Strengthening Your School’s Catholic Identity: A Practical Framework for Administrators

Table of Contents

• Challenge
• Focus on Faculty Formation
• Building Liturgical Culture
• Integrating Catholic Social Teaching
• Measurement and Accreditation
  • Mission Matrix
• School-Parish-Home Connection

The Challenge of Catholic Identity in Today’s School Environment

Catholic school leaders today face a pressure that rarely appears on a strategic plan but shapes nearly every decision: the challenge of maintaining institutional Catholic identity.

Erosion of a school’s Catholic identity seldom happens all at once. It can get chipped away gradually. A new faculty hire with no real connection to the faith. School Masses that feel more like logistical responsibilities than liturgical celebrations. Secular test score standards trumping spiritual development. Parents searching for rigorous academic curriculum but not as concerned about the rigor in faith.

The thing is, none of this really reflects a failure of leadership or shortcomings by teachers or staff. It’s the reality of running a Catholic school in competitive environments, often with few resources, while trying to hold the line on something that can’t be reduced to a checklist.

A school’s Catholic identity is what allows it to interact with and thrive in the modern world. As Pope Francis said, “We cannot create a culture of dialogue if we do not have identity.” The identity becomes the value proposition. Why should parents choose to invest tuition money in a Catholic school instead of a charter school? The school’s Catholic identity.

Schools with the strongest Catholic identities have intentional, concrete practices woven into the fabric of the school, able to survive teacher turnover, and prioritize mission and strategic goals in every aspect of school life.

Here are fundamentals for establishing, growing and maintaining a strong Catholic identity in K-12 Catholic schools.

A Focus on Faculty Formation for Catholic Identity

Mission drift rarely begins in the classroom; it begins in hiring and onboarding.

Hiring exceptional teachers with a strong understanding of Catholic identity is challenging for a number of reasons. So it seems increasingly common for schools to bring on faculty who have little or no formation in the faith.

Without a plan for engaging and involving new faculty in the faith fabric of the school, a school’s Catholic identity can fall on the shoulders of the small, shrinking mission-committed staff. And that’s not sustainable or optimal.

High-performing Catholic schools, especially those steeped in the charisms of religious orders, treat faculty faith formation as a professional expectation, not an elective. This means:

• Annual faculty retreats that engage theology, not just team-building
• Structured theological reading tied to the school’s charism or the liturgical year
• Tiered formation expectations: all faculty participate in mission formation; Catholic faculty are additionally expected to engage in prayer, liturgy, and sacramental life
• Mission alignment language in performance reviews that is specific enough to be actionable while being respectful of personal beliefs

Dr. Daryl Hagan, the Director of the Institute for the Transformation of Catholic Education at The Catholic University of America, points out that retreats have a long tradition in allowing us to pause from our day-to-day responsibilities and allow room for aligning on the big picture mission.

“Throughout history, the faithful have disengaged from their daily responsibilities to reflect, to pray, and to draw closer to God,” he said. “Scheduling a retreat prior to the new academic year or during the school year may provide inspiration and greater clarity toward the mission of the Catholic school and the role each of us play in the fulfillment of the mission.”

In a paper titled “Teacher Faith Formation as Response to an “Existential Crisis” in Catholic Schools: Western Canadian Superintendents’ Perspectives,” researchers argued that “Recognizing the individuality of each teacher is a vital feature of faith formation.”

This gets back to the tiered format for expectations–someone hired shortly after graduating college, with little background in Catholic faith, is on a much different formation trajectory than someone who has been actively involved in Catholic education and liturgical life for decades.

Incorporating faith formation into annual Professional Growth Plans is one way to meet teachers where they are and build formation into the culture of the school. These are unique to the individual teacher but can draw on resources available to all: activities at the school, resources within the diocese, courses and more.

Liturgy and prayer opportunities can also help bridge the gap between summer retreats and end-of-year growth plan reviews as well as instill the school’s Catholic identity in students.

Building Liturgical Culture Beyond Obligation Masses

A school can celebrate Mass on every holy day of obligation and still have a thin liturgical culture. The difference between compliance and genuine liturgical formation is whether students (and faculty) understand what they’re participating in, and whether the school’s life is actually shaped by the rhythms of the liturgical year.

“Schools rich in Catholic identity have active participation in liturgy and prayer,” said Stacy McNerney, a former Catholic school teacher and administrator for over 23 years has focused her years in administration on the importance of the Mission and Catholic Identity of the school. “Liturgy and prayer are taught at every grade level in a developmentally age-appropriate way and then put into practice in order to truly engage in the faith.”

