlearned mockers of learning.” St. Thomas More Letter to William Gonell
world-view ordered towards union with the Triune God. Through our academic studies, we learn about the Good, the True, and the Beautiful and we join ourselves to the Blessed Sacrament.
for students to discover the influence and beauty of Catholicism in every aspect of culture and in their own lives, growing in holiness, and drawing ever closer to God.
Another feature is the practical integration of the These features of our schools in Edmonton, Calgary home, school, and Church. Restoring the domestic and Derwent provide a wholly unique and rare church and Catholic academic tradition means an educational opportunity. investment in an authentic common life. The goal is )7(
Grades 1 - 8:
shared Responsibilit y: A Partnership with Parents
T
he Holy House of Our Lady and St. John provides an integrated Catholic liberal arts education, supporting parents as the primary educators. As a Shared Responsibility programme, we aim to be a home at school that harmonises with schooling at home in mutual support. Many of our school teachers are parents of Holy House students and all parents help to teach and apply the programme at home.
Our programme recognises the domestic church as the first society, and complements the vocational mission of parents “as those first responsible for the education of their children”. We do not seek to replace the parental role in education; but rather bolster and support parents in their efforts as educators of their children. We strive to maintain an atmosphere in which our students learn the joy of intellectual inquiry as an end-in-itself and also develop the habits and virtues needed for serious study and personal growth.
Grades 9 - 12:
Fitting for this World, Training for Another
A
t the high school level, Gilbertine Academy continues to provide a classical Catholic education that regards parents as the primary educators, but seeks to equip students to take a more active and independent role in their education, working toward completing requirements of an Alberta High School diploma. Our programme provides an integrated classical Catholic education, supporting parents as the primary educators. Both home at school and schooling at home take on new dimensions as students become more responsible for preparing for in-person
days, participating in learning and discussion in the classroom, and bringing both of these activities to fruition via further assessment and enrichment. Although our high school programme retains a vision of the domestic church as the first society, it also recognises that students must be prepared to participate responsibly in the larger societies of Church, nation, and world. We seek to aid parents in preparing their students in evaluating, understanding, and joining social discourse in its many forms.
All education is to be founded on Revealed Truth… to fit men for this world while it train[s] them for another. St. John Henry Newman, The Rise and Progress of Universities
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Faith Formation Our course of studies equips students to grow and thrive in a world that is often hostile to our Catholic faith. We assist their spiritual, human, and academic formation. Because education is more than the transfer of knowledge and skills, we work with parents to help form the whole person as a beloved child of God with a supernatural destiny, in the pursuit of truth, beauty and holiness. The environment of Holy House aims to allow each child to mature academically, spiritually, socially and emotionally, as strong, resilient and engaged Catholics equipped for sainthood.
Character Formation “If faith is like the root, charity is like the sap that nourishes the trunk and rises into the branches, the network of virtues, to produce the delicious fruit of good works" (Servais Pinckaers, O.P.; Morality: The Catholic View, South Bend, St. Augustine Press, 2001. Holy House’s cultivation of faith naturally leads to a cultivation of virtue. Students in our programmes receive instruction in the classical understanding of the virtues as dispositions which arise out of habits built over time by means of repeated choiceworthy actions. This understanding is animated anew by the wisdom of the Church, as demonstrated in Scripture, the documents of the Magisterium, and the lives of the saints, which recognise the integral role grace plays in the development of good character.
as faculty and staff strive to demonstrate these habits, aid students in identifying them in their classmates, and think through how to develop them in their own right. Holy House’s goal in its virtue programme is that its students may understand along with the Catechism that “A virtue is an habitual and firm disposition to do the good… it allows the person not only to perform good acts, but to give the best of himself. The virtuous person tends toward the good with all his sensory and spiritual powers; he pursues the good and chooses it in concrete actions" (see CCC 1803).
Academic Excellence & Integration Our curriculum adopts a cyclic study of history and an integrated approach to all subjects. Just as the source of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness is one divine being subsisting in three persons, so we study these same transcendentals as present in individual disciplines grounded in one reality.
