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“Laudetur Iesus Christus, 

Thank you for the continued prayers, keep them coming as they are needed, that the joy of the resurrection is at the center of all I do for you all and the school. Let us also continue to pray for our teachers, that they may continue to reflect the Good Teacher, Jesus, to your children. And please be assured of our prayers for you and your families.

My last newsletter message for the 2025-26 school year is this: thank you! The love and support of this community has been a wonderful example of Christian charity and support, and there is no way Lindsey and I could have made such a big move without the grace of God and the love of you all. We are beyond blessed, and because the community that has sustained Lindsey and I is the community that supports St. John Paul II Classical School, I know without a doubt that the one true God is providing all the sustenance we as a school need.

Have a blessed summer and I will continue to share updates as they come. God Bless!” 

Your Brother in Christ, 
Eric Schreiber, Headmaster

St. John Paul II Classical School and Chesterton Academy are of the Green Bay Area Catholic Education (GRACE) School System. They are private Catholic classical schools serving Montessori preschool and elementary through high school. They have open enrollment and provide an individualized education in an integrated faith-based environment. Each child is supported not only academically, but spiritually. Learn more by scheduling a visit.

“In Pope Leo XIV’s new encyclical on safeguarding the human person in the age of artificial intelligence titled Magnifica Humanitas, we are reminded of our responsibility in creating a civilization of love, beginning with our grassroots community, namely, the family, the Church/parish, and the school. Below is a brief snippet that caught my attention because of my nerdiness with The Lord of the Rings.   

“The twentieth-century Catholic author J.R.R. Tolkien, in the words of a protagonist in one of his novels, described our responsibility in this way: ‘It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till.” [187] The civilization of love will not arise from a single or spectacular gesture, but from the sum total of small and steadfast acts of fidelity that serve as a bulwark against dehumanization. For this reason, it is worthwhile pausing to reflect on some aspects of how we, each in our own way, can cooperate in building the civilization of love.” – MH, Pope Leo XIV, no. 213. 
([187] J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings. The Return of the King, Part III, Book Five, Chapter IX, New York 1965, 190).           

The continued call for unity stems from an understanding of our responsibilities to our communities that will surely ripple into the greater communities.”     — Headmaster Eric Schreiber

St. John Paul II Classical School and Chesterton Academy are of the Green Bay Area Catholic Education (GRACE) School System. They are private Catholic classical schools serving Montessori preschool and elementary through high school. They have open enrollment and provide an individualized education in an integrated faith-based environment. Each child is supported not only academically, but spiritually. Learn more by scheduling a visit.

“Thank you for the continued prayers, keep them coming as they are needed, that the joy of the resurrection is at the center of all I do for you all and the school. Let us also continue to pray for our teachers, that they may continue to reflect the Good Teacher, Jesus, to your children.

And please be assured of our prayers for you and your families.

In Illo Uno Unum has been our prayer all year as a faculty and staff, and is my continued prayer as we get ready to close out my first year as your headmaster. In the One God, we are made one. In its entirety, we pray for unity in Christ in the midst of things that may cause disunity, knowing that the evil one desires for us to be divided.

Our unity begins in He who is “the way, the truth, and the life,” (Jn. 14:6) Jesus Christ. As I reflect on the past year, I wish to express my gratitude to you all for helping Lindsey and I experience a great community.”     — Headmaster Eric Schreiber

St. John Paul II Classical School and Chesterton Academy are of the Green Bay Area Catholic Education (GRACE) School System. They are private Catholic classical schools serving Montessori preschool and elementary through high school. They have open enrollment and provide an individualized education in an integrated faith-based environment. Each child is supported not only academically, but spiritually. Learn more by scheduling a visit.

“Today is the beautiful feast of Our Lady of Fatima, and as a “Mama’s boy,” I would like to share how I feel her message resounds with us today, here at St. John Paul II Classical School. This beautiful “Lady in white” spoke to three shepherd children, asking them to pray the rosary daily and to entrust our lives to her motherly care and intercession. 

Below is the Act of Entrustment made by Pope St. John Paul II in 1981 that I invite everyone to pray together for the next week:    

“Mother of all individuals and peoples, you know all their sufferings and hopes. In your motherly heart you feel all the struggles between good and evil, between light and darkness, that convulse the world: accept the plea which we make in the Holy Spirit directly to your heart, and embrace with the love of the Mother and Handmaid of the Lord those who most await this embrace, and also those whose act of entrustment you too await in a particular way. Take under your motherly protection the whole human family, which with affectionate love we entrust to you, O Mother. May there dawn for everyone the time of peace and freedom, the time of truth, of justice and of hope.”    