Liturgies are vital; they are not assemblies that need to be coordinated. They’re celebrations that bear critical witness to the Catholic identity of the school.

Sacrosanctum Concilium §14 calls for the full, conscious, and active participation of the faithful, saying, “it is the primary and indispensable source from which the faithful are to derive the true Christian spirit; and therefore pastors of souls must zealously strive to achieve it, by means of the necessary instruction, in all their pastoral work.”

That vision requires preparation, not just attendance. Practically, this means:

• Planning the academic calendar around the liturgical year, not just scheduling Masses around it. Advent and Lent should be recognizable seasons in the life of the school, with prayer practices, service projects, and formational rhythms that distinguish them from ordinary time.
• Distributing liturgical ownership across homerooms or advisories: preparing intercessions, selecting music, leading reflections. Students who have a role in the liturgy engage with it differently (USCCB liturgy guide) and not one campus minister assigning roles to trusted students. Everyone can and should contribute to liturgy.
• Catechizing school Masses with brief, age-appropriate preparation. This shouldn’t be a lecture, but enough context that students know why they’re there and what’s happening.
• Connecting school prayer to the liturgical calendar throughout the week, not only at Mass. Stations of the Cross during Lent are a great example. Or explaining the Confiteor at Mass and how that’s related to, but different than, attending confession or praying an examination of conscience.

One way to build a sustained culture of respect for the liturgy is to lean on older students to be role models for younger students. Sometimes called a “Buddy Program,” this system pairs younger with older students, extending throughout the school year and includes liturgies and other activities.

Katie Diltz, writing for Notre Dame’s McGrath Institute for Church Life, found that this was successful for getting students to behave.

“We would have the older grades sit with their ‘buddies’ from the younger grades,” she said. “For example, each 7th grade student would sit with one or two kindergarten students. This practice reminded the older students to behave like responsible role models; it also allowed the older students to assist the teachers by attending to the younger students’ needs.”

It’s more than just behavior. When those “buddies” students matriculate to older grades, the culture and expectation is already in place: It’s their turn to take on more of a leadership role in the success of the liturgies. This parallels the responsibilities they’ll be asked to take when they prepare for the sacrament of Confirmation.

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Integrating Catholic Social Teaching Across the Curriculum

One of the most concrete ways to demonstrate Catholic identity to students, parents, boards, and accreditors alike is through documented, cross-curricular integration of Catholic Social Teaching.

Catholic Social Teaching is rooted in human life and human dignity, recognizing that every human is made in God’s image, redeemed by Christ, and possesses inherent value as a member of the human family.

Because Catholic Social Teaching is “inseparable from” our understanding of human life, it cannot be compartmentalized to just religion class, where it is studied rather than applied.

When Catholic Social Teaching lives only in the theology classroom, it becomes a subject rather than a lens. When it’s embedded across disciplines, it becomes part of how students learn to think. It helps faith transcend “religion class” and become a way of life.

The USCCB’s seven themes of CST provide a ready framework for curriculum mapping. In practice, this looks like:

• Economics and social studies courses drawing on Church documents like Rerum Novarum, Laudato Si’, and Caritas in Veritate
• Literature and humanities courses engaging questions of human dignity and the common good
• Science courses addressing stewardship and the theology of creation, and upholding Church teaching on the sanctity of life, and caring for God’s creation and the world around us
• Virtues-based frameworks that address social-emotional learning through the lens of our Catholic faith, led by religious and other leaders in the Church

Beyond the curriculum, Catholic Social Teaching can inform how schools deal with disputes or problems, either in school or at home.

Having a virtues-based approach to classroom management (instead of a purely secular framework) can further help solidify a school’s Catholic identity on all fronts. Hallow offers a daily virtue session as part of its content for kids, with a focus on helping young people grow in holiness in and out of the classroom, as well as content for older students on mental health topics that help students learn how to work through stressful situations using Scripture and faith as the framework.

Measuring Catholic Identity: From Inputs to Outcomes

Boards, dioceses, and accrediting bodies — including the NCEA and diocesan Catholic identity audit processes — increasingly ask schools to demonstrate Catholic identity through benchmarks, standards and an action plan.  

A crucifix in every classroom and Mass on holy days are baseline expectations, not evidence of a flourishing Catholic culture. When it comes to accreditation; governing bodies want to see more than the basics, they want to see faith in action and evidence of a flourishing Catholic school community that provides opportunities to have an encounter with Christ.

