The Apostle of Truth
Remarks of Dr. Thomas E. Dillon at the Dedication of St. Thomas
Hall
(Fall 2007 Newsletter)
 Rasmussen
and Associates and HMH Construction have together met the challenge
of designing and building an office complex that would house under
one roof not only the teaching faculty of Thomas Aquinas College,
but its administrative faculty and staff, as well. This could not
have been accomplished without the generous assistance of a number
of organizations and individuals, some of whom we are honored to
have with us today.
I would, therefore, like to thank from the Fritz B. Burns Foundation,
Mr. Joseph Rawlinson and his wife, Elaine, Mr. Rex Rawlinson and
his wife, Maureen, and Mrs. Ken Skinner for their Foundation's magnificent
contribution to this project. My heartfelt thanks goes also to all
the representatives of the Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation, and
in particular to Mrs. Ann Noble Brown, for your Foundation's great
generosity, and for traveling to our campus today from Oklahoma
to be part of this celebration.
Rasmusen and Associates and HMH Construction have wonderfully
expressed in stone, as it were, the unity of purpose that our founders
intended between the College's various employees—those who
teach our students, and those who support their work by helping
to provide the practical necessities without which they could not
carry it out. We are united in a noble mission—to provide a
genuine, Catholic liberal education to the young men and women whom
God sends our way. We aim especially to do what Pope Leo XIII called
for in Aeterni Patris: "to furnish to studious youth a generous
and copious supply of those purest streams of wisdom flowing inexhaustibly
from the precious fountainhead of the Angelic Doctor," St.
Thomas Aquinas.
Our curriculum, while including many hours dedicated to the trivium
and quadrivium, is ordered finally to the higher disciplines of
philosophy and theology. In particular, it is informed by the teachings
of St. Thomas Aquinas because, as Pope Benedict XV taught, "The
Church has declared his doctrine her own." We have chosen,
therefore, to name our new faculty office building St. Thomas Hall
after our patron. For this building represents, more than any other
on campus, our desire to study and learn at the feet of that great
master, St. Thomas, as he is the common doctor of the Church.
Pope John Paul II in his encyclical Fides et Ratio, describes
our patron thus:
Profoundly convinced that 'whatever its source, truth is of
the Holy Spirit,' St. Thomas was impartial in his love of truth.
He sought truth wherever it might be found….In him, the Church's
Magisterium has seen and recognized the passion for truth. His
thought scales 'heights unthinkable to human intelligence.' Rightly,
then, he may be called the 'apostle of truth.'
So, it is to the truth that we especially are committed, in the
spirit of St. Thomas. Pope Leo XIII said of our patron that like
"the sun, he heated the world with the warmth of his virtues
and filled it with the splendor of his teaching." We should
note that it is not simply for his erudition that St. Thomas is
acclaimed, but for his virtue. And this is the hope we have for
all of us at the College—students, faculty, and staff.
Fittingly, then, this new and beautiful building is located just
next to the College's chapel, still under construction. For our
noble end is ordered to a yet greater end—that our students,
duly formed in the liberal arts and the thought of St. Thomas, will
receive through the Mass and the sacraments the graces they need
to make their own the truth about the created world, man, and God
and, in turn, bring it to others in their lives beyond our campus.
In keeping with what Pope Benedict XVI said of our patron on his
feast this past January, we hope that our graduates will know "how
to present that wonderful Christian synthesis of reason and faith
which today, for Western civilization, is a precious patrimony."
We pray, therefore, that all our efforts—those of the teaching
faculty, administrative faculty, and staff—will help our students
to go out into the world and do their part to transform it for Christ,
who said of Himself, "I am The way, the truth, and the life,"
and who taught that "the truth shall set you free."
-- Qtrly Newsletter, Fall 2007
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