Education Under the Light of Faith, for Its Own Sake
President Dillon's Convocation Day Remarks
(Fall 2008 Newsletter)
[Index
of Past Articles by President Dillon]
In the fifth chapter of the first book of the Rhetoric,
Aristotle distinguishes between possessions which are useful and
possessions which he calls "liberal." The former we have
for the sake of something other than themselves; the latter are
to be enjoyed just in themselves, without reference to anything
else.
You are about to embark upon a year of liberal studies. When you
graduate, you will have in your possession, so to speak, a liberal
education. This education is not for the sake of tending to your
bodily needs, nor for the sake of the occupations in which you will
be engaged in order to live. This education is for its own sake-but
in the very possession of it, you will be enabled to live well.
I say this because a liberal education is ordered to the cultivation
and perfection of the intelligence, which is our highest faculty.
Such an education begins in a kind of wonder about things and sets
us on a path toward the fullness of knowledge, which we call wisdom.
A liberal education does not immediately produce wisdom, but it
does help us to make the right kind of beginning in what should
be a lifelong quest to know the highest and best things and the
ultimate causes of reality.
Aristotle points out that all men by nature desire to know. There
is a natural desire in us to look for the reasons behind things-to
understand causes. This desire is part of our very make-up, for
the good of the intellect is to know the truth, and it innately
seeks that good. For each of us, then, the more we know, the more
completely we fulfill our nature, and the more excellent we become
as men. In fact, in bequeathing us the gift of intelligence, God
has made us, to some degree, like unto Himself, and sharers, in
a sense, in a divine life. From all this it follows that to know
what is true is a great human good, and it also follows that a liberal
education is worthwhile just in itself, whatever other benefits
may derive from it.
Faith and Reason in Catholic Liberal Education
Now, Catholic liberal education has the same noble end as liberal
education generally. However, there is a significant addition to
the means it employs to reach that end. For whatever we can discover
by our natural reason, as believing Catholics, we also have in our
intellectual endeavors the guidance of divine revelation and of
the teaching Church. Our faith can illumine our understanding, and
it can be a most helpful guide in the intellectual life, providing
signposts, as it were, which direct us on the road to wisdom, deter
us from making wrong turns, and lead us to profound truths which
we would otherwise not even begin to see.
The College's founding document, often called the Bluebook,
spells out very clearly what is the nature of Catholic liberal education
and how Thomas Aquinas College in particular proposes to conduct
it. This founding document, which was first published in 1969, fits
hand-in-glove with Pope John Paul II's apostolic constitution concerning
Catholic universities published some 22 years later, entitled Ex
Corde Ecclesiae. The fit is close because neither document pretends
to be saying something "new and original," but rather
both draw from the same rich intellectual patrimony of Catholic
thought, and both look to the gospels and to the traditions of the
Magisterium of the Church as their source of inspiration and guidance.
Our Bluebook maintains, quite simply, that the essential purpose
of a Catholic college is to educate under the light of the Faith.
Secular learning, it states, is to be combined with Catholic wisdom,
since the Catholic faith is a guide in the intellectual life as
well as in the moral life, and a Catholic college is properly defined
by and formed by divinely revealed truth.
In a similar vein, Pope John Paul II's Ex Corde Ecclesiae
states:
A Catholic university is completely dedicated to the search
for all aspects of the truth, in their essential connection with
the supreme truth, who is God. It does this without fear, but
rather with enthusiasm, dedicating itself to every path of knowledge.
Speaking along related lines in his address to Catholic college
presidents in Washington, D.C. this past April, our Holy Father,
Pope Benedict XVI, stated the following:
All the Church's activities stem from her awareness that
she is the bearer of a message which has its origin in God Himself:
in His goodness and wisdom, God chose to reveal Himself and to make
known the hidden purpose of His will (cf. Eph 1:9; Dei
Verbum, 2). God's desire to make Himself known, and the innate
desire of all human beings to know the truth, provide the context
for human inquiry into the meaning of life. This unique encounter
is sustained within our Christian community: the one who seeks the
truth becomes the one who lives by faith.
He went on to say:
The contemporary "crisis of truth" is rooted in a "crisis
of faith." Only through faith can we freely give our assent
to God's testimony and acknowledge Him as the transcendent guarantor
of the truth He reveals. Again, we see why fostering personal intimacy
with Jesus Christ and communal witness to His loving truth is indispensable
in Catholic institutions of learning…It is important therefore
to recall that the truths of faith and of reason never contradict
one another….The Church's mission, in fact, involves her in
humanity's struggle to arrive at truth. In articulating revealed
truth she serves all members of society by purifying reason, ensuring
that it remains open to the consideration of ultimate truths.
Seeking and Speaking the Truth
Now, what is fundamental in our own founding document, in Pope
John Paul II's Ex Corde Ecclesiae, and in Pope Benedict's
address to Catholic educators-in fact, what is fundamental in any
cogent understanding of education-is the judgment that truth exists.
It is certainly not difficult to see that if there were no truth,
there would be no reason for a college to exist. But there
is truth, and it is discoverable-though, for the most part, not
without great effort and diligence. Even if the lips were to deny
truth's existence, the human mind, in its very operation, can only
reaffirm that there is truth-any other position turns out to be
self-defeating. Skepticism is nothing but an imposter in the halls
of the academy.
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Each year at the Matriculation
Ceremony on Convocation Day, freshmen come forward to greet
President Dillon and the presiding prelate (this year, the
Most Reverend Salvatore Cordileone) and then sign their names
in the College's official register.
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Thomas Aquinas College, therefore, is devoted, in season and out
of season, to seeking and speaking the truth-no matter what the
intellectual vagaries of the world, no matter what curricular fads
abound on other campuses.
A Sense of Wonder
Let me emphasize that none of what I said implies that the truth
is easily won. As you wrestle with understanding the perplexities
of the natural world, or the complexities of quantity, or the mysteries
of the divine, you must question, explore, speculate, and test-in
short, you must give free reign to your wonder.
Naturally, you will make mistakes, but it is only through genuine
intellectual inquiry that you will make genuine progress toward
the truth.
This community of learning, which is a community of friends dedicated
to the fostering of intellectual virtue, is an ideal place in which
to cultivate your sense of wonder and to strive for wisdom. Let
us, then, begin this 38th year of Thomas Aquinas College with the
determination that it will be the best yet in our history.
-- Qtrly Newsletter, Fall 2008
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