Study Center

Today is Saturday, March 7, 2026 and I’m William Michael, the headmaster of the Classical Liberal Arts Academy. If you’d like to learn about what we’re doing to restore classical Catholic education, and if you’d like to join us and study at no cost, check out our website at classicalliberalarts.com. This morning, I was thinking through some frustration that I feel as I work in Catholic education, because I feel like Catholic families complain about modern culture and complain about modern education, but they never do anything about it, and even if they do make an attempt to do something, … Continue

Today is Thursday, March 5, and this is William Michael of the Classical Liberal Arts Academy. One of the most important mistakes that parents make is seeking to find a school that provides everything that their children need to grow and develop well. Parents look for schools to provide not only academic instruction and assessment, which is the principal role of schools, but they look for teachers to provide role models. They look for schools to provide children with friends. They look for schools to provide children with extracurricular activities like sports, music, and fine arts. The problem is that … Continue

Today, the following image was posted was made on social media: The image was spread around by men and women who were interested in criticizing the Second Vatican Council. The argument goes like this: 1. Whatever happens after Vatican II was caused by Vatican II.2. The decline in religious priests and sisters happened after Vatican II.3. Therefore, Vatican II caused the decline in religious priests and sisters. This will persuade people who are seeking a cause to separate from the Catholic Church (Proverbs 18:1). It will not, however, persuade anyone who is reasonable. First, the argument is a fallacy. The … Continue

Recently, I’ve been engaged in a number of interesting discussions with Protestants who deny that the papacy was established by Christ in the person of St. Peter. And as I’ve been engaged in these discussions for several days, I’ve been just jotting some thoughts down and organizing my own thoughts on the topic, studying the scriptures, trying as hard as I can to gain a full picture of what the scriptures have to say, especially as others present their interpretation and ideas on the topic, and I started to collect a bunch of different points and notes that I wanted … Continue

I’d like to take some time today to talk about a plan for homeschooling that I would recommend for homeschooling parents who have no idea what they’re doing. When I say homeschooling parents who have no idea what they’re doing, I’m not being negative or critical. I’m being honest. I’m talking to Christian parents who desire to give their children a Christian education, who are concerned about the quality of modern schools, who love their children very much, who fear God and desire to honor Him as parents. But when it comes to education, when it comes to homeschooling, when … Continue

This talk is intended for parents and students of the Classical Liberal Arts Academy who are trying to understand how Catholic students should think about the study of the natural sciences, with a Catholic mindset, with a coherent system of Catholic thought. Many think that there’s a choice to be made between Classical Studies and Modern studies. But as I’d like to explain in this talk, that’s not the case. In fact, I would argue that in order to be true scientists, to be good scientists, we actually need to understand scholastic philosophy first and then study science within the … Continue

Aristotle’s final work in the Organon, called “Sophistical Elenchi,” is one of the most practical books ever written. It’s not about how to construct clever arguments or win debates through trickery. It’s about something far more important: how to recognize when reasoning fails, and more crucially, how to avoid failing in your own thinking. Let me tell you why this matters. Reasoning is supposed to correspond to reality. When we argue, we’re trying to say something true about the world. We’re trying to move from what we know to what we don’t know. We’re trying to arrive at knowledge. But fallacies … Continue

The seven liberal arts are the traditional disciplines by which the human intellect is formed in the knowledge of truth. They are called liberal because they are proper to a free man—that is, one who lives according to reason and seeks understanding for its own sake, rather than for utility or gain. These arts are not modern academic subjects, nor are they collections of skills or methods. Each is a defined intellectual discipline, distinguished by its proper object and method, and each holds a necessary place within an ordered whole. Their division is not arbitrary, but follows the order of … Continue