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About The Oratory Academy
Welcome to The Oratory Academy, a homeschool academy offering classes twice weekly to support homeschooling parents. Our mission is to encourage each other in the noble endeavor of educating our children in the classical tradition and of cultivating in them a love for all that is good, true, and beautiful.
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It is our earnest desire that always, the chief end of every thing we do at The Oratory is to glorify God.
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​St. Philip Neri is our patron saint and one of our guides in the education of our children and the betterment of the Church and society. In the spirit of St. Philip Neri, our emphasis is on prayer, music and fine art. Other guides are Charlotte Mason and Laura Berquist, educators and writers.​
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Our Purpose
Our Mission Statement uses particular words that are revealing:
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"To support homeschooling parents": We see homeschooling as a wonderful way of education, especially since parents are the first educators of their children, but not without challenges. Our 1 to 2 day a week model serves to strengthen the family by making homeschooling more feasible...so we don’t have to give up our high ideal of homeschooling our children.
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"In the noble mission": In this culture, it is increasingly a battle to educate our children in the Truth, and to pass on the truth about the human person and his place in the world. To teach a child to love what ought to be loved, is a noble endeavor, and our duty.
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"To educate them in the classical tradition": We take for our guides educators who understand the classical tradition, which aims to teach a person how to reason and communicate the truth which he logically concludes. A classical education helps a child understand what it means to be human, by drawing on the wisdom of the ages, which is conveyed through the study of the liberal arts—and not to simply make him a knower of facts.
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"To inspire in them a love for all that is good, and true, and beautiful": We believe that children respond to beauty--we seek to enliven that response through prayer, adoration and mass in our beautiful church, our art study classes, through the beauty of words in our poetry and recitation classes; and the beauty of music through our choir, and through the great medium of literature that speaks of the universal human condition, and inspires students to naturally align themselves with the good.
Our Name
The word “oratory” means a place of prayer. We have chosen this name because we hope that God will accept the work that we do in educating our children as a prayer to Him. It is increasingly clear that in the face of the errors that permeate most modern education, we parents need to take more seriously than ever, the task of educating our children in the Truth. And so, we envision the building where we meet as a place of prayer, where every effort will be as incense rising up to God as we strive to recognize in every area of the children’s education, the beauty of His Truth.
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​A prayer, too, is our attempt to create unity, a striving to “be of the same mind and having the same love.”
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The primary words that guide our work at The Oratory were written by St. Paul to the Philippians, a community of believers not unlike us:
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"So, if there is any encouragement In Christ, any incentive of love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfishness or conceit, but in humility count others better than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which was in Christ Jesus....”
-Philippians 2:1-5
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Through prayer and the frequent contemplation of this passage, we strive to create a community based on the joy and charity and humility of Jesus Christ.
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We humbly ask the prayers of godly men and women who have been dedicated to the education of children in other ages:
St. Philip Neri, who founded the first Oratory—and we seek to imitate him who was famous for his joy and cheerfulness and the love for God which his heart could not even contain, and his dedication especially to the salvation and education of young men—his virtue a light to our path;
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St. John Bosco, who also established an Oratory wherein he educated young men, most of whom would have been destitute, without his help—his service to others a light to our path;
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St. John Henry Newman, who loved St. Philip Neri, and held him as his personal patron and who also established an oratory; who wrote eloquently of the greatness of a liberal arts education—his intellect a light to our path;
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St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, a mother and a religious who founded schools in a needy country;
St. Katharine Drexel, who worked tirelessly establishing schools for underprivileged children;
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St. Rose Duschesne, who also established schools for the love of God.
