Mobilize to Mission
Dear Mater Dei Community,
Blessings to you in 2022! As we wrap up the joyful Christmas season, we celebrate the founding of our apostolate. Three years ago this month on the Solemnity of the Mother of God, the vision of Mater Dei was conceived and began to take shape. We are filled with gratitude as we reflect on our journey and consider the road ahead.
In this month's newsletter, we will take the opportunity to review our mission, summarize our three-year history, and introduce members of our newly forming Governing and Advisory Boards. As we respond to Bishop Felton’s invitation to "mobilize to mission" within our diocese, we see tremendous potential for growth. Thank you for your continued prayers and support. May God bless you.
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Ad Jesum Per Mariam
Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam
Mater Dei Mission
Mater Dei is a Catholic lay apostolate committed to the education and formation of high school students in Duluth, Minnesota. Our vision is to create an oasis of Catholic culture in our society, where high school students can receive high-quality intellectual and spiritual formation, regardless of where they live or what they can pay. Our mission is to provide higher education prep that is affordable, accessible and authentically Catholic.
Affordable
We operate a low-cost financial model and increase donor and parent engagement in order to keep our program tuition-free with only minimal registrations fees.
Accessible
We operate a flexible hybrid education model to serve families from conventional school and homeschool backgrounds, with a remote component to serve families in distant, rural communities.
Authentically Catholic
We educate students with a classical curriculum rooted in the Catholic intellectual tradition, while recognizing the role of parents as primary educators.
Mater Dei History
As parents, we have the right and duty to provide a Catholic education for our children. For over forty years, the lack of options for Catholic high school education in Duluth was a cause of distress that we took to the Lord in fervent prayer. We prayed for a Catholic high school. We prayed for a refuge from the secular culture and ideology being imposed upon our children in their formative high school years. We prayed for a high school education that would prepare them for a life of wisdom and virtue, grounded in the truth, beauty and goodness of our Catholic faith. For over forty years, this prayer was left seemingly unanswered.
But the Lord works in unexpected ways through unexpected channels and thus, Mater Dei Apostolate was founded in 2019. It required an act of surrender and complete trust, as we ventured into the unknown with our “Bethlehem model” of education, as our beloved, late Bishop Paul Sirba liked to call it. The Lord in His wisdom foresaw the need for a new model of education for high schoolers that would be affordable, accessible, and authentically Catholic in our ever-changing world.
We launched our program with 9th grade in the fall of 2019, adding an additional grade each year thereafter, overcoming many obstacles along the way. With joy in the Lord, we will welcome our first full 9-12th grade high school in the fall of 2022.
Our local diocesan school, Stella Maris Academy, will also be launching a Catholic high school in the fall of 2022. We fervently pray for the success and growth of both programs and we remain open to opportunities for cooperation and collaboration, guided by the Holy Spirit. Together, we can bring more souls to Christ from within our community that has been neglected in the area of Catholic high school education for so many decades.
We are at the forefront of a movement to revitalize Catholic high school education in an innovative way. With affirmation from Bishop Daniel Felton, we are paving the way forward, embracing our full potential as primary educators of our children. Our inspiration comes from the Church:
“Parents and those who hold their place are bound by the obligation and enjoy the right of educating their children. Catholic parents also have the duty and right of selecting those means and institutes by which, in light of local circumstances, they can better provide for the Catholic education of their children (Can. 793,1).”
“Since, in our own times, new problems are arising and very serious errors are circulating which tend to undermine the foundations of religion, the moral order, and human society itself, this sacred synod earnestly exhorts laymen—each according to his own gifts of intelligence and learning—to be more diligent in doing what they can to explain, defend, and properly apply Christian principles to the problems of our era in accordance with the mind of the Church (Ch. II, 6 Apostolicam Actuositatem).”
“Just as it is gravely wrong to take from individuals what they can accomplish by their own initiative and industry and give it to the community, so also it is an injustice and at the same time a grave evil and disturbance of right order to assign to a greater and higher association what lesser and subordinate organizations can do. For every social activity ought of its very nature to furnish help to the members of the body social, and never destroy and absorb them (Quadragesimo Anno, 79).”
Mater Dei Growth
We have been blessed with the new partnership of many talented individuals who are committed to the mission of Mater Dei. We are currently making the transition from a small "working board" to a well-formed Governing Board to provide oversight and governance for our operations moving forward. In addition, we are forming an Advisory Board consisting of individuals who will help guide the overall vision and mission of our apostolate.
Also, a letter was published last week from the office of the Bishop. The letter clarifies the relationship between Mater Dei Apostolate and Stella Maris Academy and expresses Bishop Felton's support for both programs. We are so grateful for his leadership in our diocese.