Catholic & Classical

St John Henry Newman College is a classical school because we are, first and foremost, a Catholic school. This means all we do and teach is given life by the beating heart of faith that is at our centre.


So how does a classical education flow out from our Catholic faith?



  • A Reasonable Faith

    As Catholics we believe there is no conflict between faith and reason. In his encyclical Fides et Ratio, Pope Saint John Paul II wrote: 


    "Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word, to know himself—so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves."


    We believe a classical education is one which teaches students to contemplate and recognise what is true, good and beautiful, as a path to knowing God and knowing ourselves.


  • A Storied Faith

    The story of the Western world is a story inextricably tied up with the story of Christ and the Church. Our history can be charted through the figures, ideas and events that form the narrative of this great story - great saints, great sinners as well as ordinary people, who teach us, through both their virtue and moral failure, about ourselves and God.

  • A Beautiful Faith

    Classical education believes in a sacramental reality, a world which is itself a sign of the hidden reality of God's salvation. Beauty is a tangible and objective reality that conveys this sacramentality. In the words of Gerard Manley Hopkins:


    "The world is charged with the grandeur of God"


    We are inheritors of an immensely rich treasury of beautiful art, music, poetry and stories - from the soaring spires of gothic cathedrals and the exquisite lines of Michelangelo's Pieta, to the hauntingly powerful heights of Allegri's Miserere Mei, Deus and the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins. A true education is one which reveals these things to be signposts, pointing us to the source and fullness of their beauty, God Himself.

The Catholic identity of a school can and should form the foundation upon which its culture and educational philosophy are built upon. At Newman College, we are passionate about delivering a classical education to the families of Brisbane because we hold our Catholic faith at the centre of all that we do and teach.


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