From the Desk of the President
A Conversation with the President of Thomas Aquinas College
(Spring 2006 Newsletter) [Index
of Past Articles by President Dillon]
 Q.
What are the highlights of the past 15 years, and what are the College’s
major plans for the next few years?
During the past 15 years, our student body has grown to its maximum
size, and we have significantly built out our campus. At the same
time, we have stayed true to our mission of liberal education undertaken
in the light of the Catholic faith. Moreover, we have added faculty
members who are committed in mind and soul to our understanding
of Catholic liberal education and to the importance of the thought
of St. Thomas Aquinas to the Catholic intellectual life.
We are now constructing two major buildings: a faculty building
and Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity Chapel. These projects will
require great attention and effort over the next few years, but
their completion will profoundly enhance our community life.
Q. What evidence have you seen that a “great books”
curriculum—no textbooks or lectures, just readings and discussions
of the classics—is practical for Catholics in today’s
world?
Catholic liberal education is ordered to the discernment of truth
and the formation of good judgment. These ends are good in themselves
and befitting the dignity of human beings made in the image of God—at
any time, in any century. Our program, therefore, is not ordered
to any particular practical end.
It turns out, though, that a Thomas Aquinas College education is
eminently practical for Catholics in today’s world, so in need
of leaders who are well-formed in the intellectual and moral virtues.
Our graduates excel in nearly every field —education, law,
journalism, medicine, military service, public policy, and so on.
Time and again, we hear from graduate-school professors and employers
that our graduates are some of the most well prepared they know
because they have learned how to think well, to analyze, and to
form good judgments. For those graduates who are called to the priesthood,
to religious life, or to marriage, the intellectual, moral, and
spiritual formation they receive here has a profound influence on
how they live out their vocations.
Q. Four decades ago, many older Catholic universities began
distancing themselves from their religious identity. And yet, over
the past several years, some have seemed eager to reclaim their
Catholic heritage. What is your prognosis for the future of Catholic
higher education in the next decade or two?
Without fidelity to the Magisterium, a school simply cannot
retain its Catholic character or foster real wisdom. Even when institutions
have good presidents, it may still be very hard indeed to effect
substantial improvements. Many are like large ships adrift in the
wrong direction and particularly difficult to turn around.
I have much more hope for some of the smaller Catholic institutions,
where the number of faculty is not so unwieldy, and fidelity to
the Faith, while never guaranteed, is more easily inculcated. There
are, indeed, many signs that the Faith is vibrant at these schools.
Thomas Aquinas College, as an example, is regularly commended by
secular organizations for its academic excellence and thereby enjoys
a kind of worldly prestige. This year, it was again placed in U.S.
News & World Report’s top tier of national liberal
arts colleges, and it is the only Catholic liberal arts college
in the country on their list of 40 “best values.”
Likewise, The New York Times recently published a list of
the 106 top colleges and universities in the nation that admit “the
country’s best students” (all colleges, not just
liberal arts colleges). Thomas Aquinas College is one of only four
Catholic institutions on that list and the only “new”
Catholic college or university so named.
At the same time, Thomas Aquinas College is widely recognized both
in the United States and in Rome for its fidelity and for the way
in which the Catholic faith informs not only the moral and spiritual
life of the community, but its intellectual life as well. Thomas
Aquinas College is proof that it is indeed possible to excel academically
while remaining faithful to the teaching Church.
Q. A few months before you became president, Pope John Paul
wrote that “the moment has come to commit all the Church’s
energies to a New Evangelization....No institution in the Church
can avoid this supreme duty: to proclaim Christ to all peoples.”
How is Thomas Aquinas College preparing its students to evangelize
the world?
Thomas Aquinas College is making a noteworthy contribution to the
New Evangelization. We now have 40 priests, 20 fully professed religious,
and 30 seminarians among our alumni, all directly involved in the
endeavor to change the world for Christ. In this year’s graduating
class alone, there are six who will enter the seminary.
In addition, we have numerous graduates involved in Catholic education
at all levels. Some are teachers in seminaries. One is the president
of a Catholic college. Another is the head of a philosophy department
in a Catholic university in California. One is the founding president
of the International Theological Institute in Austria, devoted to
the study of marriage and the family, expressly established at the
request of the late John Paul II. Still another is the vice president
for academic affairs in charge of four colleges, the law school,
and the graduate school at the Pontifical Catholic University in
Puerto Rico.
There are, in addition, scores of our graduates who teach at, or
are administrators of, faithful Catholic secondary and elementary
schools. Others evangelize through their publications. One has co-edited
a book on St. Thomas Aquinas and the natural law; another, at the
request of [St. Louis] Archbishop [Raymond] Burke, has produced
a high-school text on the social teachings of the Church. Another
has written a book on the ethical principle of the double-effect,
to be published in June by Oxford’s Clarendon Press. Yet another
is the president of the Catholic Schools Textbook Project, which
is turning out the first authentically Catholic textbooks in 40
years.
Other graduates are journalists and still more work in public policy.
The list goes on and on.
Thomas Aquinas College graduates are reaching, quite literally,
tens of thousands of souls. In their various capacities, they are
truly helping to change the world for Christ.
-- Qtrly Newsletter, Spring 2006
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