It is vitally important in the Catholic Home School to continue the study of religion into the high school years to flesh out the bare-bones knowledge of the Faith learned in the elementary grades. It is here that the wealth and the consistency of the Church's teaching in all aspects of life are learned and appreciated. We offer two excellent high school religion courses, one old, one new.

The older course is a series of four books by Father John Laux, first published in the late 1920's and reprinted by TAN Books. Despite the fact that the course was composed almost eighty years ago the writing style is not dated. The material is presented in an interesting, understandable and engaging way. Chief Truths of the Faith - Book I treats of the basic tenets of our Faith and includes the sources of our knowledge of God, the angels, sin and redemption, and all the beliefs expressed in the Creeds. Mass and the Sacraments - Book II teaches the doctrine and the history and development of the seven sources of sanctifying grace, proofs of the Real Presence, the nature of the Mass and much more. Having been written before Vatican Council II, the text explains the Mass in its Tridentine form.   Catholic Morality - Book III deals with conscience, virtue, vice, law, property and much more. It presents the Church's clear moral principles which can be applied to new problems as they arise. Once again, because it was published pre-1930 it does not deal with specific problems of recent years which have appeared because of science run amok, e.g., cloning, embryo farming, surogate motherhood, etc.  The principles for addressing these problems, none-the-less, are spelled out clearly.  Catholic Apologetics - Book IV gives the students the tools to answer the challenges of those who do not believe in God, in Christ or in the Church.

The newer Catholic High School Religion Course is the Catholicism & . . . series by James Drummey and others. This series is keyed to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, has citations from contemporay but orthodox authors and recent official Vatican documents. One further advantage of this series is that each of the five volumes has a Teacher's/Study Manual. Catholicism & Reason: The Creed and Apologetics presents the doctrines of the Church and shows that they are defensible and reasonable.  Catholicism &  Life: Commandments and Sacraments applies the teachings of the Church to the practical realities of everyday living by treating of the natural law as revealed in the commandments and of the sacraments as the sources of sanctifying grace necessary for salvation.  Catholicism and Society: Marriage, Family and Social Issues shows how our Faith governs our relations to those around us in family and the larger society. It also treats of vocation and avocation. Catholicism and Ethics: A Medical/Moral Handbook has two main sections. The first deals with the nature of ethics and morality: human acts, conscience, double effect, cooperation in evil etc. The second part considers such very specific problems created by secular, atheistic science as cloning, artificial insemination, fertility testing, etc.   The newest text in this series is Catholicism and Scripture: Salvation History. It takes the student on a tour through both Testaments showing how the Word of God can be applied to everyday life. It discusses the life of Jesus through the lens of the twenty mysteries of the rosary.