Vere resurrexit!    — Headmaster Eric Schreiber

St. John Paul II Classical School and Chesterton Academy are of the Green Bay Area Catholic Education (GRACE) School System. They are private Catholic classical schools serving Montessori preschool and elementary through high school. They have open enrollment and provide an individualized education in an integrated faith-based environment. Each child is supported not only academically, but spiritually. Learn more by scheduling a visit.

“Last week I mentioned a book that our faculty have been reading throughout the year in Renewing Catholic School: How to Regain a Catholic Vision for a Secular Age, and wish to expound on chapter 9 and building a school community. I again cannot say enough about this rich book that I believe every family should read. 

At the heart of this chapter, we see the need to build a community steeped in joy; genuine, deep, attractive, confident JOY. Reflecting on this, Jesus’ first public miracle is Cana whereby “it was not men’s grief, but their joy Christ visited” (p. 97).

If we are to build up a school community in joy, we have to do so in a radical way, in a good way. “Our intellectual heritage is the pursuit of wisdom, virtue, and the transcendental qualities of truth, beauty, and goodness…” (p. 100). Being a school community is radical when we think about it, and yet, it is a necessary part of formation, because our final end is heaven. 

The philosophical roots of our entire civilization rest on the principle that things act according to their final end. “When we aim short of that in the practical mission of our schools, we will suffer and break apart” (p. 100). Moreover, when we remain short-sighted in our mission, communities fracture, joy wanes, and schools close – in that order. Let us not lose sight of the communal mission we share together.

I want to encourage everyone to continue to enter into our Cultura Incarnationis as we embody our Catholic Classical Education together.”

Vere resurrexit!   — Headmaster Eric Schreiber

St. John Paul II Classical School and Chesterton Academy are of the Green Bay Area Catholic Education (GRACE) School System. They are private Catholic classical schools serving Montessori preschool and elementary through high school. They have open enrollment and provide an individualized education in an integrated faith-based environment. Each child is supported not only academically, but spiritually. Learn more by scheduling a visit.

Catch up on the latest news within GRACE in the Spring 2026 Newsletter! Discover what students have been working on, meet those at the heart of the classroom (our teachers), learn why summer reading matters and ways to keep it enjoyable for students, and more.

Read now!

St. John Paul II Catholic School and Chesterton Academy are of the Green Bay Area Catholic Education (GRACE) School System. They are private Catholic schools serving Preschool and Elementary through high school, adding one grade per year. They have with open enrollment and provide an individualized education in a faith-based environment. Each child is supported not only academically, but spiritually. Learn more by scheduling a visit.

“Last Friday for the teachers professional development, we spent much of the day discussing a book that we have been reading throughout the year titled, Renewing Catholic School: How to Regain a Catholic Vision for a Secular Age, which I highly recommend every family read. This book has been a fascinating look into a shared conceptual agreement → embodied understanding → cultural application. 

Our reasoning for reading through this book is so that we may all “row” in the same direction on mission together. At the crux of rowing together is a shared understanding of who we are in forming a school community. Some of the reflective questions I wish to share with you all are: Why is community itself formative, not just supportive? And, How does a shared mission unify curriculum, faculty, and families?

The argument here is that our community is just as necessary to the formative process of our students as is our curriculum and faith. I pray that as we close out the year, we continue to open our hearts and grow as a community. 

Vere resurrexit!  — Headmaster Eric Schreiber

St. John Paul II Classical School and Chesterton Academy are of the Green Bay Area Catholic Education (GRACE) School System. They are private Catholic classical schools serving Montessori preschool and elementary through high school. They have open enrollment and provide an individualized education in an integrated faith-based environment. Each child is supported not only academically, but spiritually. Learn more by scheduling a visit.

“And Lead Us Not Into Temptation” (CCC, 2847)
The Holy Spirit makes us discern between trials, which are necessary for the growth of the inner man (Cf. Lk 8:13-15; Acts 14:22; Rom 5:3-5; 2 Tim 3:12.), and temptation, which leads to sin and death (Cf. Jas. 1:14-15). We must also discern between being tempted and consenting to temptation. Finally, discernment unmasks the lie of temptation, whose object appears to be good, a “delight to the eyes” and desirable (Cf. Gen 3:6.), when in reality its fruit is death.

