Page 26: School Profile - Holy Angels Academy

An Interview with Headmaster Joseph Norton

G.K. Chesterton famously stated that atmosphere is 50% of education. A small school nestled in the suburbs of Louisville, Kentucky, Holy Angels Academy offers parents and students an intensely Catholic atmosphere in which the pursuit of truth - for the honor and glory of God and the salvation of souls - takes priority. Here, respect and responsibility are fostered in a setting where rules of conduct are enforced with a firmness that is tempered with compassion.

Holy Angels Academy was founded in Louisville in 1973 by Dominican Sister Mary Elise Groves and a few devoted laymen dedicated to the preservation of truth in Catholic education. Responding to the permissiveness and watered-down catechesis enabled by a pervasive misinterpretation of the Second Vatican Council’s teaching on Catholic education, the school started with just a handful of students and a dedication to its guiding principle of faithful adherence to the truths of the Roman Catholic Church and the endearment of those truths to its students. Since that time, Holy Angels has grown to over 130 students, added a high school (1995; initial enrollment - 11), and relocated to a beautiful new brick facility, which the administration fully intends to expand even further as enrollment increases. The Academy remains committed to the education of the whole person, for the mental, moral and volitional powers, and the physical, emotional and social capabilities of their students prepare them to lead lives which will attain the end for which they were created -- eternal happiness with God.

"Schools can get grants for technology and computer labs right and left," Headmaster Joseph Norton notes, "but here we sell families on who we are . . . [we] train minds to think." One might also add, "and hearts to love." To see things clearly "across the spectrum," Norton continues, one needs the basis of truth as it is found in the Catholic Church. Thus, there is a full-time chaplain on the premises from the Fathers of Mercy, an opportunity for all students to attend daily Mass, the opportunity for students to receive the Sacrament of Penance every two weeks, and a focus in religious education on orthodox instruction and the cultivation of the prayer life of the school’s young charges. Catechetical instruction is present at all grade levels and is in harmony with the Catechism of the Catholic Church, with all instructors professing loyalty to the Magisterial positions of the Church.