A Catholic College
A college dedicated to Catholic liberal education is responsible
first and foremost for helping its students perfect their
intellects under the light of the truths revealed by God through
the Catholic Church. It should guide them in making a good
beginning on the road to wisdom and in forming the intellectual
virtues characteristic of well-educated men and women. This
it will do chiefly through its  curriculum
of studies. It is in the design and direction of the curriculum
- toward truth and wisdom - that Thomas Aquinas College is
unique among American colleges and universities.
The major subjects comprehended by a curriculum of classical
liberal education are worthy of the attention given them because
of their intrinsic merits and because each contributes to
the student's growing knowledge, judgement and wisdom. But
these subjects are not all of equal importance. Wisdom includes
discerning their relationships and relevance to one another.
A Catholic college must therefore organize its curriculum
to make evident the essential unity and intrinsic order of
the arts and sciences. In so doing, it will guide students
to see for themselves that all the branches of learning converge
on theological wisdom. The academic program of Thomas Aquinas
College presents to students, in an order that respects the
natural development of their minds, the fields of knowledge
that comprehend a complete undergraduate education.
 Because
the "Great Books" record the thoughts and discoveries
of Civilization's greatest minds from the classical era to
our own, a college should turn to them in its pursuit of truth
and wisdom. Even a cursory reading of these books, however,
reveals frequent and radical disagreement among their authors
concerning fundamental matters. A Catholic college should
- indeed, inevitably will - distinguish certain authors
as most important in the Catholic intellectual tradition and
will, accordingly, emphasize their books as most important
in the formation of its students. It is in its recognition
of the excellence and authority of certain authors, and in
its understanding that Sacred Scripture and the magisterium
of the Church are the most important sources of enlightenment,
that Thomas Aquinas College is more than a "Great Books" program.
 While
Thomas Aquinas College emphasizes the writings of certain
of the authors in the Catholic tradition - Plato and Aristotle
in philosophy, for example, and St. Augustine and St. Thomas
in theology - it recognizes that intellectual nourishment
can come from every sort of source, whether Catholic or not.
The discussions which characterize the classroom work of the
College draw upon the wide and rich patrimony of wisdom in
the "Great Books." The many contradictory claims made by the
authors studied in the curriculum are sifted for their merits
under both the natural light of reason and the supernatural
light of Faith. As Pope John Paul has said in the encyclical
Fides et Ratio, "Faith and reason are like two wings
on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth."
In conformity with the desires of the Church as expressed
in the apostolic constitution Ex Corde Ecclesiae and
in Canon Law, the Catholic members of the teaching faculty
of Thomas Aquinas College publicly take the Oath
of Fidelity and make a Profession
of Faith at the beginning of their terms of office. By
these, they confirm their commitment to teaching all the parts
of the program in a way that leads to and aids in reaching
the natural goal of all honest intellectual inquiry - the
contemplation of the truth about reality whether discovered
through reason or revealed by God Himself.
Meet our campus chaplains...
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