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“Vessels of Grace”
By Dr. Brian T. Kelly
Dean, Thomas Aquinas College
Dedication of Founders Plaza
March 7, 2017

 

I remember hearing Ron McArthur talk about the founding of Thomas Aquinas College to an audience at the University of Notre Dame many years ago. He said that the founders were faced with a situation in the 1960s where Catholic education was corrupting, apparently at all levels. And they wondered why this had to be. Why couldn’t a college be seriously Catholic and seriously intellectual? Why insist on driving a wedge between faith and reason? Thomas Aquinas College was founded to provide a response to the clear teaching of the Magisterium that human beings need truth and that real progress can be made on the road to wisdom under the guidance of the Church.

Using the tools at their disposal, and relying heavily on the God of mercy, they took a leap of faith and started a small, independent, Catholic college committed to making the students active in their own search for wisdom and ordered to and by the method and doctrine of St. Thomas Aquinas, who has been lauded by the Magisterium as a sure guide for the one seeking wisdom.

Inspired by the founders’ vision we have carefully preserved and continue to foster discipleship to St. Thomas Aquinas. Now, it is one thing to accept this approach on faith, and another thing to experience its fruitfulness. Forty-six years later, we have found ample evidence that proceeding under St. Thomas’ guidance, and following carefully the curriculum that the founders worked out, have provided an excellent road to the truth amidst the wasteland known as higher education.

With God’s blessing the founders did this at a time when it was just not thinkable. I remember Peter DeLuca telling me that the first substantial donation came from a man who did not believe that such a thing could be done but was impressed by the founders’ ability to dream big.

I am thrilled to be able to thank and honor the founders today and to be able to say a few words as their former student and later colleague, and later still as their dean. I have been blessed by their gift in countless ways. And let me say that I intend to thank and honor even those founders that I never got to know well for whatever role they played in making Thomas Aquinas College a reality.

I have been struck again and again by one common thread in the founding tutors that I was blessed to know. Although they had a high regard for the school that they founded, and were struck by its growing reputation, they were all remarkably humble about their role in it. I remember Mark Berquist telling me that they always recognized that the good that they saw coming out of this project exceeded the labor that they put into it. They always recognized that God used their efforts for His own purposes and that they could only take credit as vessels of grace.

Let me give one little example to illustrate the humble spirit of service that I found in these men. First of all it required a remarkable humility to gladly accept having me elevated to a position of authority over them — when I became dean, Ron McArthur, Mark Berquist, and Jack Neumayr were all still actively teaching. We are blessed to still have Peter DeLuca going strong. They all responded with amazing grace. But once I asked Ron what course he would like to teach the following year, and he hesitated to tell me. He said that he didn’t want to tell me what he would prefer to teach because I should feel free to give him whatever assignment would best serve the needs of the College. An amazing example of humble solicitude for the common good.

I am not here to canonize the founders — I ask you please to remember to pray for them and their families — but I have to tell you honestly that humility was a common thread among them. And this can also be recognized in the sentiment that they wanted their students to leave with. From the beginning our Commencement ceremony has asked the newly minted graduates of Thomas Aquinas College to sing a hymn to the Lord proclaiming, “Not to us Lord, not to us, but to Your name give the glory.”

May God Bless Ron McArthur, Mark Berquist, Jack Neumayr, Peter DeLuca, and anyone else who played a significant role in making the Proposal for the Fulfillment of Catholic Liberal Education come to life.