Lent, 2016

 

Dear Friend,

Lent is a time of waiting and a time of preparation. For us at Thomas Aquinas College, this year it is doubly so.

At the end of this month, the Supreme Court of the United States will hear oral arguments in our case against the HHS Mandate. The Mandate requires organizations either to offer contraception, sterilization, and abortifacient drugs as part of their employee health plans — or to cooperate with the government in doing so.

The government claims that this cooperation, though it is linked to the fact that the organization is paying for health plan services, somehow removes the organization from any involvement with the coverage. We reject this claim.

We are honored to approach the Court together with a varied and distinguished company of plaintiffs, all gathered to represent the cause of religious freedom, and united with the many courageous organizations whose cases are still making their way through the lower courts. The coming ruling will impact us all. This is indeed a time for prayer, for fasting, and for reflection on the principles we uphold.

Simply put, we believe that Truth Matters.

Truth matters not only in what we say, but in how we conduct business, how we treat those around us … in short, how we live our lives.

We are asking the Court to allow us to administer the College in accordance with truth. This means continuing to provide excellent health insurance for our employees and their families that does not contradict Catholic teaching.

The oral arguments this month will be the culmination of a process that has taken more than two years since the College filed its suit against the Mandate in September of 2013. These have been years of uncertainty, and often of anxiety, but we recall that the College was formed for just such times as these.

You may ask how, more than 40 years before the mandate was ever thought of, our founders could have known that it would be written. They couldn’t, of course. But they knew that there would, in every time, be challenges to Truth. And so they created the College to:

• Bring young men and women to greater knowledge and love of the truth;
• Form them as confident and capable thinkers, writers, and speakers so that they could articulate the truth;
• And strengthen them through community and Sacrament to defend the truth.

This is the work of Thomas Aquinas College. This is the work we have pursued for more than 40 years, and that we continue to pursue as we await the Court’s ruling. The Lenten desert, by enforcing a period of waiting, offers us time for preparation. Right now, in our classrooms, students are undergoing that preparation. Truth will always be challenged in this world, and Truth will always need defenders.

Because we work to keep our education affordable, and because we do not accept any direct government funding, each year more than a quarter of our operating budget must be raised through private contributions. This year, our need is $5.1 million.

As we wait together in the desert, please prayerfully consider a gift to make this time fruitful for our students.

And, even in a Lenten season as somber and uncertain as this one, let us hold fast to hope — and to joy. On the day before Palm Sunday, we will celebrate the great feast of St. Joseph, Patron of the Universal Church. May this great Saint, who was asked so dramatically to live the truth by trusting in the Word of God, teach us, too, to trust. And may he, who held Christ in his arms, enfold us in the same embrace.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Michael F. McLean, Ph.D.
President