The programme seeks to pursue truth wherever it is found, honouring the genuine achievements of scientists, poets, and philosophers throughout history. As Saint Augustine exhorts, “let every good and true Christian understand that wherever truth may be found, it belongs to his Master” (Augustine, De doctrina christiana II.18). Similarly, Saint Basil the Great writes that “after the manner of bees must we use these writings, for the bees do not visit all the flowers without discrimination, nor indeed do they seek to carry away entire those upon Students study one virtue a month, and consider the which they light, but rather, having taken so much as ways it is cultivated in everyday life through examples is adapted to their needs, they let the rest go. So we, if found in literature, Scripture, poetry, and history both wise, shall take from heathen books whatever befits us sacred and secular, as well as, in the higher divisions, and is allied to the truth” in order to make the honey the way it has been understood and applied through the that flows from the rock (St. Basil, Address to Young Men disciplines of philosophy and theology. Students are also on the Right Use of Greek Literature, ch. 4). shown how to live virtuous lives in the school setting,
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The badge used by our younger students (Holy House of Our Lady & St. John) brings together four visual elements: the Marian cypher which represents Mary the Mother of our Lord, St. John’s chalice for the patron of our parish in Inglewood, the Alpha and Omega representing Christ but also alluding to our classical educational tradition, and finally the arms of St. George, recalling the Anglican patrimony as a treasure to be shared. The Marian cypher or monogram is located in the top quarter and is composed of the letters ‘M’ and ‘R’ which means “Maria Regina (Queen)”. This design can be traced back to the eleventh century. The three points on each of the ends of the monogram remind us of the Holy Trinity. Below is the chalice with the snake emerging from it — a symbol of St. John (the patron of our parish of St. John the Evangelist and Jesus’ beloved disciple). It too is an ancient symbol and can be traced back to the thirteenth century. Christians have been persecuted right from the start, but this symbol shows us that we have nothing to fear. It comes from an old legend that tells us about someone who tried to poison St. John. The Evangelist was preserved by a miracle: the poison came out of the chalice in the form of a snake and St. John drank the cup unharmed. The left and right quarters have within them the Alpha and Omega, the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet. These are appropriate for any Christian school because it reminds us most of all of the Lord Jesus’ words in Revelation 1:8, “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.” Finally, at the centre, we have a shield with the cross upon it. By this symbol we are reminded that our only protection is Jesus Christ Himself. The style of the shield recalls St. George, who was martyred during the Diocletian persecution of AD 303. He refused to recant his Christian faith and his earthly life was taken from him, though of course not his eternal life. St. George’s cross and shield have become associated with the English Church and the Anglican patrimony which we preserve and celebrate at St. John’s. There are three other crosses found on the badge that remind us both of the Holy Trinity and of Calvary, where Jesus was crucified with the two thieves. We are reminded that Jesus said, “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me” (Matthew 16:24). Each of us, like the two thieves, has a choice to make: do we reject Christ, or do we choose Him as the good thief did? “Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, to-day shalt thou be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43). This is our ultimate hope for all of our students and is really the goal for the education they receive at the Gilbertine Academy: that they would choose to follow Jesus and live with Him forever in joy and felicity.
The Four Pillars
of Classical Catholic Education
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n keeping with Catholic tradition, Holy House II. Sacred Wisdom: Our students are immersed recognises four pillars of Catholic education: in the excellence of the Catholic Classical Liberal Arts tradition which fosters the intellectual and moral I. Sacred Worship: Primacy is given to the daily virtues needed for serious study, for living a Christian celebration of the liturgical life of the Church, since life of discipleship, and for sharing the Catholic Faith. the first education of the soul is conducted not by Academic rigour in the liberal arts is essential to the programmes, but by the Word of God and sacramental formation of rational, free, and virtuous persons, grace. The entire day and school year is therefore we therefore ensure a firm grounding in literature, punctuated by prayer, with the Holy Mass, as the most grammar, science, and other core subjects. important class of the day.
