From the Preface:
This guide is designed especially for Catholic education broadly—including
parents, diocesan and school leaders, teachers, librarians, homeschool curriculum
publishers, and textbook publishers—and draws upon The Cardinal Newman
Society’s Policy Standards on Literature and the Arts in Catholic Education. The guide
focuses first on the purpose and goals of literature in Catholic elementary and
secondary education. It then provides guidance for readers on how to approach
a text. This is followed by a rubric to help determine which texts are best suited for
Catholic education and to ensure that selection criteria are clear, understood by all,
and targeted to the integral Christian formation of students.
The final section is a limited recommended reading list, which is mostly confined to
better-known, time-tested works. These have been selected for a variety of reasons
including their beauty, their cultural and historical significance, their suitability for
examining the human condition in light of Catholic sensibilities, their capability to
inspire virtue or warn against vice, their ability to elucidate other times and cultures
to better understand our own, their capacity to entertain and inspire, and their
fitness to guide the moral imagination. The list is not exhaustive but represents some
reading selections used by schools recognized by The Cardinal Newman Society for
their exemplary Catholic identity.
There is a limited amount of time in one childhood to read literature, so selections
should come from the best books. These books should be read “fruitfully,” doing
more than finding the main points so as to answer computer-based or multiple-
choice questions. Students should enjoy the experience of reading, understand and
identify with characters, grow in virtue, and expand their imagination, empathy, and
creativity.
