When we talk about classical liberal arts education, it can be easy – in our enthusiasm for what is surely an antidote to so many of the ills of contemporary pedagogies – to invoke the transcendentals almost automatically. Most people are unlikely to object to the True, the Good, or the Beautiful, even if we might disagree, in practice, over what these entail, so it’s tempting to toss them around in unexamined – albeit well-intentioned – ways. But when we say that classical education seeks Truth, Goodness, and Beauty, what do we, as a Catholic and a Christian institution, mean? By setting them as ideals and ends of education, we affirm the universal and distinctive qualities of the True, the Good, and the Beautiful, while also acknowledging their necessary interrelations. For the sake of clarity – and with apologies for the reductive nature of such definitions – we might understand each as some character of the real: Truth as that to which our intellect is drawn, Goodness as that to which our will is drawn, and Beauty as that to which our appreciation – we might even say our wonder or gratitude – is drawn. We find Truth, Goodness, and Beauty at work in the world, and we can meaningfully seek them, but no worldly reality perfectly captures what they are. They belong properly only to God as the source and summit of all being. When we say that classical education seeks the True, the Good, and the Beautiful, this is not a noble abstraction but something infinitely more urgent and profound. We mean that the aim of classical or liberal arts education in developing and exercising our human capacities – our critical thought, creativity, empathy, humility, intellectual honesty, memory, and discipline – is ultimately to seek God, our Creator....