The Florida Catholic Conference Accreditation Program, one of the oldest and most robust accrediting programs in the country,  looks at four domains of excellence in the schools it evaluates, using the NSBECS National Standards and Benchmarks for Effective Catholic Elementary and Secondary Schools. The first one? Mission and Catholic Identity. The others are Academic Excellence, Governance and Leadership, and Operational Vitality.

Adopting a matrix or rubric to thoughtfully assess a school’s Catholic identity can help with both of these. One possible framework comes from The Holy See’s Teaching On Catholic Schools by Archbishop J. Michael Miller, C.S.B., who suggests there are five essential “marks” of Catholic schools:

• Inspired by a Supernatural Vision
• Founded on a Christian Anthropology
• Animated by Communion and Community
• Imbued with a Catholic Worldview
  • Search for Wisdom and Truth
  • Faith, Culture and Life
• Sustained by the Witness of Teaching

Catholic School Mission Matrix

Here’s a sample Catholic Identity/Mission Matrix you are free to use or that can inspire a custom one specific to your school:

You can also consider a matrix based on the NCEA’s four standards when it comes to Mission and Catholic Identity:

• An excellent Catholic school is driven and guided by a clearly communicated mission that embraces a Catholic identity that includes gospel values, a focus on the Eucharist, and a commitment to communal faith formation, academic excellence, missionary discipleship, and service.
• An excellent Catholic school adhering to mission provides an exemplary academic program for religious education and catechesis in the Catholic faith, set within a total academic curriculum that integrates faith, culture, and life.
• An excellent Catholic school adhering to mission provides opportunities both within and outside the classroom for Christ-centered student faith formation, participation in liturgical and communal prayer, and action in service of missionary discipleship and social justice.
• An excellent Catholic school adhering to mission provides opportunities for Christ-centered adult faith formation and action in service of missionary discipleship and social justice.

In addition to the matrix, schools should establish a Mission and Catholic Identity committee to regularly review curriculum, hiring and other matters through the lens of the school’s Mission Statement. This statement is woven into the life of the school and drives every aspect of school life—from its placement on the school’s website to students reciting every day with prayer.  The mission statement is the ‘North star’ that defines and shapes the school.

Strengthening the School-Parish-Home Connection

One other way to strengthen a school’s Catholic identity is by deepening the connection between the school and the parish (or, in the case of schools run by religious orders, the diocese or local parishes).

Both schools and parishes benefit when school families are registered parishioners. This is especially helpful for coordination around sacraments and recognizing the school’s place amid the larger Catholic fabric of the community rather than a separate, Catholic-branded private school.

This requires a clear line of communication between the Pastor and the Principal, and for the school especially, it means encouraging students to live their faith far beyond the school community, including within their parishes and in their communities.

According to the Archdiocese of Toronto, “A healthy working relationship between the pastor and the principal is crucial to the development and maintenance of a strong parish-school connection.”

This also helps parents engage with their children in faith while at home. Excellent Catholic schools should be providing opportunities for students to benefit in and out of the home from a Christ-centered faith formation.  The school works to assist families in their role as the primary educator of faith for their child and supports families with resources and opportunities to live out their faith. 

At Hallow, sessions like Family Mass Prep, Sunday Homilies, and Bible Bedtime Stories help students and their families pray together (and on their own.)

“Hallow offers students the opportunity to grow closer to God through prayer, not only in the classroom, but to build their own personal relationship outside of the classroom, to become a firm foundation for life,” said McNerney. “We are truly teaching our students how to pray and know that no matter what happens in their lives, they can always go to God through prayer.”

How Hallow Supports Catholic School Identity

Many teachers and school administrators may know about Hallow but be less familiar with the ways Hallow partners with schools.

Hallow can be a helpful tool to support and enhance the work you’re already doing in establishing and strengthening your school’s Catholic identity.

When a school partners with Hallow, it gives administrators, campus ministers and teachers a structured, content-rich platform for daily prayer, liturgical formation and seasonal programming that can engage the entire school community.

“I say this with great sincerity that I think Hallow has been one of the greatest answered prayers as a theology teacher,” said Anna White, theology department chair at JSerra Catholic High School, which has partnered with Hallow for several years.

We’d welcome the opportunity to show you how other Catholic schools are using Hallow to support their mission. Explore Hallow for Catholic schools to learn more or connect with our team.