“God does not want to impose the good, but wants free beings. . . . There is a certain usefulness to temptation. No one but God knows what our soul has received from him, not even we ourselves. But temptation reveals it in order to teach us to know ourselves, and in this way we discover our evil inclinations and are obliged to give thanks for the goods that temptation has revealed to us (Origen, De orat. 29: PG 11, 544CD.).

When I work with spiritual directees, one phrase that I use often regarding discernment is, “trust the process.” Discernment is a process, one that requires an action in order to call it discernment, by which there is a right order to things, namely, relationships. When our relationship with God and one another is rightly ordered, the temptation is to disrupt the order, which is ongoing and never ending while on earth. Therefore, let us trust the process, that the Lord will always guide us and move us toward the good we have been made for.   

Vere resurrexit!  — Headmaster Eric Schreiber

St. John Paul II Classical School and Chesterton Academy are of the Green Bay Area Catholic Education (GRACE) School System. They are private Catholic classical schools serving Montessori preschool and elementary through high school. They have open enrollment and provide an individualized education in an integrated faith-based environment. Each child is supported not only academically, but spiritually. Learn more by scheduling a visit.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, I would like to share two brief reflections for the Triduum, as the reality of our “yes” to the Lord is made known in the cross of Christ. 

First, in the context of the Lord’s Supper, Jesus says, “If the world hates you, realize that it hated me first…” (Jn. 15:18). The reality is, by choosing Jesus we are choosing to be counter-cultural. By choosing Jesus we are choosing to be alienated, and yes, hated. By choosing Jesus we are choosing to be persecuted. The question I wish to posit is, do we know who/what we are choosing, fully and completely? The Triduum gives us a glimpse into our choosing Jesus, which does not end in death, but rises in glory. 

The second brief reflection is this: As Catholics, the cross and the crucifixion have a special place in our hearts for adornment because the crucifixion reminds us of our calling, namely, to be persecuted with and for Christ’s sake so we may rise with Him. As Pope St. John Paul II notes in his Triduum reflection, “the Church puts the adoration of the Cross at the center of the Good Friday liturgy, not as a symbol of death but as a source of authentic life.”      

My master’s thesis was on “Theology of Suffering and Vicarious Satisfaction” (I’d be happy to share with anyone interested), so I have spent a lot of time learning and reflecting on redemptive suffering and how the most intimate relationship I have found with the Lord is in meditating on His cross. For me, the cross of Christ has been the learning tree. I invite you all, as a family and as a community, to sit at the foot of the learning tree, where the Lord wishes to reveal the glory He has stored up for you in the Resurrection. 

Happy Triduum and most especially, Happy anticipatory Resurrection. — Headmaster Eric Schreiber

St. John Paul II Classical School and Chesterton Academy are of the Green Bay Area Catholic Education (GRACE) School System. They are private Catholic classical schools serving Montessori preschool and elementary through high school. They have open enrollment and provide an individualized education in an integrated faith-based environment. Each child is supported not only academically, but spiritually. Learn more by scheduling a visit.

“In the midst of this season of sorrow and repentance we are presented with the hope of the Annunciation. It is in Mary’s fiat to the Incarnation, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word” (Lk. 1:38), that we receive Jesus’ fiat to the cross, “Father, if you are willing, take this cup away from me; still, not my will but yours be done” (Lk. 22:42).  

I would argue that the lens with which we pray the Annunciation, especially during this Lenten season, we are equipped more fully to enter into Holy Week next week. It is not about mere submission; rather, it is about entering into God’s love with a response of love. In the words of one of my theological heroes, Pope Benedict XVI, it affirmed: “Mary’s yes to God was not just an act of submission, but an act of profound trust and love.” 

Mary’s response models for us the lifelong journey of saying yes to God, daily; not only when it is easy or convenient. Our “yes” begins at conception and ends at death. As we fast and practice self-denial this Lent, it is worth asking: What are we making room for? What is our “yes” forming within us, and how is it shaping our relationship with the Lord?”   — Headmaster Eric Schreiber

St. John Paul II Classical School and Chesterton Academy are of the Green Bay Area Catholic Education (GRACE) School System. They are private Catholic classical schools serving Montessori preschool and elementary through high school. They have open enrollment and provide an individualized education in an integrated faith-based environment. Each child is supported not only academically, but spiritually. Learn more by scheduling a visit.