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III. Sacred Music: Music is an integral part of the skills. By learning to draw more carefully, we learn to see 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.
more carefully. Accordingly, we ensure every student is visually literate, with drawing and painting treated as foundational skills essential for both the appreciation and creation of art.
IV. Sacred Art: The great treasury of our Catholic
The object of education is to teach us to love what is beautiful.
faith contained in our sacred arts and architecture can be accessed only through competent visual literacy
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Socrates
Badges worn on clothing became popular (especially in England) in the late Middle Ages as a way of showing an association between individuals. Today this tradition has survived perhaps most notably as a badge on school uniforms. While some schools use a Coat of Arms for this purpose, The Gilbertine Academy follows the more traditional paraheraldic practice. Our badge brings together three visual elements: the Canterbury Cross, the heraldic arms granted the Gilbertine Priory at Sempringham, and the circle which presents the design and motto in a visually harmonious way. The red and blue school colours subtly remind us of the blood and water which flowed from the Lord’s side at His crucifixion, while the gold and silver in the design remind us of the costliness of our Catholic faith. Perhaps the most prominent component of the badge is the Canterbury Cross set upon a blue field. Discovered in 1867 during excavations in Canterbury, England, the original Anglo-Saxon broach dates from AD 850. This particular cross reminds us of our obligation to celebrate, protect, and hand-on the patrimonial gifts as treasures to be shared. Of course, every Cross ultimately symbolizes the Christian Faith and reminds us of Christ crucified. The historical arms granted the Gilbertine Priory at Sempringham sits upon the cross and further informs the design. The blazon reads: Barry of six, argent and gules; over all in bend sinister, a pilgrim’s crutch or. The pilgrim’s crutch is sometimes rendered as a long cross and this is the case here as we are a Catholic School and the cross is our hope and deliverance. St. Gilbert was a medieval Priest and teacher who believed both boys and girls should be educated. He, in 1131, founded the only medieval Religious Order indigenous to the English people when seven of his female students asked him for a Rule, habit, and a cloister. The communities would grow to include Nuns, Sisters, Brothers and Priests and flourished until the dissolution of the monasteries in England in the mid 1500s. The cross and shield are presented upon a circle — a universal symbol with meanings that include unity, wholeness and eternity. We strive for a kind and generous unity of the student body at the Gilbertine Academy towards an integrated education that we hope will lead to eternal life in the presence of God the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Our motto, rendered in Latin, is that of the Gilbertines “Factum Est”—a message from St. Gilbert himself, made during a vision of him after his death, which means “it is accomplished”. The words also remind us of the Gospel of John, the first chapter, the fourteenth verse: “Et verbum caro factum est” — “And the Word became Flesh”.
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Academic Overview Primary Division: Grade 1 & 2
Junior & Intermediate Divisions: Grade 5-8
Classes for Holy House’s youngest students aim to introduce students to the rich liturgical and academic rhythms which characterise Holy House, to foster an awareness of history and a love of literature and learning in general, and to support parents in teaching basic literacy and numeracy skills.
Students in the Junior (Grades 5-6) and Intermediate (Grades 7-8/) divisions are expected to read and write fluently so they can explore, discuss, and respond to literature, history, and science texts with a high level of independent engagement. Junior and Intermediate students likewise may share some classes together and separate into smaller groups for other classes, depending on their experience and skill level in each subject.
Beginner Division: Grade 3 & 4 The Beginner Division provides a transition period for students who are not yet reading and writing with the fluency necessary to accomplish the goals of the Junior Division, yet who have the maturity to begin engaging with the same classic literature and historical themes as the older students. Students in this division will build their spelling, printing/cursive, and pre-writing skills through direct instruction, literature studies, and guided narration work.
Senior Division: Grades 9-12 Students in the Senior Division are expected to have mastered the basic skills of reading, writing, and discussing in order to facilitate engagement with the material they study at a more mature level. The skills of reading to organise the text in one’s mind, find key passages, and interpret, as well as writing and discussing to build and communicate complex ideas, will be developed.
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Visit our website to learn more or book a tour : holyhouse.ca gilbertineacademy.com