This year focuses on how much children are loved by Jesus Christ, and how His death and Resurrection has opened the way to heaven. Children continue to learn about the parts of the Mass, the lives and lessons of the saints, and more ways to pray. This year includes a special focus on the Sacraments of Confession and Eucharist.

Children learn what the Catholic Church is, who the Holy Spirit is and how He guides the Church, and what it means that Jesus continues His mission through the life of the Church. Along with the basics of the Trinity and all seven Sacraments, they build on what they have learned about prayer, and explore what it means to live as children of God. This year also focuses on Jesus’s Parables of the Kingdom, and Mary as the Mother of the Church. Includes a supplement on Confirmation for restored order dioceses

Most of this year focuses on the moral life, with children exploring more deeply what it means to be created in the image and likeness of God, and how they should respond to God’s grace in order to spend eternity with Him in Heaven. Explored are conscience formation, the Ten Commandments, the Beatitudes, the Golden Rule, and Jesus’s Great Commandment to love God with all our heart and soul, and to love our neighbor as ourselves. The reality of sin and the necessity of virtue are emphasized.

This year provides an in-depth exploration of God’s grace in the Sacraments, with a focus on what a Sacrament is and why Jesus instituted them, along with the form, matter, history, celebration, and effects of each Sacrament. Children explore what it means that God is the source of all life, learn more about Holy Mass and Holy Days of Obligation, and read and discuss longer biographies of the saints, especially young saints.

Children spend this year immersed in God’s Word in the Sacred Scriptures, and explore how the Bible, written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, records God’s plan of salvation. Includes basics on how to use the Bible, Magisterial authority, how and why we should pray with Scripture, how the Bible is different from other books, and the four senses of Scripture before beginning a comprehensive exploration of the Holy Bible from Genesis to Revelation.

This year includes four units in which middle school students explore in-depth the topics of: Jesus and the Gospel message, with an emphasis on unifying themes in Scripture and an in-depth examination of the four Gospels; Personal growth, with an emphasis on the origin, dignity, and destiny of the human person; the seven Sacraments, with an exploration of each Sacrament; and Prayer, with an emphasis on its elements, qualities, and challenges, ways of praying, and Mary and the saints as models of prayer.

Theme:

This year includes five units for middle school students to build on their understanding of: Personal growth, with an emphasis on our vocation to love and our responsibilities to God and each other; Morality, with an emphasis on conscience formation through God’s gift of an objective moral standard and prayer; Church History, with an emphasis on what we can learn from history about our identity as Catholics, and how the saints have shaped the liturgy, hierarchy, and doctrine of the Church; the Citizen and Government, including the natural rights of all persons and the purpose of government, and God's Plan for Marriage and the aFamily, with an emphasis on our identity as male and female and all that encompasses, purposes and abuses of sexuality, and resisting temptation to avoid sin and grow in virtue.