Mount Royal Academy was founded in 1994 by a group of lay parents who courageously fulfilled their God-given duty to educate and form their children. Since the school's founding, the faculty and administration of Mount Royal Academy have carried out the school's mission of supporting parents in the education of their children, recognizing that the Church, in her wisdom and love, guided by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, teaches that parents are the primary educators of their children.
The Wisdom and Teaching of the Catholic Church on Parents' Role in the Education of Children
Familiaris Consortio, Pope John Paul II, 36
The task of giving education is rooted in the primary vocation of married couples to participate in God's creative activity: by begetting in love and for love a new person who has within himself or herself the vocation to growth and development, parents by that very fact take on the task of helping that person effectively to live a fully human life. As the Second Vatican Council recalled, "since parents have conferred life on their children, they have a most solemn obligation to educate their offspring. Hence, parents must be acknowledged as the first and foremost educators of their children. Their role as educators is so decisive that scarcely anything can compensate for their failure in it. For it devolves on parents to create a family atmosphere so animated with love and reverence for God and others that a well-rounded personal and social development will be fostered among the children. Hence, the family is the first school of those social virtues which every society needs."
The right and duty of parents to give education is essential, since it is connected with the transmission of human life; it is original and primary with regard to the educational role of others, on account of the uniqueness of the loving relationship between parents and children; and it is irreplaceable and inalienable, and therefore incapable of being entirely delegated to others or usurped by others.
In addition to these characteristics, it cannot be forgotten that the most basic element, so basic that it qualifies the educational role of parents, is parental love, which finds fulfillment in the task of education as it completes and perfects its service of life: as well as being a source, the parents' love is also the animating principle and therefore the norm inspiring and guiding all concrete educational activity, enriching it with the values of kindness, constancy, goodness, service, disinterestedness and self-sacrifice that are the most precious fruit of love.
As the first lay-founded and operated school in the Diocese of Manchester to be officially recognized by the bishop, Mount Royal Academy joins the Diocese of Manchester in partnering with parents as the primary educators of their children.