The primary goal of campus ministry at Bishop Guilfoyle is to create the appropriate climate of invitation for students to begin and/or deepen a vivifying personal relationship with Jesus Christ. This involves creating and maintaining regular opportunities for students to develop and cultivate a saving relationship with Him through participation in sacramental worship and the fostering of authentic spiritual growth. It also entails coming to the aid of others in the community through service, with a priority placed on service to those in greater need in fulfillment of the Lord’s own teaching.

Apart from it’s impact within the religion classroom, Bishop Guilfoyle’s campus ministry program always looks to create opportunities where unique encounters with Christ are made possible. These include retreats with various themes and topics, pilgrimages and visits to holy sites, guest speakers, collaborations with students from other schools, and special peer ministry events.

At the same time, special recognition and provision is always made for those students at Bishop Guilfoyle who are products of a Christian faith tradition other than Catholic, and again for those students who attend the school with no link to a Christian faith tradition. In both of these instances, “[t]he school must begin from the principle that its educational program is intentionally directed to the growth of the whole person.”^[1] “In the certainty that the Spirit is at work in every person, the Catholic school offers itself to all, non-Christians included, with all its distinctive aims and means, acknowledging, preserving and promoting the spiritual and moral qualities, the social and cultural values, which characterize different civilizations.”^[2] 

Even outside of the religion classroom, students will still be exposed the broader Catholic context of the school since it is the fundamental character of the school’s activity and mission. But our campus ministry program recognizes that our students must always experience the freedom that they have as human beings concerning faith, so that they never feel coerced or pressured by the proclamation of the Gospel or the explication of its truths by their school. While the school undertakes that proclamation and explication without reserve, we are always mindful of and appropriately accommodating towards those students who come from without the Catholic faith and those who come from no faith tradition at all.

^[1] The Catholic School n.29

^[2] The Catholic School n.85