[9] Religious Education was compulsory for all students, as was daily attendance at morning mass before breakfast and night prayer after supper.

Each year during Christmas vacation, the Junior class traveled to Rome for two weeks under the supervision of several teachers and parent chaperones.

[16] The Norbertine priests in the 1940s were well-established teachers in the national educational system of Hungary that encompassed religious and secular schools alike.

Two groups of priests from the Norbertine Abbey of Csorna fled their native land on separated July nights in 1950.

[14][17] On the night of July 11, 1950, word came to the Abbey in Csorna that the police would arrive the next day to arrest the conferred and suppress the community.

Arriving in New York in 1952, they were welcomed by the Abbey of St. Norbert in De Pere, Wisconsin, with whom they worked for several years, saving money to begin their own monastery.

[18] At the invitation of Cardinal McIntyre, archbishop of Los Angeles, they first moved to Santa Ana, California in 1957 and taught at Mater Dei High School,[14] establishing a monastic community the next year.

Parker to petition Cardinal McIntyre to allow the school to introduce a parallel college preparatory program for lay students.

As the number of those interested in the priesthood at the high school level continued to dwindle, the parallel programs gradually merged into one.

By 1995, St. Michael's Prep became the only institution where Catholic, secondary education was available in the entire Western United States for those seeking to study in an all-boys, residential environment.