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Fides Entrepreneurship: Putting Beauty back into Education and Testing
Luca Zocche
January 29, 2026
This is Fides Entrepreneurship bi-weekly newsletter, your resource for Catholic Entrepreneurship wether it inspires you to start your own business led by your faith or help meet the people you need to help you grow your business.
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Thank you to everyone who joined us last night.
Your presence truly made it an unforgettable evening.
Your support continues to bring forward stories like Jeremy Tate’s, a story that began with a restless search for authentic Christianity, passed through public school classrooms in Brooklyn, protestant seminaries filled with unanswered questions, and ultimately became a bold act of entrepreneurship: creating an alternative to a system that is against truth, beauty, and wisdom from education.
Through the Classic Learning Test, Jeremy showed us how one seemingly “unsexy” lever standardized testing can reshape an entire culture of learning. Not by ideology, but by returning students to the great texts, the saints, the philosophers, and the long tradition that teaches young people how to think, not what to conform to.
How to start to ask the question “What is the meaning of happiness?” and one that they will think of for the rest of their lives.
We hope this evening encourages you to refuse to quit when the odds are long, and to the restoration of beauty not only in education but in the U.S (quite possibly even following the trend of American Dynamism).
📆Upcoming Events
February 7th 🏃 ☕ Catholic Entrepreneurs Morning Run Club (FREE)
February 19th - Speaker to be announced soon!
March 26th 🕯️ Candle lit dinner with Tim Busch, Founder of Pacific Hospitality Group and the NAPA Institute
Brief words from Tim:
“When Tom Monaghan became a billionaire I said, wait a minute if they can go to mass and then what you find out, is that prayer multiples your time it doesn’t take from your time. You’re using your time much more wisely and the holy spirit is guiding you away from people things and efforts that are going down dead ends. Through prayer you regain time” (Source)
April 9th 🕯️ Candle lit dinner with John Studzinski, Managing director and vice chairman of the global investment-management firm PIMCO and Founder of the Genesis Foundation, Arise Foundation, and The Passage.
Brief words from John’s upcoming story:
“We’re living in a world where people’s values are more and more ambiguous, and they are uncertain. People want to know what they’re dealing with – which is why they ask the question about daily Mass – whether in China, Tokyo, South Africa or Copenhagen. And when I say “Yes”, I go on to talk about the universality of the Church, what it is about it that gives me strength for my day, and gets me focused on what is important in engaging with them. It’s a very important anchor. Faith is not an accessory like a handbag or a wristwatch; it’s the very core of my being (Source from our sponsor, Catholic Herald)
Without further ado, here are 3 golden takeaways from Jeremy Tate’s conversation that we hope will stay with you:
1. Authentic Christianity Is Not “Baskin Robbins”
Jeremy’s journey began with a powerful conversion but also with a deep discomfort toward relativized Christianity.
After hearing the Gospel for the first time at Young Life camp, he asked a simple question: Where do I go to church?
The answer unsettled him.
“They would use this analogy, you know, church is kind of like, like Baskin Robbins… a lot of flavors, but it’s all ice cream.”
And his response was instinctive:
“I just felt wrong, like, I don’t know that if that’s right.”
That discomfort launched what he called a search for authentic Christianity, a search that eventually led him to the Church Fathers, the question of authority, and finally to the Catholic Church.
“I felt very uncomfortable that, like, my take on Scripture was as legitimate as the seminary, as legitimate as any of my professors… that can’t be right.”
Truth is not a matter of preference.
Faith deepens when authority, tradition, and beauty are taken seriously.
2. “The Test Shapes the Curriculum, So Change the Test”
One of the most striking insights of the evening was how standardized testing quietly governs education.
Jeremy saw it firsthand when students avoided philosophy and apologetics for one reason alone:
“It’s not any AP points.”
That single sentence revealed something deeper.
“In our Catholic high schools, the College Board has taken the place of the Catholic Magisterium.”
Because what is rewarded becomes what is taught.
And what is tested becomes what is valued.
“For better or worse, the test is going to shape what happens. It’s going to shape the curriculum. It’s going to shape secondary education.”
CLT was born not as a protest, but as a lever — restoring long-form reading, primary texts, no calculators, and the great minds of the Western Christian intellectual tradition.
“If you can create a new gold standard that is evaluating a student’s ability to grapple with the very best of what has been thought and said… I think that can fundamentally reorient education.”
Culture follows incentives.
Change the incentives, and you change the culture.
3. Parents Are the First Educators
One of the quiet but most countercultural moments of the evening came when Jeremy returned education to its proper place: the family.
He reminded us plainly:
“The Catholic Catechism teaches and this is true regardless of if you send your kids to a public school or homeschool or Catholic school — parents are the first and primary educators of their own kids.”
This wasn’t theoretical for him.
Reflecting on conversations with adults who grew up in public schools, he noticed a pattern:
“I talk to people who are my age or older, and who went to public school, but they’re like, ‘It was really my mom or really my dad who was like, you’re going to read this book and then we’re going to talk about it.’”
That simple act — a parent choosing formation over outsourcing — shaped hearts and minds far more than any system ever could.
Jeremy’s warning was clear: no school, test, or institution can replace the vocation of the parent.
“Regardless of what educational choices you make for your future kids… really, really embrace that.”
This is not just practical wisdom — it is deeply Catholic.
The Church has always taught that education is not first a bureaucratic process, but an act of love and responsibility entrusted to mothers and fathers. Schools assist. Systems serve. But parents lead.
Bonus Quote: Beauty Leads Before Arguments
Jeremy closed by returning to what first stirred his heart: beauty.
“Bishop Barron puts it this way, that the transcendental you always lead with in Christian apologetics is beauty, because it’s not an argument.”
People don’t need to be convinced that beauty exists.
“People just know when something is beautiful.”
And that beauty still draws hearts home.
“People walk past St. Patrick’s… they’re not Catholic oftentimes, but they’re like, ‘Why, who built this? Why did they build this?’”
Beauty evangelizes quietly — and permanently.
Student Entrepreneurship Ticket Fund
We’re very excited to have officially launched our student fund!!
For the first time students can attend our events for free thanks to the contributions made at our Christmas party!
At this event we had 5 students from:
Fordham University
Hunter College
Open University (UK)
CUNY
Why do we do this?
At the high-school and university level, students are forming both their intellect and moral compass. They are bold thinkers but often financially constrained. Your sponsorship allows them to attend our events free of charge on a monthly basis, giving them direct access to an experience that shapes both their character and career.
Inspired by programs like The Wings Club’s Future Aviation Leaders tables and The Economics Club of New York, this initiative allows Catholic students to meet real-world leaders in entrepreneurship and finance and ultimately those who are actively shaping Wall Street, policy, and the Church’s future witness in public life.
Now for the first time to continue the growth and support of our student program thanks to the Knights of Columbus Charitable Fund we can accept Tax-Deductible donations!
Your support of this program is deeply appreciated and means a lot for the next generation of Catholic Entrepreneurs to do good in the world and create true change!
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It publishes his letters, official biographies, and other spiritual works while also offering religious articles. Working closely with Voce di Padre Pio, Tele Radio Padre Pio, and Padre Pio TV, it forms part of a broader Capuchin mission to communicate Gospel values and continue Padre Pio’s legacy of faith, charity, and evangelization through modern media.
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