The Proposal for the Fulfillment of Catholic Liberal Education is the founding and governing document of Thomas Aquinas College. What follows here is an effort to summarize what the College's program is intended to accomplish in the minds and hearts of the students. For a complete and authoritative statement of the College's guiding principles and objectives, please read the Proposal.
Moral
The successful graduate of Thomas Aquinas College will have:
- A deeply rooted love for the intellectual life borne from wonder about marvels of the world, both natural and supernatural.
- Confidence that progress can be made on the difficult road to wisdom, especially under the light of the Magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church and in the company of friends pursuing wisdom.
- The humility to acknowledge 1) that he is measured by reality; 2) that he needs to attend carefully to the great thinkers and to seek guidance from the wise, especially from the patron saint of the College, St. Thomas Aquinas; and 3) that his estimation of his own achievement and that of the larger intellectual community must be proportioned to the level of those achievements.
- A love for the common good, which motivates and governs an appropriate participation in political and ecclesial communities.
Intellectual
To the degree appropriate for the beginner, the successful graduate of Thomas Aquinas College will:
- Understand the distinction of disciplines: in their subject matter, in their modes of procedure, in their principles, and in their level of precision and certitude.
- Understand the unity and order of the disciplines, recognizing how one discipline sheds light on another and how Sacred Theology is the Queen of the sciences to which all others are ordered.
- Grasp something of the order of the universe from prime matter to spiritual being to God, both in its natural perfection and in its perfection in grace.
- Have the skills to converse with others fruitfully and in the spirit of friendship, both in speech and in the written word.