Classical Education
in the Catholic Tradition
John Paul the Great College is a tertiary institution in Benque Viejo del Carmen, Belize, offering a two-year Associate's program that engages students in a profound dialogue with the greatest thinkers in the history of Western civilization and promotes an authentic Catholic culture on and off campus.
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The college began operating in 2013 as an evening program at Mount Carmel High School with 28 full-time students. The faculty members included and still include volunteer instructors from the United States of America. After two years in the old BRC Printing building, the College moved over to its new campus on Chapel Hill in August 2016.
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Since its founding in 2013, John Paul the Great College has provided a liberal education in line with the Catholic tradition of higher education. It offers concentrations in Business Administration, English, Classics, Theology & Catechetics, and Cybersecurity in addition to the required liberal arts core. The college hopes to expand its academic program, providing more opportunities at an affordable cost for young adults seeking to nurture servant leadership in distinct areas of professional service.
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Many thanks are due to the Charles Hunter S.J. Commission for exploring the needs of the community and Meliton Auil and Salvador Habet Sr. for making the college building possible.
MISSION
Through engaging students in a profound dialogue with the greatest thinkers in the history of Western civilization and by promoting an authentic Catholic culture on campus, John Paul the Great College forms the person intellectually, spiritually, and morally. This formation produces free, virtuous, and professionally competent persons who can direct themselves to their proper end of attaining true happiness and thus contribute effectively to the authentic good of humanity.
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VISION
A world transformed through education in an authentic encounter with the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
"I came that they may have life, and life to the full." (John 10:10)
PHILOSOPHY
John Paul the Great College is a tertiary institution under the patronage of the Society of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity (SOLT), a religious community serving at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Parish since 1969. Rooted in the sacred mystery of the Blessed Trinity, SOLT institutions are committed to a wholesome education that leads the individual towards Trinitarian relationships to bear fruit for God’s Kingdom.
Why the Liberal Arts?
Young people in higher education today face a daunting array of specialized classes. They can earn a degree in anything from Information Technology to Biology Education and many studies in between. It is a wiser plan, however, to first obtain a more general, foundational education that will best serve them for the remainder of their lives. As Cardinal Newman observed: “A cultivated intellect, because it is good in itself, brings with it a power and a grace to every work and occupation which it undertakes.”
John Paul the Great College’s liberal arts core comes from a distinguished tradition and is reflected in a carefully designed, chronologically and disciplinarily integrated curriculum that is required of all students. This curriculum challenges students to think far beyond what seems easy, to stretch themselves in new areas of learning, to discover their human potential, and to become fully educated. Robert Hutchins once wrote:
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The liberal arts are not merely indispensable; they are unavoidable. Nobody can decide for himself whether he is going to be a human being. The only question open to him is whether he will be an ignorant, undeveloped one, or one who has sought to reach the highest point he is capable of attaining. The question, in short, is whether he will be a poor liberal artist or a good one (“The Great Conversation”).
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Liberal education addresses the whole of life enabling one to live well in the midst of family, church, and society. By attaining it, students gain an appreciation of all that life offers and develop their physical, intellectual, and spiritual capacities.
"Freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought."
~ St. John Paul II
John Paul Pillars
Click the titles to learn more.
Following our patron, John Paul the Great, we strive to be excellent in three ways:
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Intellectually - Not just doing, but knowing. Knowledge of the truth is good in itself.
Morally - Choosing and loving the good we know.
Physically - Using our bodies well; for work, play, and the refining of our senses.
