Sydney Catholic Schools has launched its new strategic plan, Magis 2033, following a process of consultation and discernment led by executive director Danielle Cronin.
Its title, drawn from the Latin for “the more” or “the greater,” signals not bureaucratic ambition but a renewed attentiveness to the deeper purpose of Catholic education in our time.
The Catholic Church has long held that Catholic education introduces young people to the fullness of reality: widening the horizons of reason, holding faith and intellect together, and forming hearts open to truth, goodness, and beauty – grounded in an encounter with the living Christ.
Education, like a compass, is never neutral. It either orients young people towards what is true and good, or leaves them confidently heading in the wrong direction.
Here Catholic education reveals both its promise and its risk. When faith is treated as an add-on rather than the integrative centre of learning, schools can quietly absorb secular assumptions about what education is for.
Success becomes measured in skills and outcomes, while questions of meaning, character and vocation recede. Fulfilment is framed in terms of self-expression or achievement, rather than self-gift and relationship.
Yet, as the church reminds us, “the light of faith is unique, since it is capable of illuminating every aspect of human existence” (Lumen Fidei, 4). Faith matters because it shapes lives and destiny – informing the choices students make, the goals they pursue, and the resilience with which they navigate life.
The urgency of this task is evident in the world young people now inhabit. They are growing up amid the trauma of war, streamed daily into their homes, and cultural narratives that promise liberation yet often deliver confusion and isolation.
Many are told that identity is self-constructed, that truth is provisional, and that meaning must be fashioned from within. It is little wonder that so many feel disoriented.
In such a landscape, education that merely mirrors the prevailing culture does not liberate; it amplifies confusion. What young people need instead is a compass: an education grounded in a Christian vision of the human person – one that names their dignity, orders their freedom, and directs their lives towards a fulfilment they do not have to invent.
Some are sceptical that schools can form disciples at all. They point to cultural resistance, the limits of institutions, and the truth that faith cannot be programmed. These concerns should be taken seriously. Yet they do not negate the mission of Catholic education; they clarify it.
Schools do not replace families or parishes, but neither are they neutral spaces. When animated by faith-filled educators and a coherent vision of the human person, they remain places of encounter and accompaniment.
For this reason, Catholic schools must look beyond producing capable graduates or responsible citizens. Their deeper vocation is to form joyful missionary disciples: young people whose minds are educated, whose consciences are shaped, and whose lives are open to holiness in Christ.
As Gravissimum Educationis affirms, the Catholic school fosters “an atmosphere animated by the Gospel spirit of freedom and charity” (GE 8) – not something vague, but a lived culture formed through relationships, values and habits of mind and heart.
This vision takes concrete shape in the three foundations named in Magis 2033: wonder, wisdom and witness.
Wonder names the beginning of faith. Scripture presents encounter with God as awakening awe: Moses before the burning bush, Isaiah before the Lord, the disciples before Christ’s works. As St Augustine observed, “what we admire, we begin to love; and what we love, we desire to understand”. In education, wonder cultivates attentiveness and openness to reality as gift.
Teachers are decisive here. Truth is often mediated through trusted witnesses, and genuine teaching rests on confidence in the goodness of reality and its ultimate grounding in God.
Wisdom reflects the integration of faith and reason. “It is the Lord who gives wisdom” (Prov 2:6). Wisdom orders knowledge towards truth and goodness, shaping conscience rather than merely imparting information. This is especially urgent today.
Students may be highly capable, yet still struggle to discern what is true or worthy. When faith and reason are held together, education enables them not only to know more, but to choose well.
Witness names the missionary dimension of Catholic education. From the beginning, faith has been handed on through lives that make the Gospel credible. “You are the light of the world” (Mt 5:14). Truth persuades most deeply when it is embodied.
This is seen in the life of St Mary of the Cross MacKillop, whose wonder before God and hard-won wisdom gave rise to a life of courageous service. In her, education, holiness and mission were inseparable.
In an age marked by confusion and pressure, Magis 2033 offers a timely reminder that Catholic education is inherently countercultural.
It seeks not simply to inform minds, but to form lives; not merely to prepare students for work, but for the fullness of life in Christ; and not just to graduate young people, but to form disciples capable of truth, hope and love in a world that urgently needs all three.
