“The essence and the goal of education consist in the collaboration with
divine grace for the formation of the true and perfect Christian.”
- Ven. Pope Pius XII
St. Stephen Academy is a Parish college preparatory secondary school. The Academy provides a Catholic classical liberal arts education for 7th to 12th grade students at St. Stephen the First Martyr Parish in Sacramento.
The Academy, with its unique curriculum and teaching style, operates under the direction of Reverend Robert Novokowsky, F.S.S.P., who serves as Pastor of the Parish and Chief Operating Officer of the school. The Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter (F.S.S.P.) is an international society of Pontifical Rite with the charism to pursue holiness by means of the Traditional Latin Liturgy.
Teachers and students at St. Stephen Academy draw on seven arts which are used to initiate students into a life of learning: Logic, Grammar, Rhetoric, Arithmetic, Music, Geometry, and Astronomy. These arts constitute both a field of knowledge and the technique to acquire that knowledge.
At the Academy, students are intellectually challenged by a program which emphasizes directed reading of the works of the greatest thinkers and writers of Western civilization. Students learn to articulate ideas and form intellectual positions by mastering the form and function of language and applying that knowledge through dialogue, oratory, and composition. The Socratic method of discussion, in which two or more people assist one another in answering difficult questions, plays a critical role in intellectual development.
The students’ intellectual lives are inspired, nourished, and blessed by the traditional Latin Catholic liturgy. Their education is enlivened by an infusion of the fine arts. Through daily music and art education, drama, interpretive speech, and choir, students learn to appreciate beauty and to give it form.
Specific courses are designed and taught using classical education strategies, structures, and traditional resources such as classical literature. Latin is a required course, enabling students to read important literature and philosophy as originally written. Curriculum for specific courses, such as history, science, and literature, is interrelated to lend coherence to the subject matter. Through this approach, students are encouraged to make connections between time periods, events and current issues, lines of reasoning and logic, and patterns of action or inertia. Ultimately, all topics are permeated by the light of the Faith and ordered to God as an integral whole.
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